Page 77 of Accidental Groom
But he’s here. That’s a positive, even if a part of me still wants to throttle him for what he did to Elena.
“You remember how to do this?” I ask, keeping my gaze locked on the line I’m working on.
George shrugs. “I remember you showing me how. Doesn’t mean I was good at it.”
“You were decent.”
“I was bored out of my skull.”
“You used to like it,” I counter, glancing up at him.
“Yeah, when I was ten and still thought you were the best dad a kid could ask for,” he snaps.
I turn, watching as he stares out at the water, his glasses pushed up into his hair now. His eyes squint against the mid-evening sun, and there’s something there, something human, not just the cocky and bitter shell he’s been since his mother died. Since I let him drift.
“You’d beg me to come out here,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t respond.
I sigh and flick the line, letting it settle in the water. The current is slow this time of day, the river still thick with runoff from last week's flash storm. We fish in silence for nearly half an hour before George breaks it.
“So,” he says. “Are you planning on lecturing me, or are we genuinely pretending this is a vacation?”
I don’t take my eyes off the water. “I’m not here to lecture.”
George snorts. “Really? Because last I checked, we hadn’t done this in years and it’s come right off the heels of yourwifebreaking my nose?—”
“I brought you here to talk.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s disappointing.”
“You can leave anytime,” I offer.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
I reel the line in slowly, already exhausted by this. “George?—”
“Go on,” he urges. “Say it.”
“I just want to understand.”
He knocks back a few slugs of his bottle of water, the plastic crunching in his hand. “Understand what?” he asks, taking a deep breath. “Why I didn’t want to marry her? Why I bailed on a wedding no one asked me if I actually wanted?”
“You abandoned her on your wedding day,” I correct.
“Isparedher.”
I stiffen. “You humiliated her in front of her family,” I say. “You jeopardized the contract. The press had a field day with the news that I was marrying her. And now?—”
“Now she’s yours,” he finished. “Yep.”
My jaw clenches. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You fucked her, Dad,” he laughs.
“Watch it?—”
“You can’t pretend like you aren’t. You knocked her up.”
