20. Astrid
20
ASTRID
When I walked into his study, I found him sitting in his favorite armchair, a cigar in his mouth with a cloud above his head. His eyes were glued to the painting on the wall, the one that he’d connected with the moment he laid eyes on it. The stare lingered before it switched to me.
Shirtless in his sweatpants, his beautiful skin covered in ink, his muscles bulging from his body, he looked like he belonged on the cover of a romance novel. With eyes that showed the gates to the underworld, he was dangerous…but not dangerous to me.
He blinked then put his cigar out.
I moved to the couch beside him and sat with a straight spine, my back not touching the cushions, my hands in my lap.
He stared at the painting a moment longer before he looked at me.
I met his stare, but I wanted to blink, wanted to flinch. His commanding presence was unnerving…but also comforting. Conversation wasn’t necessary to cushion the silence. Even the tensest moments with him were more comfortable than easy moments with anyone else.
He continued to stare at me, his chin moving to his closed knuckles.
“You still like the painting.”
He continued his stare.
“I thought you might take it down, because it would remind you of me.”
“It does remind me of you.” He left the armchair then walked to the table where he kept his scotch and his glasses. He poured two glasses then came back to me, leaving one on the table to grab if I wanted it. “Tell me what happened.”
I stared at the glass on the coaster.
“And be brief.”
I swallowed, not wanting to take this trip down memory lane. “He’d really changed. Was more affectionate than he’d ever been. Committed. Everything I’d ever wanted. And then he left for his contract, texted me when he got there…which was a first. But he left his tablet behind by mistake, and I watched it glow as messages popped up.” The story didn’t make me angry. I’d been over it for a long time. Felt no sense of betrayal because I hadn’t wanted him in so long. “That’s when I saw messages from this woman named Carson, who seemed to be a long-term girlfriend. I confronted Bolton when he came home, and he was so remorseful and apologetic. In his messages to her, he said he wanted to make this work for me, that he realized what he had and didn’t want to lose it. He seemed to be a reformed man after everything that happened between us, but it wasn’t enough for me.”
Theo’s eyes were locked to mine as he listened to the tale, showing no emotion in the depths of his gaze.
“And this is where it gets creepy, because he was so broken. He begged. He cried. I’d never seen him cry…ever. It almost made me feel bad for wanting to leave. Almost. I told him it was over, and he would need to move out while I packed up my things and left. And that was when everything changed. Within the snap of a finger, he was a different person. His eyes were dry. They were vile. He gave me this hollow stare, like all his humanity had disappeared. Then he said he would never let me go, and if I tried, he would hurt me.” I still remembered the moment vividly because it was one of those out-of-body experiences, where I floated high above the scene and watched it unfold. The biggest disassociation there ever was. “It wasn’t a bluff because he made good on that promise.” There was more to the tale. Details that made my hair stand on end, made my throat dry. My imprisonment felt like an insane asylum. I was scared every day until I stopped being scared, because I stopped feeling. But I spared Theo those details because they didn’t enrich the story, just made it more unbearable.
Theo turned his gaze away. At first, he stared at the ashtray where his cigar had gone cold. Then he looked at the fireplace, which hadn’t been lit because it was a warm day. His stare lingered as his thoughts remained locked behind the high gates of his exterior.
I let the silence pass, let it pass as long as he needed.
He said nothing for minutes. His stare turned to the painting on the wall. Another bout of silence stretched as he rubbed his fingers across his hard jawline. “I hope his death brings you peace—because I’m going to kill him.”
Bolton’s death wouldn’t bring me peace. The only thing that would ever give me peace would be never knowing him in the first place. Being spared the time I wasted, the lies I ingested like poison.
Theo turned back to me and stared. “I promise you.”
“I know.”
His hard stare burrowed under my skin all the way to my soul. He grabbed on to it and squeezed.
I could feel it.
“There’s something I need you to understand.” His tone changed, so the subject seemed to have changed too. “When I told you I would try, I meant it. But try is all I can do. This will probably end with me walking away at some point. Maybe in six months. Maybe in a couple years. I want you to know the end before you choose to begin. You’ve suffered enough, and the last thing I want is to make you suffer more.”
If disappointment was a frying pan, it just smacked me in the face. I battled two emotions at once, the sadness from his devastating honesty and the respect for his integrity. By no means was I old, but I would be twenty-nine in just a few weeks, and time had started to work against me. I’d already wasted invaluable youth on Bolton. It would be stupid to waste more.
But I wanted to waste my entire life on this man.
He continued his stare like he expected me to respond to that.
