Free Rug Burns (Reviving Haven Book 2) by Cory Cyr Page B

was love, but I knew he would end up destroying her.
    It took five years. He literally took everything from her. Her body and mind. The fucker even took her soul. I’d spent the prior two years considering a revolving door in my condo. They would fight. They would make up. I watched as she became someone I no longer knew. She was a puppet, and Jared was the puppet master.
    After tales of his whoring surfaced and the promise of marriage was pushed back time after time, Haven was done. She’d spent years living in hell while I pursued everything with a cock. We never lived far apart, so I was her constant ally. I begged her to move back in with me all those years ago, but she always said no.
    She didn’t want to give up on her first love. It felt like failure to her. In my mind, she should treat it as a learning experience. Get over it and go to the next one. Of course, I never said that.
    Jared had molded her into the image that suited him, but the one thing he couldn’t control was Haven’s lack of sexuality. Oh, and he couldn’t control me. We had a war of words for days following her departure from his home. He’s lucky I wasn’t into chicks, because filleting him with a knife was tempting. Surrounded by pussy in a women’s prison, not so much.
    My bestie was gone. Not only mentally, but everything that had made her Haven disappeared. She was too thin, too blond, too tanned… He’d created a Stepford Wife version of my girl, and I hated it. She stayed with me for two weeks, then went home to Colorado. As much as I didn’t want her moving away, she needed her parents and probably therapy. I couldn’t give her the kind of help she required. She was shattered. He’d stolen Haven’s self-worth and left her emotionally battered.
    I gave her fourteen months to get her shit together. Then I went out to visit. It was fucking cold in Colorado. In more than one way. Haven was still a mess. Although, now she was a quiet mess. She’d been seeing a therapist. But was still locked up tight. Her descriptions of what happened had been carefully edited. She refused to let anyone in. I spent nine days, eleven hours, and twenty-one minutes coming up with valid reasons she should come home. Regardless of what had occurred, living in Los Angles with me was home for both of us.
    She finally relented, and I promised her parents Haven would continue therapy in L.A. I absolutely knew that was a must. Jared had done something terrible to her. I felt like a stranger when we spoke. The flight back to California was solemn and silent—two things I didn’t handle well. So I drank my way to exuberance all the way home.
    There were times I truly felt I shouldn’t have forced her to come back here. She was obviously unhappy and kept to herself. Maintaining our relationship was fatiguing. Depression ruled her, and her behavior didn’t quite resemble anything close to normal. Even though I had a roommate, most of time, I felt like I was living alone. I found her a good shrink, and once they put her on medication, she began to respond to her surroundings.
    I wanted to do something for her, something that would give her a reason to get out of bed every morning. I found a bookstore for sale through my real estate listings. I made the down payment, and she paid rent to the holding company. Okay, so that holding company was actually me. I added those payments to the condo rent she paid. By the time she found out the truth, she would have a nice nest egg of her own to do whatever she wanted.
    It gave me great satisfaction to do this for her. She flourished owning that store. It took several months of renovations, but she loved it. I helped her decorate, and we hired a young girl part-time to do stocking and sales. Haven seemed happiest in that environment.
    I had to beg and plead for her to go out with me. She was the worst wing woman ever. I knew she was miserable about the way she looked. No longer rail thin and tan, her body had matured and