Okay, maybe I wasn't such a great prize, but I still think it's his loss.
The asshole.
And as I gazed on that image of myself, as I stood on the edge of the cliff like a living gargoyle from hell, something occurred to me, something that had been bothering me for the past month or so.
Amazingly, I still cared for Danny.
Yes, the man had made my life an absolute living nightmare. Remember, until recently we had been trying to make things work. And if he hadn't cheated on me, I would still be with him. I had planned to be with Danny for the rest of my life.
Well, the rest of his life.
But he had turned into his own kind of monster, which is more than ironic, and even though he began to openly cheat on me, and even though he hurt me more than I had ever been hurt in my life, I still had feelings for the bastard.
Yes, I understood why he did what he did. I get it. I'm a freak. He wanted out. But did he have to be such an asshole about things? Couldn't he have treated me with compassion and love? Did he have to act like such a douchebag all the time? Did I want to hurt him often?
The answer, of course, was yes to everything.
I sat quietly on the cliff edge, surveying the beach below. There was no one behind me, or anywhere around me for that matter. My hearing in this form was phenomenal.
Danny was the father of my children. As much as it pained me to admit it, I knew he was doing the best he could given the circumstances. How many fathers would have taken their kids from something like me? Probably many of them. How many husbands would have sought a warm body elsewhere? Probably many of them.
Yes, it would have taken an extraordinary man to get through this with me.
Danny wasn't him.
In my mind's eye, I studied the woman in the flame. She stood there passively, naked as the day she was born, watching me in return. I loved that woman. I loved her with all my heart. Life had dealt her a shitty hand, but she, too, was doing the best she could.
A moment later, I was moving toward the woman in the flame. She grew rapidly bigger, taking on much more detail. And then she was rushing at me, too, and a moment later I found myself standing on the edge of the cliff, naked, cold and crying, and staring down into the churning dark depths below, where the surf pounded rocks into sand.
Chapter Twenty-three
"I think I'm in love with her," said Chad.
It was nearly four in the morning, and we were standing just inside my hotel doorway. It had been a hell of a long night for Chad. Apparently, though, he had loved every minute of it.
"Thanks, Chad. I owe you."
"I'm not joking," he said. Chad was a tall guy, easily six-foot-three. Maybe taller. When you barely scrape five-foot-three, just about anyone looks tall as hell. Except for Tom Cruise, of course. Chad added, "There's something about her."
"She's vulnerable and cute," I said. "And you're a man. It's a simple equation."
We were whispering since Monica was asleep on my bed. We were also whispering because it was four in the morning and we were in a hotel and we weren't assholes.
He glanced over at her sleeping form. I glanced too. Mostly under the comforter, she looked tiny and child-like. Just a little bump in a big bed. Say that five times in a row.
He said, "Sure, but there's something else." He stopped talking. Chad, I knew, wasn't used to expressing his emotions; he needed prodding, like most men. Well, those men not named Fang.
So I prodded. "You feel an overwhelming need to protect her, to help her, to save her."
Chad looked at me funny. "That's pretty much it, yeah. How did you know?"
"Because I had the same reaction," I said.
He nodded and looked back at her sleeping form. "How could anyone do that to her?"
"There are bastards out there," I said.
Chad didn't say anything at first. When Chad and I were partners we didn't talk much, but we always had a comfortable silence. When he spoke, his words weren't empty. They were full of a lot of forethought.
"I would kill him," he said. "If he ever came within a mile of her."
"That sounds like love to me," I said. "And just think, I was only gone for six hours.
"And we talked nearly the whole time."
"You mean she talked and you listened."
Chad grinned, but kept looking at her sleeping form. "Something like that."
"Get out of here and get some sleep, you love-struck puppy dog," I said. "Before you propose to her in her sleep."
"I guess I am being a little ridiculous, huh?"
I shrugged.
"This has never happened to me before," he said.
"Welcome to love-at-first-sight," I said. "Now go on."
He nodded and told me to call him anytime I needed help. I said I would and practically shooed him out of my hotel room. As I locked the door behind him, I resisted the urge to look out the peephole to see if my ex-partner was hugging and kissing the door.
With Monica sleeping nearby, I did some more work on my laptop. In particular, I got the visiting hours to Chino State Prison. On a whim, mostly because the bastard was on my mind, I headed over to my ex-husband's law firm's website. Danny was your typical ambulance chaser. He screwed insurance companies...and anyone else, for that matter.
I broadened my search on Danny Moon, chaser of ambulances extraordinaire. His name was all over the net, usually in association with some case or another, usually a case that actually went to court. You see, Danny didn't like to go to court. Danny was a lazy SOB, and his firm did all they could to keep cases out of court. But sometimes the negotiations went bad and cases actually did go to court. When they did, Danny and his firm actually had to do real legal work. Which generally made him grumpy as hell to be around.
Poor baby.
I next went to his Facebook page. I generally don't go on Facebook. It's not like I have a lot of new pictures to post, right? Anyway, I do keep an account because my daughter has one and I like to see what she's doing. Besides, Farmville is a hoot.
No, Danny and I are not friends on Facebook; apparently, divorcing someone is also grounds for dropping them as Facebook buddies. So I guess you could say I've been defaced.
Anyway, Danny kept his pictures public. Maybe he didn't know the intricacies of Facebook privacy, or maybe he didn't care.
He should have cared.
Although his pictures were very professional, everything a respectable attorney's pictures should be, there was one very unprofessional picture. Apparently Danny had been tagged at a party. And not just any party. A party at a strip joint in Riverside. And not just any party at a stripjoint, but a Grand Opening party.