Page 19 of Legacy of Lies
Another Brand boy Sara didn’t want to interact with. Her stomach clenched. What a mess. It would be centuries before she dated again, at least in Copper River.
The problem wasn’t that she had loved Hank. He was someone to date while she spent the required four years in Copper River, fulfilling her obligation so she could pay off her loans. She had never imagined meeting him at the end of a church aisle with her in a white dress. Hell, she had never gotten butterflies over their next date.
It wasn’t even that he’d become erratic and downright mean, which led to her breakup with him.
What hurt was how he had responded and why.
For such an initially pleasant guy, Hank Brand had been cruel and detailed in his retaliation, shredding her reputation and ego like a sharp cheese grater. It was like he’d been taken over by another person altogether.
You’re a piece of bastard trash. You came from trash, and that’s what you’ll always be.
In this day and age, that kind of thinking should have gone the way of the horse and buggy, but apparently not in Copper River, Wyoming. At least not for Hank Brand.
According to him, she possessed no value as a person or as a lover, and he’d only dated her for something to do. Someone to do. A cure for his boredom. In fact, if he could be believed, then he already had someone else waiting in the wings.
God, how he’d smashed the emotional supports she had built one piece at a time over the years.
All that hard work to try to prove herself: going to college, earning her degree, and creating a respectable career and life. All to negate her upbringing and her adolescent mistakes.
Still not good enough.
She hugged Izzy good night before a Brand brother could show up and make a bad day even worse. Tucking her arms around herself in the chilly air, Sara trudged the few blocks to the rental house one street over from Main.
The silence in the home didn’t welcome her this time.
