Page 45 of Crashing Without Justice

“I hope that poor bastard sees her for what she is before he gets in too deep,” I remarked, meaning every word.

“If it’s not him, it’s going to be someone else, Harding,” Luke pointed out. “Until she gets some professional help, all the episodes of her crazy reality show are going to be the same.”

I looked back over at my best friend. “Well, that’s one hell of an analogy.”

Luke grinned as he shrugged. “It seemed apt.”

“So…I guess we should just toast to me finally being free, huh?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

We clinked bottles before we each took a drink, and while I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, it still felt good to know that it was finally over. I never imagined that so much turmoil could happen in a span of two measly weeks, but it’d had, and I was glad to be able to move on from Paige’s drama.

“What kind of flowers does Amy like?” I asked. “Because I feel like I need to send her flowers.”

“She likes posies, but you should send her roses,” he replied easily. “In this case, it’s the cost of the thought that matters.”

I barked out a laugh at that. “Duly noted.”

“Hey, she almost caught herself an assault charge because of your crazy cuckoo bird wife,” he retorted. “You deserve to go into debt for her apology.”

I laughed again. “You might be right.”

We’d ended up bullshitting for two more hours, but there’d been no more talk about Paige or everything that she’d done. We’d spoken about work, sports, our kids, and everything else that we usually talked about when we went out to have a beer or two. It’d felt like old times, and it’d been nice.

Now I was swiping my keycard for my hotel room, and I was counting down the days when I no longer had to live in a goddamn hotel.

Chapter 30

Paige~

It was a good thing that winter was upon us, making me able to kill two birds with one stone. As the fire crackled in the fireplace, I didn’t feel one ounce of regret as what was left of Harding’s things burned to ash. If these things had meant anything to him, then he would have taken them the day that he’d come over and had taken the rest of his stuff.

I’d also done a picture cleanse of all my social media accounts and phone. After Kirk had finally texted me back this morning, I had called into work, then had spent the entire day removing every photo of Harding from this house, along with everything that he’d left here. I wasn’t about to disrespect Kirk by making him have to endure Harding’s ghost when Harding was a non-factor now.

There was also the fact that Kirk wasn’t fooling anyone with his excuses about work and whatever. No guy wanted to have to worry about the man that had come before him, and so I was doing my best to reassure Kirk that I was committed to him and only him. The next time that he walked into this house, he was going to see that it was ready for him to move in. He was going to see that my heart was his, and that we could finally move forward.

Kirk and I were also going to have to talk about how he took his time replying to my texts. While I understood that he had a job to do, he could still take two minutes out of his day to respond whenever I reached out to him. His family and friends were just going to have to learn how to wait now that I was in his life. Of course, I had no doubt that Kirk would eventually see things my way, it was just going to take a little time for us to find a routine that worked.

I tossed another shirt into the fire, careful not to burn anything that could blow up the house. Whatever I couldn’t burn was going to go into the trash, even if I had to rent a larger trash bin for the occasion. I wanted to erase Harding from my new life with Kirk, and while the kind thing would have been to call Harding to come get the rest of his stuff, he didn’t deserve my kindness anymore. In fact, he hadn’teverdeserved my kindness.

There was also the fact that my friendship with Heady was at an impasse. When I’d called her to tell her about Kirk, she hadn’t sounded at all happy for me. She had accused me of moving too fast and using Kirk as a reboundfor the hurt that Harding had caused me. Suddenly, she’d gotten a PH.D in relationships, and instead of being excited for me, she had tried to kill my hope, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to forgive her for that. Now, while I did my best to follow the teachings of the church to the letter, forgiveness didn’t necessarily mean that we had to remain friends. I could still find a way to forgive her without letting her toxic viewpoint steal my happiness.

As I threw a few of Harding’s boxers into the fire, I thought about how Kirk had insisted on not meeting my kids or parents yet. At first, I’d been upset that he would refuse such an honor, but when he explained how he hadn’t wanted to meet them under the dark umbrella of my divorce, I relented. While my feelings had been hurt a bit, I could still appreciate how he wanted everything to be perfect between us, and my divorce from Harding was definitely a dark cloud that we both needed to get out from under.

Watching everything burn, my phone rang, and my heart sank when I saw that it was Heady calling me and not Kirk. He had promised to call me later, and I was holding him to that promise.

Nevertheless, I answered because that’s what Jesus would do, and I would always work hard at being the better person in any situation. “Hello?”

Heady let out a deep sigh over the phone. “I’m glad that you answered, Paige. I’ve been thinking about you since our last conversation.”

“Oh, you mean the one when you told me that I shouldn’t be with Kirk,” I retorted tartly.

“I never said that, and you know it,” she replied evenly. “I just asked the questions that any good friend would ask.”

“You tried to get me to stop seeing him,” I snapped, correcting her.

“No, I did not, Paige,” she lied, and it bothered me that she sounded so calm about it all. “I was just warning you against rushing into something too quickly.”

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