Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(109)

“Traveling is practical,” Misha says. “You’ll learn about the world, other cultures. It’s important. I’ll make sure you travel often.”

I want to ask if Misha will travel with me. If we’ll take frequent romantic trips together. Instead, I shake my head and put my defensive front back up. “That’s surprising. I thought I’d be under lock and key for the rest of my life.”

Misha leans back in his seat and regards me, still toying with the knife in his fingers. “Is that why you had a panic attack before the wedding?”

I raise my eyes to his in surprise. “Nikita told you?”

“No. I had a hunch. Which you just confirmed.”

Dammit. “It was… about a lot of things.”

“Tell me what they were.” It’s a command, but a gentle one. I don’t sense disapproval as much as curiosity.

Maybe this is his attempt at being friends. Most people on their honeymoon are a lot more than friends. But Misha and I aren’t most people, are we?

“I guess I just—I really missed Clara,” I explain haltingly. “I felt like I was making this big life decision all alone. No parents, no family, no friends. Just me in a white dress walking down an empty aisle.”

“At least you had the dress this time.”

That makes me smile. “I’m surprised you remember.”

“I pay attention when you talk.”

“That’s a definite upgrade. Anthony never listened to me.”

“Then I’d say you’re making progress in the husband department.”

We exchange a smile. Against my better judgment, I’m thawing towards Misha.

Being reserved and keeping my distance isn’t as easy as I imagined. It took a lot of energy and willpower. Two things I don’t have in a city as beautiful as this one.

So I let myself soften. I let myself lean into this comfortable, exciting, exhilarating feeling.

And I blame it all on Prague.





83

MISHA

We are back in the hotel room around midnight.

Considering we flew in only this morning, I expected Paige would be exhausted and ready for bed.

But she plucks off her shoes and makes straight for the balcony.

I watch her for a moment, barefoot and beautiful as she turns her face to the moon. It brings back a memory that I really don’t need on my mind right now.

But even as I step onto the balcony behind her, I see a fleeting image of her arched neck from the night we met. I hear an echo of those frantic moans. I feel the heat race to my cock as I remember the moment I thrust into her for the very first time, all on a balcony not that much different from this one.

I have no idea where we stand. Yes, we’re married. Yes, we’re on our honeymoon. She seems to be open to the idea of friendship. But the truth is that the suggestion of friendship was a desperate attempt on my part to break down the walls she had built up around herself during the wedding. Walls I despised, even while knowing that it was my doing that put them there.

I had no fucking right to offer her my friendship. Especially considering I have no clue how to be just friends with her.

I don’t know how to be around her without wanting to be closer.

I don’t know how to be around her without wanting to fuck her senseless, wanting to make her laugh, wanting to keep her safe.

I don’t know how to be around her without falling the fuck apart.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Paige says, cutting through the conflict raging in my head.

She glances towards me. The moon is casting a blue shadow against one side of her face. Her eyes are bright and warm. It’s the first time I’ve seen her clutching her pendant with something resembling gratitude instead of the usual fear or sorrow.

“Clara would have loved this city,” she says softly. “So full of life and history and romance. She used to say that when we left Corden Park, we’d go somewhere far away. Somewhere exotic and exciting and cool. She never really said where, exactly. It’s taken me this long to realize that it’s because she didn’t have enough exposure to dream this far. She probably couldn’t have even imagined a place like

this.”

Her eyes swim with naked emotion in her eyes. The icy grip of her grief. She usually hides it so well that I’m almost surprised to see just how deep it runs.

“The night of my bachelorette party, I told you the story about the asshole who tried to hit on me. You asked me why I didn’t tell Clara…” Her voice trembles . “It’s because I walked into her little corner of the trailer that day and caught her with a knife to her wrists.” She takes a deep, calming breath.

“She’d made shallow cuts already. I snatched the knife from her hands, threw it in the garbage, and asked her what she was doing. She admitted that she fantasized about killing herself a lot. That’s how she put it, too. Fantasized. I cried more than she did that day. I cried so much that eventually she cried, too. But she wasn’t crying for herself. She was just crying because she didn’t like upsetting me.”

The tears keep falling from her eyes, but she continues anyway. Like she’s been waiting years to get this off her chest.

“After that, I made her promise to call me any time she started having those bad thoughts. We never talked about it again, but she called me a lot. Every time, I wondered why. Like, was she suicidal the day she came over in the rain just to bring me a bagel? Did she want to end it all that time she called me from a payphone two streets over to ask me what I thought about the color blue?”