BWWM Interracial Romance 2: Open Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t sure whether she would tell Rosalie the interesting ending of that particular interaction—at least, not until after the date.

The Date
     
    As Ashley drove down I-95, matching speeds with the surprisingly fast-moving northbound traffic, she thought about the fact that Kent had actually called her. She had deleted the message immediately after listening to it, determined not to give it another thought, but the fact of its existence plagued her mind. She wasn’t sure what to think of it; when they had separated, prior to the divorce itself even, Kent seemed hell-bent on never speaking to her unless he absolutely had to. Ashley had been hurt when he announced he was leaving her, even though she had—somewhat—seen it coming. They had been fighting bitterly for months before Kent left her, and Ashley had thought on more than one occasion that each fight might actually end up being their last, that he’d just walk out in the middle of it one day. For that matter, she couldn’t entirely understand why she had continued to stay when Kent made it clear, over and over again, that their relationship wasn’t working.
    She thought of the words he had hurled at her in their fights; that she was a cold fish, that she didn’t care about him at all, only her career. Ashley had had to miss out on some of the romantic nights he planned, and on more than one occasion she had been too tired to do more than change into pajamas, eat dinner, and go to bed when she got home from work. The fights started out with Kent accusing her of cheating on him, or demanding to know why she was so selfish with her time. She couldn’t take time away from work as often as he wanted as she was on call. He became more and more jealous, and there had been a few fights where Ashley had been convinced that Kent was only moments away from hitting her in the heat of his anger.
    She understood now that it wasn’t that she was cold to him that bothered Kent. When she got the divorce paperwork, Ashley spent a day crying, wondering what she could have possibly done different. Could she have been sweeter, could she have given him more of her time? But her common sense had asserted itself—though it couldn’t heal the pain she felt at the ruination of her relationship. Kent had been suspiciously broke towards the end of their marriage, demanding that Ashley work more overtime to cover their expenses. When she looked at the bank statements, she noticed that there were an awful lot of withdrawals on his card—in random amounts that she couldn’t match to anything in the house or any of the bills. Their arguments had also changed in tenor from being about her dedication to her job to about the state of their finances before the end. While Ashley had a good head for keeping herself out of debt and managing her money, she had left the paying of the bills mostly to Kent’s discretion, since the long shifts made her tired enough to potentially forget to pay something. When the internet was shut off, they had barely spoken to each other for three days; Kent paid it, but he insisted that it was somehow Ashley’s fault.
    She understood, finally, that the reason that Kent left her wasn’t her lack of warmth to him, it was that he couldn’t adjust to the fact that she was making more money than he was. He always wanted to be the one in charge, and the only way that Kent could see himself controlling the marriage was to control the money. Ashley didn’t know where the mysterious withdrawals had gone, but she knew that when she brought them up, Kent had raged at her about how distrustful she was, that he could handle their money. As the divorce dragged out, with arguments back and forth about whether she would or would not pay alimony to him, it became clear that Kent was trying to take revenge on her for the fact that she had been successful and he hadn’t.
    It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Kent had learned his mistake, Ashley thought as she