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“I’m glad it’s all figured out now.” I squeeze his hand. “And…” I trail off. I don’t know if I should ask this, or talk about this.
“What is it, baby?” He looks back up at me, and the honest and pure curiosity I see in his blue eyes disarms me.
“How did it go with Theo, and lunch with your mom?”
“Oh, well.” He takes a sip of his water and takes so long to answer that I fear he won’t, that it isn’t my place to ask him about this. “It was hard,” he says eventually. “Both were, the appointment with Dr. Sasha especially. Theo explained the whole thing, how it was when I was still married to Mary, how it changed only in the fact that she didn’t hide her apathy toward him when they moved away, and how he accepted it was something he had to endure.” He clears his throat and shakes his head. I stay silent. I don’t know what to say, I still can’t understand what Theo went through. “Anyway, Dr. Sasha explained a lot to me, too. She said how me not knowing, created a safe space for Theo where he could exist without having to carry the pain of that situation because no one was asking him about it or pitying him. Essentially, it was a survival instinct for him. So I understand it better now.”
“But you haven’t let up even a little on yourself, huh?” I take a guess.
“Yeah. And my ma… well she’s furious, you can imagine who had come to get her from the house after lunch.”
“I can.” I nod.
“Well when she came back, she was much calmer and had an evil glint in her eye, so I know he convinced her he was going to do something about it. I made him swear to me he wouldn’t, again.”
“That’s good because you were right about what you said when you talked to him. The only special thing about Mary is who she married.”
“Exactly. In any case, Ma’s feeling as guilty as I am since she never saw it in her either.” He shakes his head. “Let’s stop talking about the depressing stuff. Tell me all I need to know about you, Tris. This is our first date after all,” he wiggles his eyebrows. I chuckle, he’s so damn cute. “Damn, that smile.” He only stares at me and grabs my hand.
“Yeah well my face hurts now.” I gesture to it, trying to frown but not pulling it off in the slightest. “This is on you, you know?”
“I’m don’t feel even a little bit guilty.” His smile only gets bigger. I sigh and get back on track.
“Well, I went to NYU for business and got a master’s in marketing and public relations. I got an internship at Reshuld & Co. straight out of my bachelor's and worked there until five years ago when Zoe and I finally took the plunge and started JPR.”
“That’s impressive, not everyone has the guts to start their own business like that.”
“Well, we knew we’d do it eventually, we just had to get at least one client so it could be viable. It’s weird, how things happen in life, sometimes like a domino effect, but Zoe was working for a luxury line, in the marketing department, and they were shooting a campaign for a spring launch with Samantha Sawyer. She and Zoe got to talking about life and work and everything. Anyway, Sam ended the conversation by telling Zoe—without any prompting—she should call her when she started her own business. Zoe hadn’t said anything to her about our idea. So she told me about it, and we thought about starting it right then, but we knew we needed more time, more money to take care of someone as famous as her. About five months later, we were putting on an event at Reshuld, I think it was the release party of someone’s album, I can’t remember who, but Wolf and Hawk were there.”
“Ah, your adoptive siblings.”
“Exactly.” I smile big at how he phrases it. The waiter comes up to us then, so we order, and Harrison asks for a bottle of wine which I never want to know the price of.
“Then what happened?” he asks.
“So during this party, one of the guests got pissy with Hawk, which means Wolf was about to start throwing punches. I stepped in and sorted it out, and they seemed to be impressed by that. I now know they were because their previous publicist was an imbecile, not because of what I did.”
“C’mon, baby. Give yourself more credit. What you did only yesterday in less than half an hour was very impressive.”
“I guess. I’ve learned a lot since then, but anyway, they asked me if I’d be their publicist, they were very dissatisfied with their previous management overall, so they fired everyone and hired all new people.”
“So you started your company with the biggest country music star in history and the rock band that’s taken the world by storm? Heh.” He laughs at his pun, and I chuckle lightly too. “That’s some skills, Tris.”
“We had a lot of luck,” I say because it’s true. “That doesn’t take away from all the hard work. I know, but yeah, luck played a part in it. Now tell me something about you.”
“I don’t know what to say, I mean my life is pretty public.”
“Yeah, but not all of it is true, I mean I didn’t know Mary wasn’t your college sweetheart, no one does.”
“Right, most days I forget people still believe that.”
I laugh louder this time. “It’s what you made sure everyone believed, but I know now, so tell me why you bought the Kings.”
“That’s an easy one. I’ve been a fan all my life. Dad was a fan, my uncle was a fan as well even though he always said soccer was better. So I grew up watching the Kings, and when the opportunity presented itself I didn’t think twice about it. I had the money, what else was I going to spend it on?”
“There are very few things left in the world that are more expensive than an NFL franchise for you to buy.”
“Exactly, besides, Iris was starting to get into it. It seemed like the most logical thing to do.”
