Even that was stupid.
Especially stupid.
If he hated being called Kelly so fucking much, why thehellhadn’t he just gone by Kellog in the first fucking place?
Fuck. He really had been a creep.
Except she’d been a year into exploring BDSM and knew she was a masochist. He’d been a very handsome, charming sadist three years older than her and going to grad school in Tampa. He’d effortlessly plugged into every mental socket she’d had, and six months in, she found herself collared to him.
A year later they were married, and she found herself moving to Pennsylvania to spend her life with him.
Everything went reasonably well for the first five years. As they delved more deeply into BDSM and settled into newlywed nesting in their new townhouse, she’d happily overlooked his shortcomings.
The next five years had seen a slow decline in the quality and quantity of their time spent together. He stayed late at work, frequently went in on weekends.
The five years after that, she hadn’t realized he’d been cheating on her until midway through year three. It’d taken her a couple of months of self-deprogramming to figure out what todoabout it.
Another couple of months following that to put together a plan of action and practically memorize forward and back the document she’d stupidly signed without thoroughly reading before she’d married him so many years ago.
Might as well have been a slave contract instead of a prenup.
But there were loopholes.
He’d cheated, and he’d grown complacent. She spent six months compiling evidence she could use against him, one of the few stipulations in the prenup in her favor, even though it had been a bilateral one.
Because of how long they’d been married, there were certain…rewards that kicked in.
She kicked him out, and hehadto pay the expenses for the townhouse—mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities—everything, as long as she was living there. She would have up to three months after the divorce was final to vacate, then it would revert to his sole ownership, and she’d used every fucking second of that time.
Had come in handy when she’d lost her job.
Kelly also had to pay for her medical insurance for two years, unless she obtained better on her own.
And the car.
She smiled.
She’d received her choice of a brand new car, a four-door, fully loaded Lexus sedan, paid in full, including comp and collision insurance for two years.
Didn’t cost his family beans, she knew, because they could write it off, but it was the principle of the matter.
It washers.
And it meant one less expense for her for now.
If she’d hung in there another two years before kicking him out and filing, she could have kept the townhouse, or had an equivalent home, size wise, purchased for her in Florida as a condition of the prenup.
She was forty.
She wasn’t giving the sonofabitch any more time from her life.
Period.
When she reached work, she parked behind the building in the reserved lot where all of the employees parked and headed inside. She made a little less working here than she had in Pennsylvania, except Florida didn’t have a state income tax, so it evened out.
And it was cheaper to live down here.
No more nasty winters to miserably weather.
