Free Sweet Alien by Sue Mercury Page A

life, that wedding vows were sacred and never meant to be broken, yet the ink on her divorce papers was still wet.
    A shudder ran through her and ice filled her veins as her ex-husband’s angry blue eyes flashed in her mind. She would have to change apartments once she returned to Earth. Greg had somehow tracked her down and had been leaving threatening notes on her doorstep. Again. For all the trouble she’d gone to obtaining a restraining order, it had done her little good. He kept finding her, and he kept harassing her, and he had promised to make her pay if she reported him to the police.
    Perhaps she should’ve filed a police report each and every time he came within a hundred feet of her or left a note on her doorstep, but she had been too afraid of his reaction once he made bail. He had plenty of money to spend on bail and fancy lawyers, while she was barely scraping by. At least he wouldn’t be able to bother her during her time on Reestria. She smiled at that thought, and some of the coldness left her.
    She tried to visualize her future once she returned to Earth. She definitely needed to leave Florida. She wished she could stay with her parents in Ohio, but that would be an obvious place for Greg to find her. Plus the more she thought about it, she didn’t really want to live with her parents. They had offered her a room, but they’d done so reluctantly after repeatedly suggesting she try to work things out with Greg.
    Work things out, my ass .
    Her parents had never seen the damage Greg could inflict after flying into one of his rages, and her mother once quipped, ‘it’s not like he’s ever put you in the hospital.’ That little comment had burned in her mind for weeks and Angie frankly didn’t understand why she hadn’t cut ties with her parents after that.
    They were her parents. Weren’t they supposed to protect her? Weren’t they supposed to take her side over Greg’s? He’d beaten her brutally countless times, even knocking her unconscious and leaving her so bruised she had to call into work for a week. She’d been too afraid of what he might do if she went to the hospital. By some miracle he’d never left her with a broken bone, though his cruel verbal attacks had left her feeling utterly shattered inside.
    There were days she still couldn’t believe the man who’d once seemed so charming and loving was actually a monster. Greg hadn’t shown her his malicious side until after they were married and living far away from her parents. She used to berate herself for marrying him so quickly and getting trapped in a horrible relationship, but she’d finally moved beyond the embarrassment and the immense guilt she used to feel on a daily basis. She refused to berate herself for one more second when she didn’t deserve an ounce of the blame.
    As she leaned against the window and stared at Earth, she came to the life-altering decision to cut all ties with her parents. Their treatment of her during her abusive marriage was almost as unforgivable as the abuse itself. They had always worshiped the ground Greg walked on, and they continued to do so even though he wasn’t their son-in-law anymore.
    Suddenly it felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She could breathe a hundred times easier.
    Now she just had to get through her trip to Reestria and avoid Reestrian males as much as possible. After confessing her trepidation about spending time around the large aliens to Kira, her friend arranged for her to have private quarters on the spaceship even though the trip to Reestria wouldn’t take more than an hour once they completed the first space fold. Except she’d been in this room for two hours already and she still had a clear view of Earth from her window.
    Why hadn’t they departed yet? Unease spread through her. What if they had a technical problem? What if something bad happened and she ended up stuck on this spaceship for days? About a dozen other humans were traveling to