Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 201 - Chapitre 210

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 a

It was nice to have a home-cooked meal after all the room service I’d had at the hotel. It was nice to eat at a dining table instead of on the couch. And it was nice to be with someone instead of being trapped in suffocating isolation.Bolton didn’t ask me any questions as he sat across from me. Just looked at me as he ate his food.“You haven’t gone to work?” I knew what he did for a living, but he talked about his line of work like he was a traveling salesman, selling life insurance to whomever he could find on the road.He gave a shake of his head. “I handed over my assignments.”“Why?”His eyes locked on mine. “I can’t focus. Not when my marriage is about to collapse.”“It already did collapse, Bolton.”“It can’t fall apart as long as I continue to hold it up,” he said. “And that’s what I’ll do…until you come home.”I looked down at my food when the anger seeped from my pores.“I would take it all back…”I pushed my food around.“It meant nothing to me, and you know that.”“That m

I sat at a table in the bar, on my second drink before my guest even arrived. It was a cold night, the rain pouring down on and off as it often did in places like Paris in the spring. Headlights were visible when cars pulled onto the street. Few people were in the bar, most of them discussing business and private affairs in their corners.I lit up a cigar so I could replace the booze with smoke and the smoke with booze. I constantly needed something, especially now when I felt like I had nothing.Axel entered the establishment a moment later dressed in black, and he stopped by the bar to get a drink before he joined me at the table. His black wedding band contrasted against the fair skin of his left hand. Ever since he’d put it on, he hadn’t taken it off as far as I could tell.He sat across from me and eyed the cigars on the tray in front of me but didn’t take one. Then he surveyed me, his eyes combing over my appearance like he saw invisible scars and bruises no one else could see.

A storm hit that night.The rain was loud against the windows. The trees bent in the wind, and the branches scratched the glass.It was hard to sleep with all the noise. But it was even harder to sleep with the depression that acted as a noose around my neck. I’d thought Bolton was the man I could trust to take care of me after life had been unkind to me, but now I was alone…in a shitty apartment. And I would probably always be alone.And after Theo…I would be forever scarred.I lay there and stared at the ceiling, cycling the memories over and over in my head, drowning in the pool of depression, when I heard a noise.The sound of something hitting the front door downstairs.I sat upright in bed, my heart immediately pounding in a split second. It wasn’t a gust of wind against the door. It wasn’t a fallen tree.It was something else.I reached for my phone on the nightstand then stepped into the hallway at the top of the stairs.The center of the door had been smashed in, and a tattoo

She glanced at the door like she hoped someone would come in and interrupt this conversation. Last time we spoke, she asked me to give our relationship a chance, and now it was like that had never happened. What the fuck had changed so drastically?“A fucking text message would have sufficed, Astrid.”“What do you want from me?” She lost her cool, her eyes growing wide with anger. “I’m sorry I called you. Now get off my ass⁠—”“You can always call me, sweetheart. That’s not the issue.”“Please don’t call me that.” Her voice turned surprisingly soft…almost weak.The ring on her left hand hurt me, hurt me like she’d betrayed me. “I just needed to know that you were okay.”“If you cared whether I was okay, you would have picked up the first time I called.”My eyes narrowed. “So you did call me for a reason.”“I’m just saying that you would have taken my call if I were important to you.”“You are important to me.”Her arms crossed over her chest. “Right.”“Would I be here right now if tha