Chapter 50 Astrid
ASTRID
In the initial aftermath of the call, I lie on the floor, curled into a ball, in a state of numbed shock.
It feels surreal. Like I’m floating overhead, watching someone else’s life detonate.
My stomach churns, and my hands are shaking.
I just keep thinking, “No, no, please no.” My brain is struggling to comprehend it. Why? How? Why, why, why?
I knew something was off these past few weeks, but I ignored my gut instinct, telling myself Callan was just stressed and busy as the season draws to a close.
My mind churns, revisiting memories with Gwen, seeing everything in a very different light. It continues to feel like a living nightmare until Paige comes home the following morning, and I have to tell her.
I shatter.
My knees give out.
I’m gasping for breath, choking as I try to force the words from my mouth.
A tearing sensation rips my chest apart, and the tears won’t stop flowing.
The only other time I felt such crippling pain was when Mormor died. But Callan isn’t dead. He’s shacked up with my ex-best friend, slotting her into the role I believed was mine.
I can’t make any sense of it.
Paige holds me together as best she can over the weekend.
After Renee shows up, I sob in her arms for hours.
No one can believe it. Everyone thinks Gwen is blackmailing Callan.
Doing this for the lifestyle and the money.
That she’s trapped him with a baby to ensure she gets what she wants.
It’s plausible, and a seed of hope blooms inside me.
Drying my eyes, I resolve to speak to him when she’s not around.
If she’s manipulated him somehow, he’ll tell me when we have privacy.
So, I call him repeatedly, leaving teary messages and begging him to call me when he’s alone to tell me what she’s done.
When he blocks my number, I stare at my phone in a daze.
Considering it might be Gwen, I call the club, and one of the players answers instead of Callan, telling me gently to move on and not to call him again.
Callan blocks me on social media after I try messaging him there, and my emails bounce back too.
If Gwen had put him up to this, he’d want to speak to me and set me straight. Even if she’s holding something over him to stop him from telling the truth, he’d find a way to get around it if he loved me. He wouldn’t be restricting my access to him like he has.
Which means it’s not a trap.
Gwen isn’t forcing him to do anything.
He had sex with her, got her pregnant, and now he’s going to play happy family with her instead of me.
I’m exhausted from crying and lack of sleep, but there’s still a teeny part of me that refuses to believe Callan would do this to me.
Until two things happen.
One, Thor speaks to him, and he categorically denies Gwen is forcing him, saying they fucked one night after getting drunk, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. He feels bad for me, but he’s going to be a father, and Gwen and the baby are his priority now.
And two, he told his parents. Roni told my mom that Callan and Gwen are together and expecting a baby. It doesn’t get any more real than that.
That night, I box up everything Callan gave me. Slipping his promise ring off my finger induces a fresh bout of sobbing, as does removing the Claddagh necklace I haven’t taken off since he gave it to me for Christmas.
“I’m really worried about you,” Mom says on the phone on Monday morning as I’m getting ready to go take my first exam.
It’s just as well I studied in advance. If I were relying on last-minute cramming, I’d be screwed.
As it is, I’m tired, emotionally overwrought, and clinging to my sanity by my fingernails.
There’s a constant hollow ache in the pit of my stomach, and it feels like I’m dragging my body around.
I can’t eat.
Can’t sleep.
Can’t think about anything but the way my boyfriend and best friend betrayed me.
I’m still struggling to accept it.
For now, I’ve locked up the anguish and all the associated emotions, shoving them aside to deal with once I get through my exams.
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. No one would be.”
“I can’t do this now, Mom. I need to numb myself to all of it. I have worked too hard this year to fuck up my exams. They’re not taking this from me too.” A sob cracks through my veneer, and a familiar pain rips through me, shredding my insides to pieces.
“I want to kill them for hurting you like this.”
“Mom. Please. I need to go.”
“Please text or call later, and if you need me, just say the word, and I’ll be there.”
When I trudge back to my dorm later that day, after hopefully passing my exams, Mom is waiting for me. The instant I see her, I burst out crying. “It hurts, Mom. It hurts so much,” I sob, clinging to her shirt.
“I know, sweetie. Just let it all out.”
I thought I had cried myself dry by now, but it seems not.
“How could they do this to me? How could Callan knock her up? I thought he didn’t like her, but it was all a ruse to hide their affair.
Everything he said was a lie, and I fell for it.
” I cling to her as wracking sobs seize my body.
“Every promise he made me was empty, and I’m the biggest fool.
Gwen planned to seduce him ages ago. I see it all now.
Instead of opening my eyes and seeing what she was doing, I defended her and handed him to her on a silver platter like a fucking idiot. ”
I had to beg Callan, on a regular basis, to let her stay in the apartment while she was house-hunting, feeling so guilty that I was forcing it on him when he barely tolerated her.
He was so fucking convincing. Then again, am I surprised?
He was amazing at pretending when we were fake-dating.
He’s clearly a great actor to have pulled the wool over my eyes so thoroughly.
I hate how fucking weak and pathetic I was.
How easily I fell for the lies. I can barely stomach looking at myself in the mirror knowing I did this to myself.
I enabled it to happen, and I couldn’t hate myself more.
