All Roads Lead to Swatragh - Chapter 43

Five years earlier......

Grace had just started at a marketing firm. She was selected out of a pool of about 50 candidates, but had been the top of her class at the university and showed she was the best candidates for this job. She got along with her co-workers and her work was appreciated by her bosses. Each morning when she arrived at work she noticed another young man entering the building about the same time. They started out smiling and nodding to each other and then started to talk on the way up the elevator.

His name was Braden and he also was a recent university graduate and worked at a law office as an intern a few floors above Grace. He was very professional looking, sharp and a very stylish dresser. Braden knew he was good looking and took advantage of that with women as often as he could. Unfortunately, Grace never saw this until it was too late.

He was slick. First it was coffee, then lunch. He developed their relationship very slowly so Grace never knew what hit her. By the time they were dating on a regular basis, he had been coming over to Grace's for dinner a couple times a week. He convinced her that it was so much nicer and more comfortable eating at her place than always eating out. But he never contributed toward the food, or supplies. Every once in a while he would bring a bottle of wine, but that was it. Grace thought this was how it worked. She was getting in too deep and put all her feelings out there for Braden to see. She really didn't share this relationship information with her friends at work.

If she had they would have let her in on this operator. Grace and Braden were constantly together after work. After a while, he needed to spend some late nights at work, first once a week, then twice and by the time he was spending three nights a week late at the office and not able to see Grace at all, she got suspicious. It was at this point she talked to one of the girls in the office and found out that Braden was slowly moving on. He would hook up with one girl, then slowly move to another when he felt the relationship was getting too serious. The problem was at this point Grace had fallen in love with Braden.

She thought she could convince Braden that it would work out. But she was in over her head and he wanted nothing to do with her anymore. He had moved on. He was having his dinners with a girl from a building across the street. One night he was so exasperated with the pleading from Grace that he unloaded on her, calling her needy and pathetic. A poor excuse for a girlfriend and someone who could not even cook. Grace had vested all her energy into this relationship and now he crushed her emotionally.

Grace moped around for weeks after that. Up to that point she had never had a serious relationship with a man. Her focus was school and getting her degree in marketing. There was no time for men in her life. Even her friends could not get her to leave the flat for a movie. She was like a robot at work. There was no joy in her job. It was then that she left the firm she started at and moved to the firm where she worked currently. Hoping a fresh start would make all the difference.
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And over the past five years she had forgotten all about the hurt and emotional drain that Braden caused. It was not until tonight when she really thought about what it was about Quinn that bothered her so much that it all came back to her.

Grace had buried all those feelings and went on with her life and was happy. Why was she falling apart now? The tears continued while she cleaned up all the dishes from dinner and crawled into bed. She hated Braden for what he had done to her.