Voluptuously Yours,

Perfectly Imperfect

The next few days went rapidly by. So fast she had to stall herself for a while.

It was Friday and Dawn was packing her things for two main reasons.

Gloria was finally out of the dark. She confessed to everything.

Her whole plan to get Richard married, then have him get her pregnant so she could only divorce him and receive a generous alimony check every month.

When Dawn found out the number of zeros her mother had added on the so-called check she was to receive if her plan worked, her own eyes bulged.

She didn't know the woman anymore.

Recognition had already failed her when Gloria used to call her names after names, blaming her for the mistakes she never committed, making her feel worse about her choice of profession, men, and her body all those years back.

But at-least she knew of her as her mother.

Now she didn't. That last string had snapped.

She was now a stranger. A stranger she would pass by without even giving a second glance.

Secondly, her job began to look up. She had sent in the pictures and Giovani was so ecstatic that he called her immediately.

He rushed in with blabbering compliments and offered her a sweet position in his team. At the end of this week, this Sunday, she gets her pictures and when she says pictures, she means all pictures of Rider showcased in the exhibition.

Her salary also rocketed and she could finally afford to stay in her own place.

Every thing she wanted was finally progressing the way she wanted and yet the hole was still present in her soul.

She didn't see Richard for the whole week.

His presence was like a survival without the sun. Everything dreary and the world becoming cold.

His heated touches she missed. His scorching eyes that make her heart gallop was gone. He didn't come out of his office at all.

Not even once.

She knew something had gone horribly wrong but she didn't know what. Lorenzo had refused to talk about it, he only imparted the knowledge of what happened with her mother.

The god forsaken woman didn't even say tell her anything and she just and up left.

At first, Dawn had a unreal thought. What if Richard was so upset with the whole Gloria debacle that he was angry at her as well?

Though, it passed away in a second when she knew that Richard didn't feel anything for Gloria.

The fact that he never saw Dawn as his step daughter should have made an appearance in her mind but at that time, she didn't know her mother could fake love so well that she'd almost pitied Gloria when she knew Richard never returned her love.

A knock on the door had her head pull up. She went and opened it to a sad face Lorenzo.

"Hi, Lorenzo. Anything I can do for you?"

"I just came by to wish you good luck and have a great future. I enjoyed our company. And-I want to thank you for helping Richard."

"I didn't do anything. It's really all him."

"No. For the first time, it isn't all him. It's you and as his friend I'm glad it's you."

She reached froward, hugging him.

"Is Richard okay?"

Lorenzo didn't answer her.

The area in her chest squeezed in pain. That wasn't comforting.