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And when Georgia got the band to play some of her crazy-ass seventies songs, she dragged me out to the dance floor.
I thought my brother was going to lose his shit because he laughed so hard at the sight.
I was the broody bastard at family events—not the guy having a good time and dancing at his father’s wedding reception.
Looks like Georgia Reynolds just got herself another first.
* * *
We’d been back from our weekend in the city for a couple days, and the internet had been flooded with photos the day after my father’s wedding reception. Me admitting that I had a girlfriend publicly for the first time had been a bigger story than my father’s celebration with his new, much younger wife.
And Georgia hadn’t been the slightest bit fazed by it. She didn’t read what was being posted, and she laughed it off when people in town were calling her a celebrity.
She was one of the rare women who could handle this without being affected in any way, shape, or form.
Her brothers had said they were having a guys’ night the day after we returned, but instead, they’d taken me out to the pond where I’d be surprising her on her birthday. A hotel in the city would have been my pick, but this was Georgia, and sitting outside in the freezing cold, eating ribs and cake with her putting an ice-skating show on for me was much more her speed. So, I’d been ordering all sorts of stuff to make it special for her. I had two guys that would go out there early and get things set up for us, and when we showed up, the place would light up like the fucking Fourth of July.
“I’m heading out to my meeting,” I said, pausing in the doorway as she stared at her computer monitor. Georgia was still working from her desk while I interviewed a few people for Virginia’s position. We were transitioning everyone to their new job titles, but Georgia was covering the tasks as my assistant as well as that of the new creative director.
There had been zero comments about her promotion and the fact that she was dating the boss. Because everyone here knew how hard she worked, and they also probably knew I’d fire their ass if they said one unkind word about her.
She chuckled. “Tell my mom I said hi.”
I held my finger to my lips. The last thing I needed was for everyone in the office to find out I was going to therapy. But I’d made this promise to her that I’d go once, and I was a man of my word, even if I’d moped all morning about it.
“I’ll be back.” I leaned over her desk. “Tell fucking Craig to stop volunteering to challenge you at ping-pong. He lost. It’s over,” I hissed. Yeah, my girl had returned from our trip and smoked his ass, and I loved watching every minute of it. The dude had spent his vacation time playing ping-pong so that he could beat her, just so he could ask her out. Now she was back at the top, and he needed to sit his ass down.
“Maybe you should mention this hostility you have about someone challenging me at ping-pong to my mother.” She raised a brow.
I wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and kissed her hard before leaving.
Alana’s office wasn’t far from mine, but it was cold as hell outside, so I drove there. I hurried inside just as the snow started coming down again. That was one thing I hadn’t fully gotten used to yet. The bone-chilling cold showed no sign of going away anytime soon.
I jogged inside and up the stairs and knocked on her door. She pulled it open and gave me a hug.
Alana Reynolds was that storybook kind of mother. She made Sunday dinners and got excited about buying her children thoughtful presents and genuinely loved each one of them. It was impossible to miss when you were at their house. Both she and Bradford were as good as it gets.
That was why I was surprised they’d warmed up to me.
I wasn’t the easiest to love. It took me a while to warm up to people.
It usually took me a lifetime to trust.
Alana guided me to the couch across from her chair, and it was exactly how I’d seen this play out in movies. My brother had gone to therapy after Mom was gone, per my grandmother’s insistence. But he never talked about it, just like I never talked about the nightmares. We both always shrugged it off and said we were fine.
“Is this normal that I’m coming to you when I’m dating your daughter?” I asked, sitting forward on the couch and folding my hands together where they rested on my knees.
“Well, let me ask you this. If your girlfriend’s mother wasn’t a therapist, would you be going at all?”
I thought over the question. “No.”
“I guess we have our answer, then. This is something that can help, and if this is the only way to get you here, I’d call it a win.” She smiled, her blonde hair, the same color as Georgia’s, rested on her shoulders. “It’s certainly not abnormal to me. And everything we talk about will stay right here in this office, okay?”
I nodded. And we spent the next forty minutes dissecting my childhood, my relationship with my parents, and the horrible night that I found my mother. I never expected to go this deep so quickly, but here we were.
Diving into a big pile of traumatic horse shit.
“So, you were angry with your father before your mother’s passing?” she asked, black-rimmed glasses resting on her nose and eyes filled with empathy.
