Crashing Without Justice

Prologue

I sat on the edge of the couch, my head in my hands, my eyes glued to my feet. I knew that I could no longer put this off, and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was the least that I deserved for what I was about to do.

I knew this.

Despite the writing on the wall, there’d been a million different ways that I could have handled this, but I’d chosen to let my emotions override logic. Of course, that was usually the case in situations like this one, and while I wasn’t the only man in history to have ever made this grave of a mistake, that didn’t really help me any. My regret was real, but that wasn’t going to matter. I wasn’t the victim here, and nothing that I could say would undo what needed to be done. Plus, the last thing that I was going to do was drag this torture along any further, hurting more people in the process.

Five years ago, I would have punched someone in the face for even suggesting that I would ever cheat on my wife. Five years ago, I’d said words that I’d meant with every piece of my heart. Five years ago, I hadn’t been able to see anything past the lovely woman that’d been standing before me, pledging to love me back forever. Five years ago, I hadn’t been this man, and I never imagined that I would be.

Nevertheless, none of that mattered now. My good intentions no longer existed in light of what I’d done, and things were only going to get worse with what I was about to do next. Now, while it could be argued that I could always just keep my mouth shut, allowing my wife to live in ignorant bliss, this was about more than just stepping out on my marriage. This was about a marriage that already hadn’t been working for a while, and I could admit that the more that I’d seen, the less that I’d been inclined to try to make it work.

Running my hands through my hair, my mistakes felt like waves crashing against my head and chest, and how I wished that I could go back and do this the right way. I should have ended my marriage the second that my commitment had begun to wane. I should have ended my marriage the second that I’d begun to find someone else interesting. In truth, I should have ended my marriage the second that I’d begun to see the oddities for the red flags that they’d been.

I let out a deep breath, determined to pay the price for my sins, knowing that I deserved to carry the burden of what all a divorce was going to entail. Since California was a no-fault state, it’d be easy to just let a judge split everything down the middle, given that it was a short-term marriage anyways, but I wasn’t going to do that to her. As far as I was concerned, she could have the house and the things that mattered the most to her. As long as she was reasonable enough to split the cash down the middle to allow me to live decently during our divorce, I was more than willing to roll over on everything else.

Running my hands down my thighs, I tried to concentrate on the positives of this shitshow. With us both being in our forties, neither of us had wanted any more children, so I considered that a huge plus. She had two from her first husband, and I had one son from my first wife, and that’d been enough. We’d been fine with our blended family, and I was holding onto that small blessing like a lifeline. No small children’s lives were going to be disrupted by our divorce, and that would also help with a clean break.

My head snapped up as I heard the garage door open, and all my practiced speeches vanished from my brain like delicate whispers. The words were a jumbled mess on my tongue, and while I knew what I wanted to say, I had no idea how to get it out. I had no idea how to say the words that were going to break this woman’s heart, and my stomach felt almost violent with the acidic bile threatening to come up.

You’re not the fucking victim here, Harding.

I could also admit that I was a bit fearful of what her reaction was going to be. While she couldn’t do me any real physical damage, I was aware of those red flags now. I saw them, and now that I knew them for what they really were, her reaction to my infidelity could be anything. My biggest fear would be that she’d harm herself, but I didn’t think that narcissists were really big on self-harm. Still, her addiction to attention could be the exception to the rule.

At any rate, as soon as I heard the kitchen door open and shut, I stood up, then worked like hell to calm my nerves. Granted, I didn’t think that anything could help with that, but I had to try something before I threw up all over the hardwood floors.

“Oh, there you are,” Paige greeted as she set a grocery bag on the kitchen counter. “I know you said you wanted rib-eyes for dinner tonight, but you’ve already had too much red meat this week.”

Seriously, high cholesterol was the least of my concerns right now.