Chapter 2
Paige~
I still couldn’t believe that this was happening; I didn’t want to believe that this was happening.
Not again.
Yeah, Patrick had sworn that he hadn’t been cheating, but only a year later, he’d been posting pictures of his whore on social media, and three years later, he had married her. My ex-husband had left me for another woman, and no matter how many times he denied it, I knew the truth. I mean, why else would he have left me? I’d been the perfect wife, giving him two beautiful children and catering to his every whim, so it could have only been another woman.
Still, instead of letting the bitterness eat me alive, I’d chosen to move on with my life and give happiness another chance. I’d chosen to put myself back out there, showing my children that you could still rebuild from the ashes that life sometimes gave you. I’d also chosen to keep a smile on my face every time that my children appeared in one of Patrick’s family Christmas cards, portraying the perfect blended family. Patrick and my replacement, Lydia, had chosen to add to their offspring count, and so Kalayla and Wilner had a half-brother a few years younger than they were.
My ex-husband’s lying infidelity aside, I had never imagined that I’d be in the same boat that I’d been in ten years ago. When I’d first met Harding, I’d felt like Rapunzel being rescued from the tower, and I’d been all in. After five years of trying to find my new love story, I’d almost given up before meeting Harding. It’d taken me two years to finally start dating again, but it’d been horrible all around. While Patrick had been posting pictures of his newfound love, I’d been wading in the disappointing waters of online dating and pitiful blind dates.
At any rate, now I was faced with the end of another marriage, and I had no idea what to do or how I should feel right now. If anyone were to ask me, I’d say that I felt hurt and angry, but those words didn’t seem adequate enough to describe how I was really feeling. My betrayed emotions felt like they were trying to break through my skin, and it was a disgusting feeling. Unlike when Patrick had ended our marriage, Harding had confessed to cheating, and he’d even had the nerve to tell me the details; almost as if he’d been doing me a favor.
When I’d gotten home earlier, all I’d been thinking about was dinner. Harding had asked for rib-eyes, but being in our forties, I’d chosen the healthier option of chicken. With Harding being forty-six, and me being forty-four, I’d begun making our health a priority in our lives, and eating better had been part of that plan. I’d also had plans on helping Heady with her booster club later this evening, but Harding had killed that with his little confession.
Anyway, the second that Harding had insisted that we’d needed to talk, I’d known that something was wrong. For the most part, Harding had always played the passive one in our marriage, catering to a lot of my last-minute whims, something that I’d seen as an act of unconditional love, but wasn’t so sure of now. From day one, Harding had been all about my happiness, so his confession hurt badly.
Now, to say that I’d been surprised would be a lie. After all, men were men, and as long as there were immoral whores walking around to tempt them, what were they supposed to do? They were only human, and we all knew that Eve was to blame for the mess of infidelity. If the first man of creation had been weak enough to fall for her deception, what hope did other men have? Good didn’t always win over evil, and that’s what was happening here. Harding’s whore might be winning for the moment, but that didn’t mean that I had to give my life up without a fight.
I also couldn’t lie and say that I hadn’t noticed him beginning to pull away a few months ago. Oh, the changes might have started about three years ago, but the real variations of personality had begun only recently. Usually onboard with everything on my agenda, Harding had begun questioning a lot of what I’d been doing, and he’d never done that before. He’d been the perfect beacon of support for anything that I’d been involved with, but not recently. No…recently, he’d begun to hit me with these minor interrogations, or at least that’s what they’d felt like.
Still, knowing all that, it still hadn’t made hearing the words any easier. My husband had admitted to cheating on me, and to make matters worse, he had also admitted to having feelings for his mistress. He had admitted that she’d been more than just a one-night stand, and he’d felt that he’d needed to be completely honest with me about that. While still trying to process my emotions, I’d been willing to work on forgiving him and look to our church family to help us through this dark time, but instead of jumping at the chance to redeem himself, he had chosen to confess his feelings for this other woman, putting a real name to her sinful ways.
So, now I was armed with information that I wasn’t ready to know. Not only was I aware that my husband was a cheater, but I also knew who he had cheated on me with, and while he’d sworn that it had only happened once, the feelings that he had for her were the bigger issue. The feelings that he’d begun to develop for this other woman were what had led him to cross a line that could not be uncrossed.
Of course, my phone was now going off, incoming texts and calls making it dance erratically, though that was to be expected after what I had posted on social media. I had people that followed my accounts and were invested in my life, so I owed it to them to be transparent. If they were going to be there for me during all my happy times, then they deserved to be able to lend their support during my hard times. I had a relationship with my friends and followers, and they shouldn’t be cheated out of what they had to offer me during my time of need. Besides, if I was going to have to endure the shame of another failed marriage, why shouldn’t Harding have to carry that same burden?
When Harding had first approached me to ask me out, I’d been over the moon with the excitement of new possibilities, and it hadn’t been just about his looks, either. He had looked at me with complete adoration in his blue eyes, and I’d fallen under the spell of his unspoken promises. Our first date had been perfect, and he hadn’t even seemed annoyed by my talkativeness. He had listened eagerly to everything that I’d had to say, and he’d even shown genuine compassion when I’d gotten to the part about Patrick leaving me. Of course, with his own failed marriage under his belt, it’d been easy to sympathize with each other, and that’d been another commonality for the both of us.
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 needed him to come shovel the snow in the morning.