His Favorite Mistake (Baby Its Cold Out) Read Free Page B

That was before she’d discovered the truth about Cade’s addictions. Before she’d learned of his violent behavior brought on by the drugs he abused. Before she learned, there was nothing about the real Cade James that came close to the fairy tale she’d believed in the beginning.
                  Cade had married her on a whim. One, which he quickly regretted.
                  Now all of that seemed like a lifetime ago. Another girl. She wasn’t the same hopeful girl who had married Cade.
                  It was only after the changes in Cade became more frequent and more dangerous that she finally accepted the truth. Their marriage had been a terrible mistake. By that time, Cade was so deep into his destructive behavior that Reyna wondered if anything could have saved him.
                  Whatever she thought she felt for him disappeared completely the first time he’d hit her. For the remainder of their marriage, Reyna felt nothing more than pity for the man she’d once believed she loved.
                  She’d tried to talk Cade into getting help, but on those occasions, he’d only become more angry and abusive until finally, Reyna was forced to watch as her husband self-destructed into an existence of living off drugs and alcohol. And then there were the affairs. Too many to remember and too much to care about anymore.
                  Reyna never really understood why Cade had married her in the first place. He’d told her he loved her at least a dozen times that first week. Even after they had separate bedrooms, he still claimed to love her. In her heart, Reyna believed Cade never really understood love.
                  He had just been caught up in the physical attraction. He’d simply desired her, so he’d convinced himself that he was in love with her. In his irrational way of thinking, that made sense.
                  That had been the reality of Cade’s behavior in the months before his death. Irrational. He hadn’t understood that love wasn’t supposed to hurt.
                  Looking back now after surviving that nightmare, Reyna knew that at twenty-three, she too hadn’t understood love. She’d only been in love with idea of love. The whole fairy tale image it represented. An image Cade had deliberately wanted her to believe existed because he’d desired her physically. Unfortunately, after a while, Cade hadn’t been able to fulfill that desire.
                  Cade had swept her off her feet. He’d been so charming and attentive, that Reyna ignored all the warning signs that had to be there even before their wedding day.
                  The truth was she’d never actually been in love with Cade James. It had all been just an illusion. Everything about their life together had been a lie.
                  The day Cade brought her home to meet his father was one Reyna would never forget. Harvey James hadn’t even put up a pretense of being polite. He’d made it clear to his only son that Reyna would never be a part of their family. He’d insisted they get a divorce immediately, which Cade had refused to do. His father accused Cade of marrying her to get back at him. They’d gotten into a terrible argument and she and Cade had left soon after.
                  In Harvey’s mind, Reyna lacked the right pedigree, the correct social connections for such a prestigious family. Coming from a small town outside the city, she was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak.
                  Cade had almost seemed happy with his father’s disappointment. He’d told her that growing up, his father had been cold and unfeeling. In some way, Reyna believed that Cade had wanted to punish his father for all those things. He’d accomplished it quite nicely by marrying Reyna, someone who Harvey James would never approve of and