“Alright.”
“I said stop!” Eric lunged forward from behind them, making another desperate attempt to block Zane’s path.
“What has gotten into you?” Hadley’s fingers closed around Eric’s arm in a restraining grip before she jerked her hand away as if burned.
Her features contorted with indignation as fury blazed in her eyes. “What possible justification do you have for preventing him from reaching his sick daughter? Have you completely lost your sanity?”
“Me? Lost my sanity?” A bitter laugh escaped Eric’s throat as his hands balled into tight fists, striking uselessly at the empty air around him. “Every action I take serves your best interests! Can’t you see how deeply it wounds you when he abandons you so easily?”
Hadley stood frozen in bewilderment, Eric’s words striking her as completely incomprehensible. Hurt? What conceivable reason existed for her to feel hurt by his departure?
“Hadley!” Her blank stare amplified Eric’s desperation, sending him into agitated circles as he struggled to make her understand. “Zane represents everything wrong for your future!”
“Excuse me?” A laugh of sheer disbelief bubbled from Hadley’s lips at his unexpected proclamation.
“He has a daughter!” Eric’s voice rose with mounting anger. “If he can desert you for his child’s sake today, what prevents him from repeating this pattern endlessly?”
Hadley maintained her silence, studying him with the detached fascination one might reserve for observing a stranger’s bizarre behavior.
The supreme irony of his accusation rendered her speechless with its breathtaking hypocrisy. Had he somehow erased from his memory the countless occasions when he had chosen Linda over Hadley and Joy?
“Hadley.”
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Eric’s eyes darted away from hers as his lashes fluttered with unmistakable guilt. The memories crashed over him with devastating clarity.
“Yes, I committed unforgivable wrongs against you! I became your greatest disappointment…” Eric’s head dropped in shame, his words weighted with profound remorse. “I shattered your heart into pieces… That’s precisely why I refuse to watch you endure identical agony again! Choose someone else, anyone else. Zane will only bring you suffering…”
Before his plea could reach completion, Hadley drew a steadying breath and cut through his words. “The situations are entirely different.”
“What?” Eric went rigid with shock, his mind scrambling to process her response. “Different? In what conceivable way?”
“You abandoned me for another woman.” Hadley’s eyes met his directly, her tone carrying the weight of absolute truth. “He’s departing to care for his daughter. These represent two completely distinct moral universes.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Abandoning someone for another woman constitutes the deepest betrayal. Leaving to tend to one’s child represents the fulfillment of sacred parental responsibility. How dare you equate these fundamentally different acts?”
Her shoulders lifted in a dismissive gesture. “Do you have anything else to say? Because if not, this conversation has reached its conclusion.”
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