15. Astrid
Bolton usually left once a week or every ten days. There was a limit to the number of contracts he would personally take on. The rest, he passed on to other guys in his crew. Sometimes his clients insisted it be him since he was the one who had started the Brotherhood and, therefore, was the best at it.
So when he didn’t leave after ten days, I found that strange.
He was always home, working in his study, and when I came home from work, he had dinner waiting for me.
I’d never seen him make dinner. Didn’t know he even knew how to use the oven.
But he was quiet and distant, not like he was angry with me, but like he had something else on his mind. He rarely talked about work, and I didn’t ask because those were details I preferred to avoid, but I suspected that was the reason for his change of mood, for the fact that he hadn’t gone to work in so long.
Theo didn’t text me either. Didn’t come by the gallery again. Even though it’d been the longest stretch of time we hadn’t spoken, he seemed unbothered by my silence. He was probably trying to respect my boundaries, but I always assumed the worst.
I approached the dining table and saw the feast Bolton had made, roasted chicken surrounded by slow-cooked rice and potatoes. It was coated in a white sauce, something that smelled like garlic and rosemary. “This looks good.” I took my usual seat and placed the napkin across my lap.
He opened a bottle of white wine and poured two glasses. “It’s amazing what the internet can teach you.” He sat across from me and draped his napkin across his lap, waiting for me to take the first serving.
I scooped the hot food onto my plate then watched him do the same, the house quiet with the exception of the music he’d put on the speaker under the window. Steam rose from my plate, smelling like a gourmet meal. “I didn’t know you had an interest in cooking.”
“You cook all the time. Thought I could help out.”
I didn’t mind cooking, but I didn’t love it either. The responsibility had fallen to me because Bolton didn’t want a chef or a housekeeper. Said he preferred to keep our home private rather than open to strangers. “That was sweet of you.” Our relationship had been silently turbulent because we both dodged conversation like the plague. But he had been trying to get into my good graces in other ways, by cooking dinner, by kissing me on the shoulder when I sat on the vanity, being overly generous in bed, as if he was trying to compensate for some kind of shortcoming.
It was mental whiplash. Angry at him one moment then soft when the good memories flooded back. Then I would think about Theo, and the guilt would rush in. We owed nothing to each other, but I somehow felt like I’d stabbed him in the back. Bolton was the one I was married to, but sometimes it was easy to forget. “You haven’t gone back to work. Is everything alright?”
He was just about to scoop a bite onto his fork, but he noticeably stilled at the question. His eyes remained down for several long seconds, seconds that felt like minutes because they were packed with so much tension. He eventually abandoned the fork altogether and set it on his plate.
I knew I’d asked the wrong thing.
He stared at his plate a moment longer before he straightened and met my gaze, his blue eyes suddenly angry. “You want me to leave?”
“I-I didn’t say that. I’ve just noticed things are different. You’re cooking at home, not going to work. It seems like something has changed. You said you would never quit the Brotherhood, so I’m not sure what’s caused this abrupt change.”
His eyes pierced mine, searching for a sign of a lie. “I want to end the arrangement I suggested, and I’m sorry I suggested it in the first place. If I could take it back, I would. You’re my wife, and I love you more than words can say. I want to have a family with you, to raise children and leave them behind when it’s our time to go.”
My fingers gripped the handle of the fork as I processed his declaration. After our last argument, neither one of us had acknowledged our problems because that’s how we’d always been. We just ignored things until they went away. But Bolton wasn’t going to ignore this.
He continued to stare at me expectantly, waiting for me to appreciate his words and agree to the new terms.
But a bottomless pit opened in my stomach, and I’d been knocked off-balance. Those were words I’d wanted to hear weeks ago. I’d hoped he would realize how wrong it was and come back to me. And I would have forgiven him. But then there were more women, and it seemed like it wasn’t a problem until he realized I was also taking full advantage of the arrangement.
“Astrid.” He seemed to know that my mind had drifted.
My eyes darted away, unable to look at him without feeling the pain and the overwhelming resentment.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it?—”
“No.”
He stilled. “No, what?”
“No, that’s not what I want.”
His blue eyes shifted back and forth between mine, slow at first, but then with increased speed, like he could feel all the pieces of his life unravel.