“Do you feel this way because of her?” I didn’t say her name because it was too hard. Too hard to acknowledge that he’d loved a woman deeply and lost her, that a chunk of his heart was permanently gone and buried in the grave with her.
“That’s one reason. Among others.”
“You’re so young to never want to remarry.” I thought I would never remarry once I was a wife. When my husband died of old age, I would wait out the remaining years until I joined him. But to lose your spouse in your twenties…that was a different story. “I would imagine she’d want you to be happy again?—”
“It’s complicated.”
My love for Bolton was dead, and I didn’t want to share Theo’s heart with anyone else. But if I wanted him, I would have to share him with her. That wasn’t my fantasy. I assumed when I met the one, we would be soul mates. But perhaps that was a stupid dream. “Why?”
“Our relationship wasn’t traditional. It was chaos from beginning to end.”
I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything. “You don’t have to talk about it, but I would love to know.”
He stared at me for a long time, his mouth shut and his eyes guarded.
An explanation would probably never come.
“I met her at a bar one night. My ass had barely touched the seat before she came at me like a fucking torpedo. A zest for life was bright in her eyes like the summer sun. She was rambunctious, spontaneous, unpredictable…fucking crazy.” He smirked slightly at the memory. “She slept over and was gone before morning. Didn’t leave her number. Never asked for mine. All I had was her name.”
It was hard to listen to the tale of him falling in love, but I continued to listen as a supportive friend, because that’s all we were at the moment. The chemistry between us was palpable, like hot steam in a sauna, but it never turned into the inferno that it should be.
“I’ve never been with a woman who couldn’t care less if she saw me again. So I tracked her down, and she rejected me. Said it was a one-time thing for her. But I convinced her to come over for another night…and another night. I looked into her and knew she wasn’t married or had a kid or a boyfriend, so I didn’t understand how a woman could be so distant. Never had a woman tell me no.”
How could any woman say no to this man? It was torture to be in the same room with him and keep my hands to myself. To look at those coffee-colored eyes and not fall deep into their abyss.
He smirked again. “She dumped me—again. Said our time together had come to an end and it was time to move on. By this point, my pride was wounded, so I nursed my ego with booze and women who couldn’t get enough of me. But I only thought of her. I’d never met anyone who lived life so intensely and fearlessly. She had this high that no amount of drugs or happiness could ever reproduce. I missed it. Missed it like fucking crazy. So I went to her again and said I wouldn’t take no for an answer. That was when she told me.”
“Told you what?”
He looked away for a second, staring at something behind me, perhaps the painting or just the wall. But then his eyes found mine again. “That she’d be dead in six weeks.”
The jealousy I felt listening to him was suddenly gone. Now all I felt was pity.
“Cancer.”
Too fucking young.
“It was terminal, and instead of wasting away in a hospital feeling like shit all the time, she decided to live whatever time she had left to the fullest. Once she told me, it all made sense. She had a zest for life because she had so little of it left.” He didn’t get emotional as he reached this part of the story. He seemed to withdraw further, feel less. “Maybe I never would have noticed her if things had been different. Maybe I wouldn’t have pursued her so desperately. Maybe the only way I would have ever wanted her was under those awful circumstances. Who knows.”
I swallowed. “That’s horrible.”
“She thought telling me the truth would finally get rid of me. Because it made no sense to grow attached to a woman who would be dead so soon. To watch the light leave her eyes until they were as black as the dark side of the moon. It was pointless and senseless. A smarter man would have walked away then. But not me.”
“You’re brave.” Bravest man I’d ever heard of. Anyone else would have turned away to protect themselves from the pain. But he stayed by her side and felt the pain with her. He watched her die and carried on afterward.
“Her goal was to fit an entire lifetime in six weeks. To cram it all together like putting all her belongings into one suitcase. She wanted to eat escargot in Paris. To see the animals on safari in Tanzania. To die a married woman.”
My eyes started to water. “And you gave all that to her.”
After a long stare, he gave a slight nod. “I did.”
I wanted to speak, but the tears in my eyes would streak down my cheeks if I tried.
“I will carry that scar for the rest of my life—but I regret nothing.”
I’d already witnessed the depth of his character and the selflessness he exhibited toward others, but now I saw an even deeper layer to his heart. He wore the skull diamond to show his power and cruelty, but I saw a man who only hurt men who deserved it. I saw a man stronger and braver than the rest of us. “I think if you gave love another chance, you wouldn’t regret that either.”
