Men Of Honor Eric - Jordan Silver Page 0,6

I could feel the sting from our lovemaking between my thighs; that sweet ache that he always leaves behind, and the slight pull deep within. My cheeks warmed with pleasure, and I snuggled into his pillow, even more, inhaling his scent that only made me miss him.

I can’t believe that this is my life; some days, I have to pinch myself to be sure that it’s real. I never in a million years would’ve dreamed that mine and my daughter’s lives could change this drastically. After her dad left us for someone else, things had been really hard. My barely above minimum wage job was hardly enough to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table, and my ex hadn’t given a damn.

It’s as if once he left, we no longer existed, and the child support he was supposed to pay had not been forthcoming, not after the first few months anyway. Because of the horrible insults and softly veiled threats, I’d swallowed it all and forged ahead on my own, not willing to battle it out with the my ex and his new wife who seemed hell-bent on destroying me for whatever reason.

I hid a lot of this from my daughter because I didn’t want to put too much on her plate. As a teen, she was already at that stage where life was changing too rapidly, and learning what a jackass her dad was wouldn’t have helped matters any.

He and his new wife had gone out of their way to be cruel as if trying to erase the last fourteen years of his life with me. We’d been high school sweethearts, and he’d been the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. All those words of love and forever had blinded me to reality, and I’d fallen for it all.

I’d gotten pregnant with Lora during my last year of high school, and my parents decided that it was a good time to wash their hands clean of me. I found a job waiting tables while Sam went to work for his uncle at his mechanic shop, which he was good at. We didn’t have much, but neither were we living hand to mouth like so many around us were.

We got married and settled into our little life of happily ever after, which had lasted longer than our friends’ relationships. I always thought Sam would be there for our daughter and me through thick and thin, just as I stood by his side whenever things went south for him. Like the time he lost his job for messing up for the third time and almost causing an accident on the job.

Then he got a job working out of town for a chain. He was making more money sure, but the long days and nights apart took their toll, and before I knew it, the man who’d laughed and played with our daughter and still brought me home flowers had grown distant and snappy.

At first, I thought it was the pressure of having a new job that took him away from home for weeks on end. I thought he was probably missing Lora, and I since the three of us had always been such a close unit, but he’d be back to himself in a few days, and things would go back to normal for a while until the next time he had to leave home, and things would start all over again.

Then the phone calls had started, strange calls in the middle of the night where nothing was ever said, but it was obvious that someone was on the other end of the line. I had my suspicions because of Sam’s behavior but silly as I was, I still refused to believe that the sweet boy who’d swept me off my feet with promises of forever would ever cheat on me, that he would do anything that would destroy our little family.

Three months after landing the new job that took him away from home for two weeks at a time, I learned the ugly truth. Sam had met and fallen in love with someone else his first week away from home. To say I was in shock is putting it lightly. The day he finally told me, I thought he was coming clean to ask for forgiveness and to find a way to make things work after his betrayal, but nothing could be further from the truth. He wanted a