Page 35 of Crashing Without Justice

“At the time, I’d been defending my wife,” I told her. “However, looking back, I’d been such a fucking asshole to a lot of people as I’d kept taking her side.”

“You’resupposedto side with your wife, Harding,” she pointed out kindly.

I shook my head. “Not like that, Trista. Not to the point that you can’t see the truth around you.” I leaned back against the couch. “And she did stuff like that often. It was like she needed to constantly upstage people, and I had refused to see it as anything other than her just trying to be helpful.”

“I’m sorry,” she remarked softly.

“I just…she’s such a good manipulator, and so I wonder how much she’s really going to get away with when this is all said and done,” I went on. “How many people are going to believe her bullshit?”

“Oh, hey,” she said as her knee nudged mine. “The people that matter aren’t going to believe anything that she says. The people that know you and love you aren’t going to hold your personal life against you. C’mon, Harding…it’s not like you’re on the street corner to sell drugs to school kids. You also didn’t beat her or pimp her out.”

“Jesus,” I choked out, her comparisons making me laugh a little, despite the dour subject.

“I’m just saying that it’s not that big of a deal in the scheme of things,” she went on. “Yeah, what we did was wrong, and we also hurt her terribly. But compared to the tragedies of life that are happening every day, you had an affair, Harding. You made the mistake of not leaving your wife before we finally got together, but that’s all you did. While wrong, worse would have been to stay married to someone that you didn’t love anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean that I still don’t feel like crap about it,” I pointed out. “Even though Paige has gone off the rails, I still broke my vows, no matter who my wife is.”

“And that’s between you and God,” she returned easily. “Your family and real friends aren’t going to care about your mistakes, Harding. Especially, when you consider that they’re not perfect themselves. That’s where love and grace come in, and you’ve got that from the people that love and know you.”

I reached out, then pulled her into my arms, thankful for so many reasons. “I appreciate how you’re trying to make me feel better.”

“I just hate seeing you so torn up about something that neither of us can change, no matter how much we’d like to go back in time and do it right,” she replied. “All we can do is make better choices moving forward.”

“You make it sound so simple,” I huffed as I squeezed her tight.

“Lifeissimple,” she said. “It’s us that make it complicated.”

She wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Chapter 24

Paige~

Iwas banging on the door, rage making me blind to everything else. In fact, I was so angry that I didn’t even remember the drive over here. I was seeing nothing but red, and I was shaking with how much fury was coursing through my body.

When the door finally swung open, Heady’s eyes were wide. “Paige? What’s wrong?”

I waved the manilla envelope in her face. “Harding had me served with divorce papers today,” I practically screamed.

“Oh, God,” she whispered as her hand came up, hovering over her mouth to hide her shock.

“Can you believe it?” I bit out. “Can you believe that he’d actually do this to me?”

“Come in, come in,” she quickly murmured as she stepped aside to give me room. “We can go into the dining room and talk there.”

Since I knew Heady’s house as well as my own, I made my way to the dining room, and luckily for me, the room had been designed to house a wine bar. Heady considered herself a connoisseur, though her tastes in wines could actually use some improvement.

“Have a seat while I grab us something to drink,” she instructed, and I did so as I tossed the envelope on the table.

My hands were still shaking when Heady set a glass of red wine in front of me, then went to go sit on the other side of the table, her own glass in her hands while she set the bottle between us. Honestly, considering the situation, you’d think that she’d grab one of the more expensive bottles of reds that she had, but I knew Heady well enough to know that she only pulled out the good stuff when she was trying to impress someone.

“Did you go over the papers yet?” she asked, her brows furrowed with concern.

“His guilty conscience is offering to let me have everything,” I bit out. “I get to keep the house, the furniture, the trailer, and the hunting cabin up north. I keep my money, he keeps his and his truck, and then we part ways like civilized adults.”

“And…and that’s bad?”

“It is when I can’t afford the house on my own, Heady,” I snapped. “He’s asking that his name be taken off everything that we own together, which means that I’ll have to refinance the house, and no bank will ever do that with a one-income source.”

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