Page 239 of Small Town Firsts
“I wanted to see if you truly knew your own mind yet, or if you were just playing games with a future you weren’t ready for.” His shoulders relaxed. “Maybe it’s finally time.”
Words left me. Just completely vanished from my head.
“I was you once.” He leaned back in his chair. “I loved your mother more than was wise, and what did it get me?”
“Christ, did everyone see what I couldn’t when it came to me and Ally?” I exhaled. “What I didn’t have the balls to acknowledge?”
“You were smart enough to tread gently. Because you knew. You understood that once you committed to her, there was no going back.”
I wasn’t sure he was saying that as a positive thing, but I nodded. “You’re right. There isn’t. I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Coming clean didn’t scare me anymore. The truth just filled me with a sense of rightness. Like I’d been traveling down a road with my headlights off, and now I’d finally turned them on.
My future was right in front of me, and all I had to do was reach out and take it. And nurture it, and care for it, and protect it with everything I was.
My father nodded and steepled his hands over the folder in his lap. “Does she feel the same?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. I think so maybe.” I blew out a breath. “But if she doesn’t, I’m a patient man. I’ll just keep at her until she has no choice.”
He surprised me by laughing. “Stubborn to a fault, you and your brother.”
Questions sprung to my mind about what he’d said about my mother having a child with another man, questions I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the answers to. Not now. Today Ally and Laurie and our future family was where my head was at. As well as my heart.
“Yeah. Not too bright when it comes to pleasing a woman either,” I added. My father coughed and I smiled. “Not like that. We’re both good there. Well, I know I am. He’s probably just all talk.”
“He is about most things.”
My smile grew. “I meant more about saying the words, giving out the romance. I kinda suck at that.”
“Oprah,” he said gravely.
I laughed. “What?”
“She told women not to settle. Now they all want a free car and a fairytale.”
Back to that again. Obviously, the universe was trying to send me a message. I was listening.
“If any woman deserves one, it’s Ally. She deserves the grand dream, all wrapped up in a big bow.”
Maybe I did too.
I reached for my phone. I had some preparations to make before the reunion. Good thing I had money to burn, because I’d have to move fast.
It was fucking fairytale time.
NINETEEN
I snaggedmy keys on the way out the door. My phone was in my back pocket, but it was off. I wasn’t stupid enough to go out without it, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. All the voices were too confusing.
Sage and her effervescent positivity.
Seth and his seductive laugh rolled in innuendo and faint promises.
Laurie and her wide smiles and happiness.
All of it was too much. I didn’t know which to trust, especially when my own voice was so very silent. Tucked in like a turtle in front of a predator. The problem was, I didn’t know where to turn, so the shell seemed prudent. Only my shell was Seth’s house.
Again.
