My Peace (Beautifully Broken 5)

With a sigh, I snort the coke. Once again, my heart-rate speeds up and pounds and pumps and I’m afraid it might explode.

It doesn’t.

23

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mila

I hate Natasha.

I hate looking at her. I hate smelling her cloying honeysuckle perfume.

“Why are you wearing that scent?” I demand. “Because Leroy likes it, or to make Pax feel comfortable around you? I know that Susanna used to wear it. I remember Pax telling me so.”

She smiles.

“Pax does enjoy it.” She smirking now, baiting me.

“You wear too much of it,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t be able to smell it from across the room.”

“Your husband didn’t have to smell it from a distance,” she tells me, her eyes narrowed. “He liked to bury his nose in my neck and smell it up close.”

“No, he didn’t.”

She laughs, and she’s mocking me.

“You seem awfully sure of yourself,” she says finally, and she sits in the chair next to my bed. I wasn’t kidding, she is wearing too much perfume, and it actually gives me a headache. I rub at my temples.

“Of course I’m sure of myself,” I answer tiredly. “Pax doesn’t want you. I know that.”

Even still, the memory of him emerging from the garage with her, in the middle of the night, it haunts me. When I least expect it, it has popped into my head and tormented me.

“He does, though,” Natasha says, playing to my doubt. “I saw it in his eyes. The way he touched me that night in the garage. He wasn’t just leaning on me for support, he was feeling me, Mila. He was feeling my body. He wanted me.”

My stomach clenches, and I force myself to relax. She’s lying to upset me.

Don’t rise to the bait.

“I gave him muscle relaxers,” she adds. “I was able to comfort him, to soothe him, in a time when he didn’t trust you enough to tell you about his pain.”

That startles me.

“What muscle relaxers?”

Pax wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t take something so strong. He wouldn’t tempt himself.

“He didn’t tell you?” Natasha feigns innocence now. “I’m surprised. I thought he told you everything.”

I’m silent now. Whatever Pax has done, he did it to protect me from something. I know my husband well enough to know that.

“Little did he know, though,” Natasha says casually as she bites into an apple. It crunches loudly. “That I laced those pills.”

This snaps my head up.

“With what?” I try to stay calm, but my heart is racing. “What did you lace them with?”

She takes another bite.