“It’s too late, Bolton.” When I’d sat down to dinner tonight, I didn’t think this conversation would transpire. I didn’t think I would make this decision. It felt impulsive, but I knew it’d been creeping closer every day for the last two months. “I couldn’t sleep with anyone, not even when you came home with lipstick on your neck after your first trip. The idea of being with anyone else but you…made me sick. But then you said there had been multiple women, and that was when I ended up in someone’s bed. I hoped after the first woman, you would realize it was a big mistake and you would change your mind about the whole thing. But you didn’t. And I think the only reason you’re changing your mind now is because you know I have someone else—which is despicable.”
His blue eyes remained angry as he listened. “I never see the same woman twice. They’re just a means to an end. It’s a transaction, a comfort in whatever city I’m forced to be in to fulfill my contract. I feel nothing for them. But what you’re doing is completely different—because you’re in a relationship.”
“You never specified the terms?—”
“Astrid.” He kept his voice even, but his anger bubbled on the surface of his face. “An open marriage means you fuck other people, but you’re emotionally committed to each other. Having a relationship with someone else is breaking that emotional commitment to me.”
“It’s not a relationship,” I snapped. “And even if it were, that’s really rich coming from you. You’re gonna sit there and try to make me feel bad for all of this? You knew how I felt about this arrangement, but you wanted to fuck someone so bad, you did it anyway.”
“You said you were fine with it?—”
“But you knew I wasn’t!” I couldn’t restrain my anger the way he could restrain his, so it came pouring out. “You drove me into the arms of someone else because I’ve been a fucking mess since all this shit happened. Another man has been consoling me the nights you’re gone, and if that makes you feel like shit, then good. I hope you feel like shit.”
He straightened further, his jaw clenching as he listened to all of it. “The arrangement is over, Astrid. We’ll go to couples therapy or whatever bullshit married couples do to fix their problems?—”
“We had no problems until you wanted to fuck someone else. You’re the problem, Bolton.”
His jaw clenched even harder as he stared at me.
When I spoke again, my voice came out gentle. “I’m not going to stop seeing him.”
“When we decided on our arrangement, we did it together?—”
“I want a divorce.” No one expected their marriage to end in divorce. Even though half of marriages failed, I’d expected to be in the other half that succeeded. “I should have asked for it in the first place.” It had just taken me time to accept that my marriage was over, that I couldn’t get over his infidelity, that whatever love I thought we had had died or never existed in the first place. “Now you’re free, Bolton. Free to fuck all those women who mean nothing to you.”
His eyes dropped. “I’m not going to let you go, Astrid.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Because you already did.”
I grabbed a bag and threw a couple items inside, not really thinking about the essentials I needed because I was still in shock. Shock that I was packing my shit and leaving my home of two years…my husband of two years.
I wanted to cry, but once the tears were shed, I’d fall to my knees and never rise again. My anger spurred me on, made me grab my makeup and brushes off the vanity and shove them on top of the clothes I’d packed.
If Bolton cut me off from our bank accounts, I still had my money from my job, so I would be able to get by for a while. I could stay at a hotel until I figured out my next plan, until our divorce was final and I could move on.
I left my wedding ring on the nightstand and zipped up my bag before I hoisted it over my shoulder. When I turned around, I almost fell back because I’d run into a wall. He came up behind me without my noticing, either because he was that quiet or I was that distracted.
His arms were by his sides, and his eyes were full of sorrow. “Please don’t go.” His voice was gentle instead of angry like it’d been at dinner. The silent plea in his voice somehow made him more human, made him seem average…and not a hit man for hire.
I turned away.
He grabbed my arm. “Astrid.”
I twisted out of his grasp. “I’m sorry.”
He grabbed me again.
I twisted out of the hold exactly as he’d taught me years ago. “No, I’m not sorry.” I stepped away so he couldn’t reach me again, his body between me and the door, a barrier thicker than the Great Wall of China. “I’m not sorry because I didn’t do this. You did.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m fucking sorry.”
“An apology doesn’t clean your dick, Bolton.”
“You’re acting like I cheated on you. You agreed?—”
“The second you wanted to fuck another woman, you did cheat.”
“Astrid, it’s the real world. You’ve seen my clients with their handful of mistresses. Powerful men always cheat on their wives. It’s just how it is.”
“Wow. Just how it is…”
“But I’ve never been that way with you,” he said. “Which is why I asked you. I understand it hurt you, but if you’d said no, I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe that’s not romantic for you, but it’s a sign of my commitment to you. That has to mean something to you.”
