Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I looked down at my boots.
I loved my boots.
They weren’t steel-toed, though.
They’d do until I could find some, however.
At least, that was what Coke said.
He said after my first six weeks, I’d be given a stipend to buy boots—since it was his only requirement at the job. I couldn’t thank him enough. I couldn’t even afford groceries. Boots would be almost impossible to cough the money up for right now.
I licked my lips and groaned.
I wanted to go to work the next morning like I wanted to stub my toe on the coffee table for the eighteen millionth time.
Yet, I pulled my big girl panties up and stepped into the front office of Coke Salvage with a grim determination stiffening my spine.
The moment I stepped inside, I felt a shiver of fear trickle down my spine, and it wasn’t because it was cold as fuck in the office.
Coke Solomon was an intimidating man, and looking at him sitting behind his desk, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a scowl on his face as he held up papers and scanning them. Yeah, I wanted to turn around and leave just as quickly as I’d come.
“H-hello,” I said softly. Meekly.
Coke’s eyes lifted, unsurprised at my arrival.
“Glad you came,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show up for your first day or not.”
I bit my lip.
I hadn’t been either, to be honest. The entire drive there I’d had one hand on my turn signal to pull a U-turn and go back the way I came.
Now, looking at Coke, I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision.
But then his face softened.
“I don’t know if you know about my ex-wife and I or not…”
I shook my head. Then winced.
“I know a little bit,” I admitted.
He grunted. “If it’s only a little bit, you’ve only heard the lies that Beatrice spread to make it sound like I was the one in the wrong when we divorced.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but he held up his hand.
“Normally, I don’t like airing my dirty laundry,” he admitted. “But, after what happened last night, I feel like it’s owed to you.”
I stayed silent, clutched my jacket tighter around my chest, and stared at him while waiting to hear what he thought I needed to hear.
He didn’t hesitate, just broke right into his explanation.
“Beatrice and I met when we were in our senior year of high school. I was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and she was the good girl who wanted to defy her daddy.”
I winced.
“We met, and she convinced herself that dating me, the poorest boy in six counties, was the perfect way to piss off her strict father. She even went so far as to convince me that she loved me. Me, not realizing that she was just a bitch who was playing me, thought I had hit the jackpot. Beatrice was beautiful, wealthy and loved me. What more could a boy like me ask for?”
Since I knew this story didn’t have a happy ending, I looked down at the floor instead of at the emotion now boiling deep in Coke’s eyes.
“The one and only time we slept together in high school, I fucked up and got her pregnant. Though, I didn’t learn until much later that she intended for that to happen. She thought that if she was pregnant, her father wouldn’t make her go to school. She wanted to be the trophy wife—but she also wanted a hot boy toy on the side. That boy toy was me. Unfortunately for her, and for me, her father forced us to marry.”
I bit my lip and looked back up at him with pity.
Beatrice, from what little I knew of her, was a bitch. There was no sugar coating it—she literally was the worst person on Earth.
When you passed her, she treated you as though you were the lint at the bottom of a dryer vent.
“Anyway, long story short, I was forced to live with her for years trying to make shit work. Shit that she didn’t want to work, and she sabotaged by being her shitty self. Trash talk her daughter? She didn’t care. Treat her kid and her husband like shit? As long as it didn’t hurt her, no problem. She fucked everyone under the sun, then blamed me because I cheated.”
I sighed. “Did you cheat?”
He sat back in his chair. “Can you blame me?”
No. After what he’d explained? Hell no. I sure the hell couldn’t. But, two wrongs didn’t make a right.
“I didn’t actually cheat on her, though,” he admitted. “I got close to someone, and Beatrice took offense to that because she was a student at a college and was ‘too young to be discreet’ according to Beatrice. She threw a walleyed fit, and I decided that I’d rather face her father’s wrath, and the possibility of him taking away my business, rather than be with her any longer.”