His hard stare remained locked on mine, his thoughts a mystery behind his callous hardness. “I watched her take her last breath. Felt her hand go limp when she was gone. Listened to the beep when she flatlined. The loss was indescribable, and I only knew her for two months. Imagine how it would feel to lose the woman you loved for thirty-five years? Who gave you a son who became a man. A girl who turned into a woman with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. Imagine that.”
“Imagine loving someone you never knew. Imagine the love of your life punching you square in the face. Imagine the altar you prayed to every night crumbling right before your eyes. The unthinkable happened to me, but I’m going to try again. You make me want to try, Theo. You were the bravest man who ever lived for Shayla. Please be brave for me.” Hearing him love someone else made me want him more, not less. I wanted to have his children. I wanted to hold his hand in mine and watch him take his last breath. I wanted it to hurt like hell because that would mean it was real.
He severed the contact between our souls and looked away. “I told you it was one of the reasons. There are more.”
“What are they?” I was determined to get past them.
“I’m the Skull King.” He looked at me again. “A profession that could get me and everyone I love killed.”
“And what if I don’t care?”
“You cared when Bolton’s men broke in to your apartment. That was staged, and you were still beside yourself with terror.”
His words felt like a slap across the face.
“So scared you took Bolton back without thinking twice about it.”
“I’m not weak?—”
“I never said you were. I just want you to understand that a life with me would be infinitely more dangerous. I broke things off between us because Bolton came into my home with a bomb strapped to his chest. Maybe it was a bluff, and maybe it wasn’t. But that’s just a Tuesday night for me.”
I did my best to keep a straight face, but I was disturbed down to my core. “Nothing ever happened when I was with Bolton.”
“Because the Brotherhood is a secret society. They’re not a supermarket open to the public. You have to know the right people just to contact them. And the members are nameless and unknown. That’s why they’re good assassins. You can’t see them coming if you don’t know who the fuck they are. With me, it’s a very different story. Everyone knows the Skull Kings—and their king. When we first met, you knew exactly who I was because of the ring I wear on my left hand. And you aren’t even in the game.”
I swallowed the bite of disappointment. “Do you ever think about leaving?”
“No.”
“You’re rich enough?—”
“My wealth is my business.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not changing my life for anyone. If you want to be in it, you have to accept me as I am. I’m the fucking Skull King. Period.”
I loved the soft version of Theo, when he was kind and gentle, his voice almost like a whisper. Then this version came out, the man who laid down the law like I was a soldier who was expected to follow orders. “You don’t want children?”
“No.”
“You might change your mind?—”
“No.”
“You may want other things later in life.”
“There is no later in life, sweetheart. I’ll probably be dead in the next ten years.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he asked. “Because I’m not arrogant enough to assume I’m invincible. At some point, there will always be someone smarter and stronger to replace you. It may be one of my own men. It may be an outside opponent. I don’t fucking know. But I won’t die in a rocking chair in front of the TV. It’ll be a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat. And if I’m really fucking lucky, it’ll be quick.”
“If that’s how your life is going to end, then why do you stay? Why do you do this job?” Was there a paycheck big enough to make it worthwhile? “It’s not the money, because you already have enough of it. So what is the reason?”
He stared at me with that silently hostile expression.
I waited for more. Hoped for more.
“Because I don’t have anything else.” His voice didn’t falter. His tone didn’t change. But the words were packed with so much sorrow. “This job and my life have become one. I’m nothing without it.”
“That’s not true, Theo. You have Axel.”
“And Axel has a wife and two kids. He has his own family now.”
“You could have that too, Theo.” I’d be happy to have that with you.
“And as I already said before—” he spoke with restraint, like his patience had officially expired “—I don’t want to go through that.”
“I don’t understand how a man so brave can be so scared.” Too scared to live.
He looked away and took a moment. His eyes were still and he didn’t blink, his mind elsewhere. His attention eventually came back to me. “I said I would try, and that’s the most I can offer you. I’ll try to have a different perspective. I’ll try to move on from the past. I’ll try to be more like Axel. But with nearly guaranteed certainty I’ll walk away.”
“With nearly guaranteed certainty, not complete certainty.”
“The gap between the two is minuscule, sweetheart.”
“But it’s there,” I said. “There’s a chance.”
With a body rigid like a stone gargoyle, he stared.
I didn’t take my chance with Theo when I should have. I bet on the wrong horse and lost my life savings at the track. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I wouldn’t date normal guys and wish they were Theo. I wouldn’t force my heart on someone unworthy, when there was only one man who had earned it. “And any chance with you is worth taking—no matter how minuscule it is.”
Will they be able to heal each other enough to make it last? Find out in It Destroys Me.