“I want a husband who doesn’t want to cheat on me, Bolton,” I snapped. “That’s what I want.”
“No man wants to fuck the same woman for the rest of his life. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Monogamy is an obligation, not a privilege.”
“If you feel that way, then why the fuck did you marry me?”
“Because I loved you,” he insisted. “Because I still do. You need to understand, wanting to fuck a woman is very different from wanting to make love to a woman. You’re the woman I want to come home to. You’re the woman I want to spend time with. You’re the woman I want to have my children. I want so much more from you. But yes, sometimes I want to fuck a woman I don’t know just to scratch that itch. That doesn’t mean everything else I’ve said isn’t true. Again, if you had just told me you couldn’t get past it, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Don’t you fucking blame me?—”
“I do blame you,” he barked. “All you had to do was say no.”
“I want a husband who doesn’t want anyone else but me.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. All men, at some point in time, desire someone else. It doesn’t mean they love their wives less.”
I thought of Axel and the way he smothered his wife in signs of his love. She was covered in diamonds and gold from his affection. I thought of Theo too, because he seemed like a man who would be the same way. “I don’t believe that. I believe there are men out there who love their woman with everything that they have. And that’s what I want. I’m not going to settle for less. I’m not going to let you gaslight me.”
“I’m not gaslighting you?—”
“You just said all of this was my fault. That I should have said no. That I shouldn’t have slept with the same man more than once. That all of this is happening because of my wrongdoing—when you’re the one who started all this bullshit. You know what I think?”
His anger started to rise. It was visible in his face.
“I think you assumed I was so stupidly in love with you that I would stay committed to you while you fucked half the town. That you could have your cake and eat it too. Well, joke’s on you, Bolton. You saw a rock, but someone else saw the Hope Diamond.” I moved into him, prepared to push him away if I had to, and I shoved him in the shoulder to force him aside.
He blocked my path and grabbed both of my arms to lock me in place. “Astrid?—”
“Let me go.”
“No.” His hold tightened.
“You fight for me now?” The tears came out of nowhere, springing from my eyes like the water from the Alps in spring. “This is what I wanted, for you to fight for me, and now you do it when it’s all said and done?”
His anger dimmed at the sight of my tears. His grip loosened too.
“I wanted you to love me, to want only me, and now you’re trying to stop me from walking out that door. Bolton, I loved you…loved you so fucking much, and you knew that. You took advantage of that love, pushed me further than I could go. Why am I the one who loved so fiercely but also the one getting smashed into pieces?”
“Astrid—”
“I pestered you to have a family because I wanted a son who wears your face. I cooked you dinner every night because I wanted to make a home for you, to make you happy. I’d buy lingerie and do special things for you to keep you satisfied in the hope you’d never want to look anywhere else. I gave this relationship all of me all of the time because I never wanted to lose you. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter.”
His eyes developed a sheen, one so subtle, it was barely noticeable.
“I deserve better.” I finally pulled free of his grasp because he let me go.
I walked around him, expecting him to grab me again when his senses came back to him.
But he didn’t.
I walked down the stairs and reached the foyer. My keys were in the bowl, and my clutch was on the dresser below the mirror. I grabbed everything and stepped into the garage where my car was tucked away, still covered in raindrops because it had rained that morning on my way to work.
I stared at it and hesitated, knowing there was no going back now.
I got in the car…and left.
I booked a suite at a hotel and sat on the edge of the bed, my bag beside me. I didn’t realize how long I’d been sitting there until sunlight came through the window and stretched across the floor. Then my boss called me and asked why I hadn’t shown up.
I told him I was sick, so sick I wouldn’t be in for the next few days.
At some point, I got so tired I couldn’t keep my head up, so I lay across the bed and pulled the duvet over me, pulling it back away from the pillows so I was basically using the bed upside down. There was a crick in my neck from lying without a pillow, but I continued to lie there, dead on the inside, thankful that Bolton didn’t try to call.
At some point, I fell asleep, my pain paused as I drifted away into nothingness.
Hours later, a text vibrated my phone, the movement so slight but enough to stir me.
I stared at it where I’d left it on the corner of the bed. I was afraid it was Bolton asking where I was so he could come get me. But it could also be Theo…maybe. He never texted me first, but maybe he’d stopped by the gallery and realized I wasn’t there. Maybe he was worried.
I lay there a moment longer before I had the strength to grab the phone.
Are you alright, sweetheart?
