Chapter One
This is a bunch of bullshit.
No, seriously, I’m already done dealing with Jason, and he only just got here. My right eye is twitching, forcing me to apply pressure—using my middle finger, of course—to my temple. Sure, it’s a futile effort to make it stop. And sure, I absolutely could have used my index finger, but it’s the tiny victories that count. A subtle ‘fuck you’ to the man I once loved.
We were together for ten years, married for seven of them. We were always oil and water, but I desperately tried to be someone I wasn’t so I could blend into him—to be the best wife possible. I was under the foolish assumption that what Jason Wembley andI had was real—right up to the day I learned there were three of us in our marriage.
Jason, Lisa Edgar, and lastly me.
Cheating on me for six years wasn’t enough for Mr. Small Town Golden Boy. Oh, no. Once he ripped out my heart, he proceeded to shit on the bloody remains. And then he moved Lisa into the house he and I had lived in during our marriage, the one I’d picked out and lovingly furnished—and lost in the divorce settlement.
So, that was fun.
Mr. High School Quarterback never wanted to marry me. Apparently, I was a high school fling that lasted too long. I robbed years of his life when I got pregnant, and his family forced us to get married. Even now, he’s not done making me suffer for ‘stealing’ that time from him.
See, the thing is, the Wembleys frown upon divorce. Heaven forbid their ‘good’ name is besmirched here in Harley Cove—a.k.a. Perfectville, USA. Instead, they pressured us to marry at twenty years old, and I went along with their ridiculous plan because my only family is my grandmother, whose advice was,“Charly, a gal can do worse than those Wembleys.”
Yeah, but not by much, I learned.
And that’s how I, poor-ass nobody, Charlotte Allison Mallory, got myself hitched to the wealthiest family in Wayne County, Pennsylvania.
It should have been quite the fairytale, right? A sad-sack girl from the wrong side of the tracks makes good with her quarterback-boyfriend-turned-husband. What a storybook tale, right? Wrong. That’s the exact opposite of what happened in real life.
Jason’s mom, Lydia, pressured me to quit college, and like an idiot, I listened, dropping out right after I learned I was pregnant.
Then came our rushed wedding, where his nasty family whispered “gold-digger” and “trash” behind my back.
I lost the baby two months later.
No one knows why. It was simply one of those things—one of those cruel blows from Mother Nature. I should have walked away from Jason right then and there. Ran away, actually. But I stayed. Why? I was a silly girl who believed I was in love despite a marriage decorated in red flags. Still, I stayed…
…until I caught this piece of shit red-handed, fucking Lisa in our bed.
Yeah, no, he couldn’t lie his way out of that one.
Fending off the beginnings of a migraine, I stop massaging my temple but keep glaring at Jason.Jason-fucking-Wembley, with his coifed hair and cruel eyes. I wanted to be the woman who mussed that blonde mop and wrinkled his crisp, expensive suits. Now, I’m standing here, envisioning myself choking him to death with that gray-and-blue checkered tie.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your esteemed visit to my bookshop?”
That your money bought me, asshole.
Our shitty marriage wasn’t a total loss. I walked away with a glorious divorce settlement.
Jason glares down his imperial nose at me like I’m still the fragile teenager he can intimidate. Wow, yeah, that’s not me anymore. I grew the fuck up, and as for him… The strain of being married to me did him dirty—as if I was the problem.
Me—his devoted wife who cooked and cleaned and ensured his whole damn world ran in perfect order down to the tiniest detail.
While I was busy tending to our life, he was building a future with Lisa.
But, sure, I was the problem. The shrew who trapped him with a baby.
He can fuck right off with the bullshit he’s been spewing for the past year since I caught him with his dick in that woman.
Totally out of place in the cozy backdrop of The Scorched Page, Jason is dressed in a typically expensive suit with blond hair coiffed to death. He stands ramrod straight to maximize his solid, six-foot stature. He’s a handsome man, but his shitty personality makes him ugly. You can see his merciless soul reflected in his ice-blue eyes. And he’s still drenching himself in that awful aftershave, the one he thinks makes him smell like old money but actually makes him reek of old man.
“Since you’re going to hear it around town, I thought it best if you heard it from me first.”
Oh, great, another announcement. Fun. The last newsflash he delivered was to tell me Lisa was moving into my old house. “Let me guess, you and Lisa are getting married.” At his nod, I give him a snarky round of applause. “Congrats. When’s the wedding?”
