Page 78 of It Hurts Me
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.