Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“Madison used to watch kids.”
“When she was in high school, Dad. She’s an adult now.”
“She’s living back home with her parents. I imagine she might need a job.”
The Kellys live right next door to my dad’s house. Madison, their only child, is three years younger than me. My senior year, she was a freshman in high school. Although we live in a very small town, where everyone knows everyone, we didn’t run in the same circles. She wasn’t the type to want to hang out with the jocks and athletes. If anything, she went out of her way to avoid our group, her nose always scrunched up when she saw me in my yard. I have no clue why, but the girl hated me. It never sat well with me, but I was also too busy to ever try and figure out why she had such a distaste for me.
“I’m not going to gossip with you about Madison Kelly.”
Dad scoffs. “I don’t gossip.”
“And just what do all of you old men talk about every morning at The Brew and Chew?”
“The weather,” Dad answers.
It’s my turn to scoff. “I’ll figure out something with the boys.”
Chapter 2
Madison
Tears of frustration prick at my eyes, the burn so bad it fills my nose with its stinging threat.
Covering my ears doesn’t completely stop the sound of rhythmic tapping.
At twenty-eight years old, this should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I shouldn’t have to be woken up by the sounds of my parents getting busy. It should be illegal, a criminal act punishable by imprisonment.
I hum as I reach for my phone and earbuds. As quickly as I can manage, I find an audiobook to listen to, but then the sound of the couple in the book going to town fills my ears. In a flash, this whole morning ruins romance novels for me. I’ll never be able to listen to another scene between fictional characters without my brain plugging my parents into the story. I could literally gag right now.
I switch to a crime podcast and bury my head back under my pillow.
Mayhem and murder are more fitting for my mood.
I’m usually a passive person, a go-with-the-flow, all-things-work-out-the-way-they’re-supposed-to kind of girl.
That was all before my life imploded last week.
Sam, my fiancé—ex-fiancé—is the responsible party for all my woes.
He was the consummate swindler, a shark, a con man.
I fell for every trick, believed every word. I loved him in that too-good-to-be-true fashion, where I turned a blind eye to every red flag. He was so quick to explain everything away. He never once faltered.
He was older, more experienced, knew the best way to run a business. He knew all the ways to make money faster. His connections helped me grow my interior design business. I felt like I owed him everything. That feeling was never more real than when he pulled the rug right out from under me, when he not only turned all the people I thought were friends against me, but he also burned every bridge that we built together.
He ran up my credit cards and took money meant for client projects. He left me with nothing but a pile of debt and no recourse for filing charges on him because he was given access to every aspect of my life, with no legal obligation.
He told me goodbye with a sad smile on his face, one last effort to gaslight me into thinking that I was to blame for it all.
I pulled the wool from my eyes a few years too late, and my inattention to all things in my life and business have landed me right back in Lindell, Texas, right back in my childhood bedroom, forced to listen to my parents getting busy.
Confronting them does nothing.
“Sex is healthy in a relationship,” my mother told me when I tried to bring it up the last time.
It’s clear they don’t want me here any more than I want to be here, but they should know I don’t exactly have a choice. They used most of their savings to pay off my clients in an effort for me to avoid my own criminal charges. Not only am I broke, but the next hundred years of my life will be spent paying them back.
I don’t have enough money to move out. I probably couldn’t even afford one of the tiny duplexes that Jason Brecken owns across town, despite Lindell being one of the last remaining places that hasn’t seen the same inflation growth that other places have.
After the podcast explains exactly how the woman took revenge on her cheating husband, I risk further damage to my psyche, and pull the pillow away from my head, slowly pulling an earbud from my ear.
The sound of my parents’ shower running gives me the all clear from having to listen to them any further, but it still leaves me with facing them in the kitchen.