Page 3 of Crashing Without Justice

I wiped my tears as memories of our proposal came rushing back to my mind. Next to my children being born, that’d been the happiest moment of my life. Harding had planned everything down to the last detail, and I’d said yes with all my heart and soul. Everything had been right out of a fairytale, and the first couple of years after that had been like a fairytale, too. In fact, Harding had been so perfect that he had put all my years with Patrick to shame. Both men hadn’t even been close enough to be able to compare, except in the fact that they both turned out to be cheating assholes.

Looking around the living room, catching glimpses of our life together, my heart started to break all over again. How could Harding do this to me? Knowing how Patrick had cheated, then discarded me, how could he do the same thing? Unlike Patrick, Harding had been just as committed to the church as I was, so how could he break such a serious Commandment?

None of it made any sense.

There were also my children to consider. This was going to also ruin their belief in love. Yeah, they might be adults now, but that hardly mattered. After my divorce from Patrick, they’d had to go live with him and his new wife, seeing them live happily while their mother had struggled, and that had done some real damage. I also didn’t care what the judge had said. Kalayla and Wilner never would have chosen to go live with Patrick freely. Somehow, someway, the courts had coerced them into saying that they wanted to go live with their dad, and there’d been nothing that I could do about it. Patrick had fooled them all, and all I could do was make the best of it.

At any rate, they had adored Harding, and now they were going to have to struggle with having to learn that their mother had married another imposter, making love nothing but a sought-out illusion that wasn’t real. Just like me, they were going to have to heal again, and that was almost too unforgivable.

Snow started coming down outside the windows of the living room, and resentment grew sharp and lethal at the sight. Harding knew that I wasn’t fit enough to shovel the snow that always piled up on the walkway, so what was I supposed to do now? Not only had he broken my heart, but he had basically abandoned me to face life completely alone. Yes, I had family and some friends, but they weren’t the ones that had pledged to stand by me through sickness and in health. They hadn’t been the ones to promise me a forever by my side, so it wasn’t their job to come shovel the snow on my walkway.

Wiping the angry tears from my face, I grabbed my phone, then shot off a text.

Me:It’s snowing

To his credit, Harding texted back almost immediately.

Harding:I’ll have the walkway shoveled first thing 2morrow

I wanted to scream with what a fucking bastard he was. I didn’t need someone to come shovel the snow in the morning. I neededhimto come shovel the snow in the morning.

Chapter 3

Harding~

Needless to say, I hadn’t slept at all last night, but I had still managed to text our lawn service, asking them if they could shovel the snow that had finally stopped early this morning. Though Paige’s job was rather demanding, it wasn’t physical to the point where she couldn’t handle it. Yeah, there’d been times when she’d feel worn out at the end of the day, but she had always insisted that she could handle it, and I had chosen to believe her.

At any rate, I couldn’t put off the firing squad any longer, so not caring about breakfast, I picked up my phone, then dialed my father’s number. While I was close with both my parents, I just felt as if my father was the one that I needed to speak to right now.

Luckily for me, my parents, Lou and Casey Rice, were solid people. My father was a retired insurance adjustor, and my mother was a retired city bus driver, and so far, they were living their best retired lives. They were also great grandparents, and so that kept them busy a lot of the time. I had given them Brendan, and though he was already twenty-four, my parents still treated him as if he were fourteen. However, at six-foot-one, he was a grown man, and while he looked like me, he had taken after his mother in coloring. Brendan had brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smile just like my ex-wife, Leslie.

I also had a brother named Jeremy, and at forty-eight, he was a career military man. He could have retired ages ago, but he was a true patriot, and dedicated to defending his country, he had passed on having a family to stay true to his heart. Jeremy and I were also damn near identical in looks. We’d both taken after our father, only I’d gotten an extra inch over Jeremy’s six-foot-two.

As for the rest of what made up my life, my ex-wife was married to a great guy named Carlson, and they’d ended up having a daughter, which had given Brendan a half-sister, one that he absolutely adored. Despite being products of divorce, my son and his sister were very close, and I actually considered her family on our side, though she really wasn’t by blood. Nonetheless, Raylee was a doll, and it helped that we all got along well.

Then there was my best friend, Luke Denims. We both worked for Carter Electric, and while I was a foreman with the company, I wasn’t big on titlesor anything like that. Twenty years ago, I had started at the bottom and that’s where I was comfortable at. I had no problem still getting my hands dirty, and my crew knew it, something that I made sure of. Respect was everything when it came to dangerous jobs, and that was something that I refused to forget, despite the size of my paycheck.

Luke was also six-foot-two, still built like a machine at forty-six years of age, and he was married to the love of his life with two children rounding out his perfect existence. Amy was his high school sweetheart, and I’d never known a happier couple. Now, while that might sound like jealousy on my end, considering what all I was going through, it wasn’t. I loved Luke like a brother, and I’d do anything for him and his family.

So, it was my parents, my brother, and my best friend that were going to help me get through this, and I couldn’t be more grateful. While they might think that I was stupider than a box of rocks, it wouldn’t make a dent in their loyalty. In fact, they had proven that the first time around, though my marriage to Leslie hadn’t ended because of cheating.

“Harding,” my father greeted as soon as he answered the phone.

“Hey, Dad,” I sighed, that sick feeling back in the pit of my stomach.

“What the hell, son?”

I let out a hollow laugh. “I fucked up.”

“I’d say so,” he agreed quietly.

“You have to believe me when I tell you that I never meant for this to happen,” I said, stating the pointlessness of the obvious. “I…I never meant to make such a mess of things.”

“You mentioned having doubts about your marriage a few months ago, so I’m having difficulty understanding why you didn’t do something about it back then, Harding,” he remarked, doing his best to tone down his lecture. “You’re forty-six, not twenty-four. This was not the mature or right way to handle your failing marriage, son.”

“I know that,” I replied as evenly as I could. “But there’s nothing that I can do about it now.”

“No, I don’t suppose that there is,” he sighed. “That girl is hurt, and I’m afraid that there is nothing that any of us can do about it.”

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