Free Bartered Betrayal - The Billionaire's Wife 08 by Ava Lore Page B

light spilling in from the streetlamps outside. They sat in my lonely apartment, the last remnants of myself that I didn't take with me into my new life with Anton. Anton hadn't touched them. My last piece, done while drunk the day after I had first met Anton, was a goat tied up and blindfolded. A crude metaphor to say the least. Clearly I was the sacrificial goat. But when I had become Anton's wife, I hadn't quite felt that way. I didn't know how I had felt. I still didn't know.
    I walked over to the area where I'd worked. It looked so small now, after Anton's enormous mansion, and now that there was nothing left in my apartment I realized I could spread out. I could make whatever I wanted here.
    I sat down on the bed and tried to think of something to make, but nothing came to mind. All I could think about was Anton, and the great sadness yawning inside me.
    I lay down and looked at the ceiling, full of cracks and old water stains. The mattress under me was scratchy and sagged, and I tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable.
    What was I going to do?
    I reached down inside myself, searching for the answer, but nothing came to hand. I was lost. I wanted to talk to Sadie. I wanted to talk to my mom. But I didn't have my phone with me. And what would they be able to tell me anyway that I didn't already know? That I'd married a guy for money and shock of shocks it hadn't turned out very well? Who would have seen that coming? Clearly not me.
    You should learn a valuable skill, Mrs. Andersen had told me, and she was kind of right. I was pretty helpless. Being Anton's wife... it had been somehow freeing in the way that solid ground frees you up to run. I had enjoyed the idea of no longer fighting to survive, no longer struggling to make it on my own. I had enjoyed being subject to his needs, knowing at any time I could stop what he was doing with a word. I had enjoyed trying to get under his skin, trying to make him laugh. I had enjoyed being the one who made him come. A powerful man, but he was still a slave to his own desires no matter how he tried to control them. And I was just a girl who wanted to give up the fear and the exhaustion and let him take it out of my hands.
    Pretty stupid of me to think love could grow from that. Love had to be there first before we could be those things to each other. And trust had to be there.
    I closed my eyes. I was just going around and around in circles and getting nowhere. Thinking was stupid. I hated thinking. Thinking about Anton, who was nothing but feelings inside me, jumbled impressions and bright flames of desire, was even stupider. It was like trying to think about... about something like food. You could think about it, sure, but it could only be experienced. Anton was purely experiential to me. I experienced him. I didn't know him. I didn't love him. And I probably never would now.
    I curled up on my bare mattress and tried to sleep.
     
    *
     
    I dreamed about Anton. We floated together, high in the sky above the city. Lights gleamed on his skin, flashed in his eyes, and when he reached out and touched me I flew with him. Or perhaps I was falling. My stomach tipped and turned as we tumbled in midair, his mouth finding mine, his hands on my body. Everything went upside down, and I lost track of the difference between the lights on the ground and the stars in the sky.
    When I woke up I was nauseous, my empty stomach rumbling and roaring at me to put food in it. I'd neglected it all yesterday since the moment I'd found out my mother was going to rehab instead of chemo.  Unfortunately I'd left everything at Anton's house, including my wallet. Not that I had anything in it except credit cards linked to Anton and the three faded dollars I'd had to my name the day Anton came into my life.
    I rolled off my old mattress, stumbled into my kitchenette and spat bile into the sink for a few minutes until I felt less like death. Then I went over to Mrs. Andersen's door an knocked.
    The old