Read Wildflower Wedding for Free Online

then Trish looked down at the amber liquid in her glass, absently thinking she needed more ice. Lost in thought, she frowned, tried to focus on her glorious newfound freedom, but her mind took her to a place she didn’t want to go, opening a door she wanted to slam shut forever.
    Why had she been so stupid? Wasted
twenty years
of the prime of her life with a man who didn’t give a shit? From countless hours of pondering the question, Trish knew the answer remained complicated. Her marriage had been like a tire with a small leak, deflating slowly, showing signs but ignored until it was totally flat. Hope and determination trumped the sad truth until Trish was finally smacked in the face with a sharp shot of reality: her husband was a lying, cheating, mean jackass.
    When hot moisture filled her throat, Trish doused it with a gulp of cold tea, refusing to shed another tear related to that poor excuse of a man. She placed the glass down and inhaled a deep, shaky breath. The divorce had taken the better part of a year since Steve fought her every step of the way, acting as if everything belonged to him because he was the big-ass breadwinner who never allowed her to pursue a career.
    Or have a child.
    Trish put her hand on her stomach and felt a hollow ache of longing. She’d wanted children, but Steve always asked to put it off and then suddenly it was too late. When she’d learned that Heather the hussy was pregnant, depression hit Trish like a sledgehammer, and for the first time in her life she’d felt the destructive stirrings of rage. She remembered going over to the house to get the last of her possessions and maybe break a few things in the process. Heather had been standing in the front yard watering the lush flower bed Trish had nurtured and grown over the years. She’d felt like grabbing the hose and dousing Heather with water until she cried uncle, but when Heather turned around, revealing the big baby bump, something shifted in Trish’s brain. There was a child involved. An innocent child. Whether Heather trapped Steve or the pregnancy had been an accident, the result was the same. The child deserved the best that life had to offer, and in that moment Trish decided to stop fighting and sign the divorce papers. She’d gotten royally screwed, but she didn’t care.
    All she wanted to be was . . .
done
.
    Gripping the edge of the counter, she said, “Don’t you dare give that despicable excuse of a human being the power to continue to hurt you. Those days are over.” She pushed back from the counter and mentally picked herself up and brushed herself off. Trish knew it was going to be a process, but little by little, step by step, she was reclaiming the free-spirited, creative woman who had become a mere shell of her former self.
    So Trish settled for a lump sum and their two-family rental home, took Maggie’s advice, and relocated to Cricket Creek, Kentucky, where life moved a little bit slower. As long as she lived conservatively and made a little money, she’d be fine.
    Although her life hadn’t gone in the direction she’d expected, the exhilarating rush of freedom from an overbearing jerk was well worth the occasional bouts of loneliness. A table for one really sucked sometimes, but it was a helluva lot better than sharing it with someone who simply didn’t care. Plus, she had Maggie, who was a shining example of how you didn’t have to become boring at midlife but could actually get better. Her friend was not only busy with her real estate projects but also married to a famous rock star. Sweet Maggie and a rock and roll legend! Life was just crazy. “Why can’t something really cool like that happen to me?” she wondered aloud, then shrugged. Hey, who knows, maybe it would? It certainly could.
    When she heard Digger’s deep bark, she rushed over to the window feeling like a giddy schoolgirl, but hey, she needed to take what