Free Indebted: Part 2: The Virgin & The Bad-Boy Billionaire (A BWWM Billionaire Romance) by Sadie Black

Chapter 1
     
    I can’t stop running the scene in my mind, the gentle touch of Brianna’s hand on Matthew’s. The vulnerability in his eyes as he talked about how he hoped I could forgive him, I’m ashamed that I believed I meant something to him.
     
    My head is aching and my throat is raw from spending the entire night in tears. It doesn’t even surprise me that Matthew betrayed me, if anything it just confirms his reputation, not to mention my stupidity for ever trusting him. What I can’t get over is Brianna’s deceit. We’ve been like sisters since high school, and she throws that all away for some guy? It doesn’t make sense. I know money makes people do crazy things, but does she actually believe that she has a future in his life? She knows his reputation as well as I do, she must see that she’s just another conquest.
     
    Then again, he fooled me. After less than a week of knowing him, I thought he was unique enough that I slept with him. Now I can’t concentrate, I can’t sleep. This isn’t what I need when I’m on the verge of completing my masters. With only a few weeks left until the end of the semester, I need to be sprinting to the finish line, not meandering around with this bullshit.
     
    My unfinished research project sits on my laptop, the cursor still flashing angry Morse code messages at me. Snap out of it! Stay focused! It scolds me. After sitting here for an hour, I’ve only managed to write one paragraph, half of which I’ve deleted for being a garbled mess of words strung together. “This is pointless,” I confide to the nearly empty screen, “I’m never going to get this done today.”
     
    Resigning myself to my unproductivity, I finally turn my phone back on after having shut it off in the cab yesterday. My voice mail is completely full, and my screen starts exploding with text messages from both of them. I don’t have the energy to read any of them right now. I dial my voicemail and start deleting the messages.
     
    “Kendra, you need to let me explain...” Matthew sternly tells my phone. Delete.
     
    “Hi, listen, I think you got the wrong idea...” Brianna starts making excuses. Delete.
     
    “Kendra, you’re being ridiculous. Please call Brianna back, she’s a complete wreck!” Oh gee, I feel so terrible for her. She’s upset that I found out about her sleeping with my guy on the side? Poor girl. Delete.
     
    I guess he wasn’t my guy at all. I mean, we never discussed the status of our relationship, or if we even had a relationship at all. Either way, she still knew that he was off limits to her. That much was clear. When I first met Brianna, we were like twins separated at birth. Not in our appearance, Brianna has always been gorgeous in a way that few women can compete with. However, at thirteen she was just a bud that had not yet bloomed into the rose she is today. She was tall and a bit gangly with slightly knobby knees and small breasts.
     
    I snort when I remember how I met her in the school bathroom, using up all the paper towel to fill her empty training bra. She asked me if I could tell it was stuffed, and I had to laugh. Her shirt looked like it was pulled over two fat donuts, all wide around the sides and flat on across the front. She crinkled loudly every time she moved her arms. When I told her that she might be better off using toilet paper instead, she practically emptied all the stalls.
     
    I knew from the beginning that Brianna had a wild streak, but I’ve watched it billow out into a mushroom cloud of self-destruction over the last few years. She’s always loved the spotlight, the cat calls, the relentless boys trying to convince her that they were worth her time. Once she met Joe I thought she had settled back down.
     
    I’d never seen her get so serious about anyone before, dating him for the last two years of high school, I thought she’d gone back to the conservative girl I once knew. However, after he strung her along and even talked