Hard As Stone (Beautiful Betrayal Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

face.
    It’s Brooke who saves me from being emotionally scarred for life. She jerks me back away from him and follows up with, “Don’t you dare threaten X!”
    When he curses vehemently at both of us, Brooke picks up an orange and wings it across the space, smacking Spencer in the head as he tries to come after me.
    “Whoa, dickweed,” Simon hollers from the doorway, a tower of ripped fuel masculinity compared with Spencer and company. “Brookie, what’s doing?”
    “Babe, show these jackasses the door,” she instructs him, picking up another orange. “Unless you want to go two for two, Spence?”
    “Feeling lucky, punk?” I snip. In a hipster world, I wonder if this act of betrayal warrants a death by fruiting.

Chapter 3
    X.S.~ Assumpsit
     
     
    OUT ON THE PORCH, I sit on the swing and pet Chester, not that he acts the least bit appreciative. He gifts me with a slow blink like he’s doing me a favor. As a Sphynx breed, he puts on airs that put Gran’s to shame. Life according to Chester: he couldn’t give a purr unless it involves his feed bowl.
    “All right,” I mutter with him in my arms.
    I amble back to the kitchen and set out Chester’s organic cat food. Beyond lies the aftermath of my engagement: liberated and damaged fruit. A testimony and my millennium war zone minus the streaming music.
    I tell Alexa, “Play , Somebody That I Used to Know .”
    One-by-one I collect the wayward produce scattered helter-skelter across the living room floor. This is the first time I’ve truly lost it. It feels both cathartic and scary. Picking up a bruised pear, I stall as if a curtain lifts in my mind. From far away, a voice threads into my awareness.
    He asks why I haven’t eaten… He makes me open my mouth. Instead of food…
    Shock and blind panic bleed through me. I suck in a gulp of air to offset the pounding in my head and chest. It feels like the walls are closing in. I can’t swallow. I can’t breathe. I claw at my neck but it’s as though my muscles are stuck. Beads of cold sweat erupt at my hairline. Pressing my temples, I tell myself calm down. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m not alone… not caged. That image threads like barb wire between my ribs.
    Flashing open my eyes, a scream billows upward but is caught in my throat. As my mind and body wage war, I stagger a step, then two. I see Brooke and Simon on the front porch. X, calm down . I focus on them talking and laughing. Simon captures her in his arms and kisses her. His touch is tender… sweet.
    Finally that god-awful sensation in my throat lessens. Inhaling, I stumble over to the waste can and throw-out the pear I’ve pulverized in my fist. Washing my hands I scrub and scrub until they’re red, until that choking feeling dissipates and I’m sure it’s gone.
    “Hey, looks like your hands are clean,” Brooke says.
    I feel her against me, turning off the water, and telling me it’s okay. Both she and Simon pick up the bags of takeout and shuttle me to the porch. She thrusts a glass of wine into my hand an d sits next to me on the swing.
    Gradually, the numbness invading my body erodes as I listen to them talk as they serve the food. They don’t say anything groundbreaking; maybe it’s more in what they don’t say that hits home. They’re intimate in their touch. He’s one of many friends-with-benefits Brooke has in her contacts and they’re connected on a level that is alien in my world.
    ~
    Thank God for Brooke and Simon curtailing my momentary jaunt. It’s been four or five years since I had an irrational bout to the dark side of crazy. It has to be the stress of this catastrophe, yet I can’t explain why and from where those images arose. Only that they accompany the anxiety attacks that once plagued me. I drop my gaze to the inside of my wrist and trace the milky white scar. Another exists on my other wrist. No way in hell! I can’t go back to living like that!
    Brooke and Simon come in from the porch and stop at the