17. Astrid
New beginnings were always scary.
I had to find a new apartment. Buy new furniture. Start a life very different from my old one. Despite my intense feelings for Theo, I was heartbroken that my marriage had ended so abruptly. It wasn’t the slow deterioration that most people described, where life in the bedroom went cold, and inappropriate messages appeared on someone’s phone in the middle of the night. It was sudden, like a car ran a red light, and I had to slam on the brakes to stop the collision.
It wasn’t enough time to process how much everything had changed. That we went from discussing a family to discussing fucking other people. Then Theo walked into my life and set the whole place on fire. I didn’t know men like him existed, but of course, perfection came with a caveat.
He wouldn’t commit.
I just wished I knew why. Was it because he was the Skull King? An association with him would always be dangerous. Or was it for a different reason entirely?
I’d just packed up my things in preparation to leave the hotel when someone knocked on my door.
It was probably Bolton to make another attempt to bring me home. Theo would text me before he showed up unannounced. But then again, I wasn’t really sure what he would do because he’d never been able to visit me until now.
I checked the peephole and was pleasantly surprised by the face on the other side. The dark beard on his jawline, the espresso eyes, the shoulders that blocked most of the hallway. I opened the door and saw him with my own eyes rather than through the distortion of the peephole.
My heart gave a flutter like it always did at the sight of him. My lungs filled with a fresh breath of air, and a slight chill ran down my fingertips. It was like a jolt of electricity, but cool to the touch.
His eyes didn’t mirror my affection. His expression rarely changed, but it seemed like a cloud had blocked the sun from his skies. He entered the room and let the door swing shut by itself. There was no kiss. No ass-grab. It felt like we were about to have the same conversation we’d already had yesterday.
“I found an apartment. I was just about to head over.” After I dropped off my things, I would begin the onerous task of retrieving my valuables from the house, a daunting endeavor because Bolton would make it as difficult as possible.
He glanced at my suitcase and stared at it for seconds, like he just wanted to have something to look at. Anything was preferable to me. Last time he was here, we’d made love in my bed on the verge of something new, and now, it was like that moment had never happened. “Astrid.” He looked at me again. He said my name to get my attention, but it was just a filler because he already had my attention the second he knocked on the door. “It’s best if we don’t see each other anymore.” He said it without missing a beat, eyes locked on mine with the same confidence he always exuded.
I knew something was amiss, but I hadn’t expected him to say that. “What—what are you talking about?” I wished I could retain my composure as well as he could, but I wasn’t a robot like he was.
“I’ve thought it over. It’s best if we end it.”
“Why?” I kept my voice steady, but it nearly cracked at the end.
“I don’t want to waste your time.”
“It’s my time, Theo. I decide how I want to invest or waste it.”
His eyes flicked away. “You were right. Our relationship only worked because you were married. Because there was an obstacle between us. Now that the barrier is no longer there, there’s no excitement.” He looked at me again when he finished, as confident as he was when he’d walked in the door, like he meant every word.
But I still couldn’t believe it. “You said that wasn’t the case.”
“I lied.”
“You wouldn’t lie.” I’d seen this man from surface to bone. Saw the integrity in his heart because he wore it on his sleeve.
“Then I lied to myself and, therefore, lied to you.”
“Theo—”
“Astrid.” For the first time, he raised his voice slightly. “I’m sorry. It’s done.”
He’d never been so harsh with me. Always treated me with respect. Validated my feelings. Now, he acted like I was a thorn that had pricked his thumb and left a spot of blood. “So you come over here and say you want to take things slow, fuck me without a condom and come inside me—and now you’re just done?”
He flinched slightly at my choice of words. “It wasn’t premeditated.”
“Then you’re lying. Which is it?”
His eyes narrowed slightly on my face.
“I know you. You’re a good man, Theo. You wouldn’t act like this?—”
“You don’t know me, Astrid. You know my surface and my craters, but you don’t know my icebergs hidden in my depths. When I told you I had nothing to offer, I meant it. That’s what I’m offering you now—nothing.”
