Page 31 of Crashing Without Justice

With that, I hung up on him, not wanting to hear anything more. As long as he refused to see how all of this was his fault, there was no use in talking with him. If Harding refused to take responsibility for the things thathehad set in motion, then there wasn’t much that I could do about that on my own. It was obvious that we needed help from a professional to get us back on track, and so I was going to have to spend the weekend searching for reputable marriage counselors since Pastor Truby turned out to be no help to us.

It was also obvious that I was going to have to do this on my own. Harding kept baiting me, making me angry, and that wasn’t going to get us anywhere. I was going to have to appeal to the judge, but once he found out how much I was involved with the local community and law enforcement, I was certain that he’d order counseling for us before granting the mistake of a divorce. In fact, I should probably search the sitting judges of our county to see what I could find out about each of them. After all, the internet really did make it too easy to find out whatever you wanted about someone.

Chapter 21

Harding~

Things just kept getting worse, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take before I lost my shit. Trying to be the bigger person was not working out, and at this point, I wasn’t even sure if Paige deserved my kindness anymore. Actually, I wasn’t sure of much of anything right now.

After the conversation that had gotten us nowhere, I had decided to take a step back, breathe in some air, and then try to regroup. However, when Paige had sent Trista that text about all the ways that we used to have sex, I’d been livid. She’d been trying to make Trista jealous, but if Paige had been firing on all cylinders like a normal person, then she would have realized the pointlessness in what she’d done. Trista hadn’t been surprised to hear that a married couple had been having sex with each other, and she also hadn’t cared about the details. It’d been an immature stunt and just plain stupid.

Still, because God was not ready to forgive me my transgressions, I’d gotten a call from Trista’s ex-husband about an hour ago, asking to meet with me because he felt that we needed to talk, and this was not how I’d wanted to meet the man. Now, while I’d had plans to meet him eventually, I’d wanted to wait until after I had filed for divorce and had finally moved on from Paige. Though I didn’t necessarily care what Frank Indigo thought of me, he and Trista got along well, and I didn’t want to do anything to disrupt that. The better that we all got along, the better for the kids.

Anyways, I was now spending my Friday evening waiting for him to meet me at a local diner that stayed open late. When Trista had called me, asking me for permission to give Frank my number, she had assured me that it wasn’t that big of a deal, but only a man would understand that it was.

I recognized Frank the second that he walked in the door, as Trista had a lot of family pictures in her house that still included him. She hadn’t ever wanted her children to feel as if they had to choose between their mother and their father, so she allowed small concessions like that in order to make her kids feel comfortable with all the members of their family.

Now, since I wasn’t sure if he knew what I looked like, I stood up, signaling him over, and this shit was already beginning to feel awkward as fuck. This drama was over the top, and if he told me that he wanted me to stayaway from his kids, what could I say? I’d be an asshole to fault him for trying to protect his children.

“Frank,” I greeted as I stuck my hand out. “I’m Harding.”

He quickly shook my hand, then sat down in the booth across from me. “I’m going to just get to the point,” he said ceremonially. “Your wife contacted me through social media, and at first, it’d been under the guise of accidentally sending me a rather risqué photo of herself. However, because I’m not stupid, I didn’t respond. However, this morning, I received a message from some random social media account, and this person was trying to convince me to file for full legal custody of my kids.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

Frank shook his head. “They said that they had proof that Trista was an unfit mother, and that I needed to get my children away from her and the company that she was recently keeping.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” I muttered, dragging both hands down my face.

“Now, I can give you the name of the account, but I doubt that it would do you any good,” he went on, and I was thankful that he was being as decent as he was being. Had it been me, I’d be furious as fuck. “There’s nothing to it, which made me suspect that your wife must be behind the account.”

“Look, I’m sorry-”

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” he said, interrupting me. “I don’t care about you being sorry. That’s not why I asked you to meet me.”

“Then why did you ask?” If he was going to be candid about why he was here, then so could I.

“Trista’s life is her own,” he said evenly. “I stopped caring about what she had going on soon after our divorce, so that’s not what this is about. This is about my kids, and how I don’t need some crazy bitch weaving her way into their lives.”

Once upon a time, I would have lost my mind over someone calling Paige a bitch. In fact, I would have lost my mind over anyone slighting her in the least. I used to pride myself on being the kind of husband that would champion his wife no matter what, and it was hard finding myself somewhere in between that now. Habit had me wanting to defend Paige to this virtual stranger, but there was no defending her when it involved children. Frank was making it clear that he was more than willing to step in if Paige’s bullshit touched his kids, and I couldn’t fault him for that. While this shit was awkward as fuck, he also wasn’t being unreasonable.

“Look, I’m not going to make any excuses for Paige because there aren’t any,” I told him honestly. “But I’m doing my best to get her to back off. I’ve even called the police and am looking into a restraining order.”

“Again, I don’t care about any of that,” he replied, though not rudely. “I only care that my children are safe, happy, and aren’t pulled into any unnecessary bullshit. The rest of it is easily dealt with as far as I’m concerned.”

“So, this is a warning?”

Frank shook his head. “Not at all. This is me simply letting you know where I draw the line when it comes to my family. It’s also nothing that I haven’t already told Trista.”

Since he was putting all of his cards on the table, I decided to do the same. “Look, I’m planning a future with Trista, so we both want the same thing here,” I told him. “I am going to do everything that I can to clean up this mess, and that includes protecting Trista and your kids from any further damage.”

“Good,” he said, leaning back against the booth. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Then I guess we’re done here,” I replied, more than ready to put an end to this crazy shit.

“We are,” he agreed. “Until we’re not.”

“Understood.”

---