Brand Me (Imagine Ink Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

spending time with John—who treated her like a lady—and the walking, talking sex-on-a-stick—who didn’t—to be truly objective where Richard was concerned.
    Since she’d met Richard, her friends were emphatic he was wrong for her. Melanie and Erika went as far as to stage a mini-intervention of sorts, calling him mentally abusive. Tori had listened to them out of love, but they accepted her decision to be with him because of the same. She respected them both tremendously for speaking out, then dropping it and abiding by her decision.
    In hindsight, she wished she’d taken their words to heart, but Torionna Reid had always had a stubborn streak a mile wide. When her besties spoke truths she wasn’t ready to hear, she doubled down on her determination to prove them wrong. Real mature. Boy, would she have some crow to eat when she got back home
    Walker, her brother, hadn’t handled Richard’s marital status with the same calm—he was not even in the same zip code as calm. He found out Richard was still technically married and went ape shit. Everyone was surprised when Richard didn’t press charges and send Walker back to prison. That’s when Richard came clean about his not-so-ex, swearing they were married in name only for the sake of his daughters. They each led their own lives and carried on as if they were divorced, and for all intents and purposes, they were, except the paperwork. That had been enough for her, until now. Yeah, right, if that had been the case, why didn’t he cop to it in the beginning instead of waiting until he was busted? Tori was willfully ignorant where he was concerned. Was willfully ignorant, past tense.
    Family, complete with backyard bbq’s and beach trips, was what she wanted. She could’ve handled an ex and step-children, but she wanted to move forward with her life, her whole life. Not just business, but personal, too. Back when she’d set the no sex stipulation of their relationship, Richard had told her he decided to finally file for divorce, claiming he realized it wouldn’t harm the girls at that point. Since they maintained separate households and accounts, it really was just a piece of paper.
    Tori had been so out of touch with reality, she almost rescinded her new clause, until he claimed he didn’t have the money to file yet, but swore that it…them, was priority number one. He promised to scratch and save to make it happen, which he never seemed to do. Hello? How many clues do I need?
    So, needless to say, when she arrived to see that Richard had purchased the expensive Breitling, the exact one she was looking at as a gift—one she knew cost upwards of ten grand—she was livid. As she watched the smooth motion of the watch and Richard droned on and on about it, she saw her relationship withering away. Not the actual relationship, that had withered a long time ago, but the one she’d built up and gilded in her mind.
    “You can put a pig in a ball gown, but that don’t make it prom queen.” Her mom’s voice echoed in her head. Yeah, Francis Reid said ridiculous southern shit like that all the time. It rarely made sense to anyone but her. Tori thought she said half of it just to embarrass her kids and to make her dad, Frank, laugh. Tori hadn’t gotten a single one, that is, until now. Her relationship with Richard was a fucking pig in a prom dress, and she had voted that bitch queen.

    T he guilt she’d felt over the hunk in the plane melted away. The tension over possibly breaking Richard’s heart and executing their relationship with her baby announcement died. Right there, in the middle of bumfuckingfrozensomewhere, she finally saw what everyone else did, The Dick . And she was a fool for not seeing it before. He had no intention of marrying her or starting a family. No wonder his marriage failed. When John came back with supplies in a month and a half, she would head back home, free of this relationship. She and her two BFFs would start their business and