“You said you would try?—”
“I said I would see where it goes.”
“So you went home after you fucked me and just decided you already knew the destination before you stepped foot on the road?” I asked incredulously. “Where’s the man who came into the gallery because he could see my despair through the window? Where’s the man who said I deserved the world and the heavens too? Where’s the man who picked me up when I could barely stand—” I stopped because my voice started to shake, my shell starting to crack and expose the geysers underneath. “You are not that man. You—you’re a?—”
“Changeling,” he said. “Yes, that’s exactly what I am.”
I stared.
He stared back.
The silence stretched. The conversation seemed to be over. My heart was already broken from Bolton, but Theo seemed to step on the shards and grind them into beads of sand. I was lost, but my guiding star had vanished in the storm clouds. I’d never felt more alone than I did in that moment.
Theo continued to stare, as if he expected more from me.
It took a moment to collect my thoughts. “I feel like I’m looking at a puzzle with a missing piece. A portrait with a color removed. A story without a setting. Because you may think you’re a changeling, that you don’t belong where you stand, but that’s not what I see when I look at you.”
There was a flinch in his eyes, so subtle I wasn’t sure if it really happened.
“I’m not going to convince someone to be with me. I’m not going to beg you to stay or tell you how much you mean to me, not when you already know the depth of my feelings that I’ve never had the courage to even whisper. But I want to know—why?”
He stared at my eyes and said nothing.
“Why won’t you try?”
He didn’t answer the question.
“Because Bolton broke my heart and shattered my trust, but I would try again…with you.”
His eyes flicked away again.
“Because I know it would be different with you.”
He continued to avoid my stare.
“Theo—”
“It’s not about trust, Astrid.”
“Then what is it about?—”
“Let it go.” Instead of raising his voice, he lowered it, like he didn’t have the energy to fight my stream of questions. “I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. I can never offer you the things you want. I’m a great lover and a great friend—but that’s it.”
“With me, you were both.”
He stared.
“That’s all I want, Theo. I just want to try?—”
“I’m done with this conversation, Astrid,” he snapped. “I’m done with you. I’m done with us. Is that clear?”
His abrupt change in attitude was so harsh it felt like he’d shoved me against the wall. He lashed out, and it nearly knocked the wind out of me, left gashes in my lungs so I couldn’t breathe. “Why are you acting like this?—”
“Because I’m dumping you, and you lack the grace to accept it.”
His claws made me bleed. I felt it ooze down my arms to my fingertips. My lungs took a harsh breath, and then I held it, my face feeling hot and my eyes suddenly tired. My snowcaps melted, and the dam in my throat struggled to hold back the water that wanted to gush from my eyes. “Alright…I accept it.” I stepped away and moved toward my suitcase on the other side of the room, pretending to return to my packing as if the conversation had never happened. “You can let yourself out, Theo.” I grabbed a stack of my sweaters that had been folded on the dresser and placed them on top of my jeans and skirts, focusing on the heels that I placed in the bottom of the suitcase, reading the brand of each one just so I had something to focus on until he left.
It took a moment for him to take a step. I imagined he stared at my back and watched me pack up my things. His first step was audible. And then the next one…and the next.
I hoped he would walk toward me, but he headed to the door.
Then it opened and closed. His footsteps disappeared a moment later.
I stared at the bottom of the suitcase as my eyes watered. I moved backward until the backs of my knees hit the foot of the bed. Then I sat down, alone in the quiet hotel suite, my tears breaking free and streaking down my cheeks. I held my breath in the hope it would stifle my tears, but it only made me gasp.
Made me gasp and cry.
Cry for a man who had never really been mine.
Next in the series…
Theo had no choice but to walk away. But will he be able to stay away from the only women who has mattered to him in a decade? Find out in It Pains Me.