My eyes crinkled when I heard his voice in my head. The moisture came a moment later, the crack in my voice because he’d been the ice pack on my bruises for months now. It had started on a rainy night when he’d changed my tire, and now we’d become something else. No.
He called me right away.
My eyes watered further when I realized how quickly he called me, like hearing my voice was what he desperately needed. They said the grass was always greener on the other side, but his grass really was a deep green from the spring rain and thick from the summer heat. It was an oasis, a pond with floating lilies, flowers in bloom, and birds full of song. I answered. “Hey…” I kept my voice steady because I didn’t want to sob my heart out to him, not because another man had broken my heart.
He didn’t say anything back. He just let the silence speak for him.
I loved that he didn’t interrogate me. I loved that he didn’t pry. He was a gardener, and he let me bloom at my own pace. “I left him. I’m at the Ritz.” I wasn’t sure why I told him the hotel, like I expected him to run straight to me.
He didn’t say anything.
“He said he wanted to end the arrangement. Said he wanted it just to be us. If he had asked me that sooner, I might have done it. But it’s too late now.”
“I hope it’s not because of me—but because you deserve better.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say, but I was disappointed by his choice of words. “It’s both.”
He turned quiet again.
I expected more from him, expected him to comfort me the way he did when he showed up at the gallery, expected him to tell me everything would be alright. But he was dead silent, like he wasn’t even there. “Is something wrong?”
Silence.
“Because—because you feel different.”
He was quiet again, the stretch of time seeming to last forever. “I’ve had a rough week.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. My life just got complicated.”
“Can I ask how?”
There was silence and then a heavy sigh.
“Can—can I come over?” Self-loathing rushed through me as I heard my own desperation. He purposely put distance between us, but I ignored it because I wanted him so much. Would settle for a different version of him, even though I needed all of him.
There was a long pause before he answered. “I’ll come to you. What’s your room number?”
“Two sixty-two.”
“I’ll be there soon, sweetheart.”
I cleaned myself up a bit because I looked like a train wreck. Mascara stains were all over the duvet, so I washed the marks off my face and started over. I reapplied my makeup—but skipped the eyeliner and mascara in case those streaked again.
A knock sounded on the door.
My heart jumped when I heard it. The walk to the door felt like a mile rather than a couple feet. When I opened it, I saw the dark eyes that followed me everywhere in my dreams. They could be lethal, but when they looked at me with softness, they were harmless like a cup of coffee or the soil after a light rain.
He took me in before he stepped into my room and let the door shut automatically behind him. Every time I saw him, I forgot how tall he was, even taller than Bolton. But all he did was look at me. There was no embrace with his lips or his arms. There was no warmth to protect me from the cold.
If he wasn’t going to comfort me, then why was he there?
I stepped farther into the room, a bed with a couple armchairs against the wall. My arms crossed over my chest because my own touch seemed to be the only comfort I would receive. “Did I do something, Theo?”
His eyes had been on the dresser when I asked the question, and they remained there.
“Because the other day, you showed up at the gallery when you saw me through the window. And now it’s like you don’t want to be here. You said if you wanted me gone, you would tell me, so tell me.”
He slowly turned to look at me. “I told you it’s been a rough week?—”
“You’re lying.” I hadn’t known him long, but I knew him well. “This isn’t the man I know. I didn’t expect us to fuck, but your hands would either be in my hair or on my ass by now.”
His hard eyes remained on mine, giving nothing away.
“Did you only want me because I was married?” Now, the parameters of the relationship had changed. Now, there was nothing that separated us, and perhaps that made him uncomfortable.
“No.”
“Then—then I don’t understand.”
“Astrid.” It was one of the rare times he said my name, and he said it with a tone of anger I hadn’t heard before. “I have some heavy shit on my plate right now. If you hadn’t said you weren’t okay, I probably wouldn’t have come. But I care for you, so I came. I’m sorry that I’m not much comfort right now, but all the simplicity in my life just went out the window, and I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.”
Now, I felt guilty for only caring about myself. “You can talk to me about it.”
“I can’t.”
“I know I’m not a part of your world, but?—”
“I said I can’t.”
The anger in his tone made me back away. “Then maybe you should just go.” My heart had already gone through one boxing match, and now it was going through another. It was battered and blue, in pieces on the floor.
He gave a quiet sigh, his eyes returning to the dresser as he dragged his hand down across the bones of his jawline. “Yeah…maybe I should.”