Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 67905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
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.”