I slam my palms into my brow. “I’m so na?ve.
They played me for God knows how long, and I fell for it.
” A fresh wave of tears batters me from side to side, and I hiccup through my tears.
Lying down on my side on the bed, I just want to die.
“You didn’t do anything wrong except trust the wrong people. Gwen fooled me too. She fooled everyone.”
“Not Paige.” I sniffle, drying my eyes with the bottom of my shirt. I sit up. “Paige saw her for what she is from the start. If only I’d listened to her.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. The fault lies with them, not you. You only want to see the good in people, and that’s a wonderful trait.”
“It’s fucking na?ve, Mom, is what it is. I’ll never trust anyone again.” Every interaction I’ve ever had with Gwen is now under a microscope, and I think Gwen has been fake with me most of the time.
“Oh, love.” Mom’s eyes fill with tears. “I know this has shaken your faith in relationships, but don’t let what they did change who you are.”
“I wasn’t enough for him. If I were, she never would’ve been able to seduce him.
” I avert my eyes, unable to say what I’m really thinking, which is I wasn’t enough for him sexually.
Gwen has tons more experience than me, and she clearly used it to turn Callan’s head.
He always said our sex was the best sex of his life, but that’s just another lie he told me.
“We don’t really know what happened. Roni is struggling to accept this too. She knows Callan loves you. I think you need to speak to him, face-to-face, and find out what really happened.”
“He doesn’t want to speak to me, Mom. He’s blocked me everywhere.
And even if there is more to it, it doesn’t change the fact she’s having his baby.
” Tears cascade down my face again. “If it were a drunken mistake and he’d fessed up to it, I might have been able to forgive him.
But it clearly wasn’t. Who’s to say they didn’t both plan this from the start? ”
“I don’t think that’s true. Why else would he make plans with you for the future?”
“We didn’t know the real Callan, Mom. Or maybe his new celebrity lifestyle has gotten to him. Perhaps Gwen fits that role better than me.”
Somehow, I get through my exams, and I ask Mom if I can stay in Mormor’s house for the summer. Mina offered me my job back at the interior design company, but I’m in no state to hold down a job this summer. I need to go hide where the media won’t find me.
News broke about Callan and Gwen, and when reporters found out she was my best friend, the scandal was delicious.
Reporters showed up on campus, at my house, and at the bookstore where I work.
One prominent magazine offered me a lot of money for my side of the story, but I immediately turned them down.
Interest seems to have died down now, but I don’t want to spend my summer constantly looking over my shoulder.
I’ve promised myself I’ll allow myself these few months to deal with my heartache, and then I’m putting it and them behind me forever.
My mom and sisters come with me to Ystad despite my protests.
I’d rather lick my wounds in peace, but Mom is terrified I’ll do something to myself.
I might be depressed, and sometimes feel like I’m dying, but I’m not going to harm myself.
They have taken so much from me already.
They don’t get to take my life. I will claw my way back, but for now, I need this.
Dad flies in once a month to see us. He had to stay in Ryemont for work. A friend of Mom’s has taken over the pottery studio for the summer so she can be here with me, and I’m so grateful for her selfless support.
Despite my fighting talk, I’m a mess, and I’m drowning in thoughts I don’t want to be thinking. If it were up to me, I’d just stay in bed crying all summer. However, Mom refuses to let me sink further into depression.
I get up and try to act like a human purely for Mom, Freja, and Alma.
I can’t stomach food, and all my clothes hang off my skeletal frame. Mom finds a bakery selling maple cake in Malmo, and she brings some home, desperate for me to eat something. I have a full-blown panic attack when she hands it to me, and she doesn’t offer it again.
When Mom finds me scouring social media, torturing myself by checking out their profiles and searching articles in the media, she blocks all their accounts and regularly checks my phone. It feels like I’m a little kid again, but I won’t lie and say I don’t need my mother.
Gwen starts sending me nasty messages and pictures from different accounts. The first time, I opened the message without realizing it, and I almost threw up everywhere, staring in horror at the picture of a naked Callan sleeping in bed beside her.
I keep blocking her, but she keeps setting up new accounts to harass me.
Every picture and every word are seared into my brain.
Each new message is like a punch in the gut, and the betrayal feels fresh all over again.
Isn’t it enough that she’s ruined my life?
Does she have to keep rubbing it in my face?
What did I ever do to her to deserve this?
Grief mixes with anger and humiliation, and I’m back to square one, wondering how the boy who swore he’d always love and protect me could stab me in the back like this.
When I’m not quick enough deleting Gwen’s latest message—one with a link to a prestigious magazine interview where Gwen and Callan announce their pregnancy—Mom swings into action. Tears stream down my face as I examine the photos and read the interview.
There is no mention of me.
It’s as if I never even existed.
The hollow gap in my chest matches the empty ache in my stomach as I cry quietly while Mom speaks to Dad on the phone.
Gently, she pries my cell from my hands and keeps the phone for the next couple of weeks.
Gwen continues sending nasty messages, which Dad uses to obtain a temporary restraining order.
Peter Stevens sends a cease and desist to Callan’s agent and a legal letter to the club, and finally, it stops.