Page 43 of Love.V2 (Occupational Hazards #2)

Dylan

I woke up groggy, mouth tasting foul. It took a few blinks to orient myself. Dad’s house. Guest room. Tess was nowhere to be seen, though the indent on the pillow told me she’d spent the night here, too.

What time was it? Had anything changed with Henry?

Damn, I should call Ron and the board. I rolled to a seat on a groan, glancing at the bedside table for my phone and finding only an empty expanse of wood, save for a glass of water.

I didn’t remember coming in last night. I hardly even remembered leaving the office.

Had I left my phone at Worther? Shit. I needed to be reachable, especially with Henry in the OR.

Even if the board went with Danny’s suggestion not to announce a new CEO immediately, there were still clients to handle.

Meetings and calls and emails I needed to be on to make it seem like everything was under control.

My heart sank as I trudged to the attached bathroom. I’d have to go back. No matter what unexpected, badass magic Tess had worked to bring me here, my phone was probably already blowing up with more emergencies. More needs. More things to do.

I wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head.

There was a time when I would have jumped at the chance to be CEO. Now, looking at my haggard face in the mirror, gray and drained after just two days back here, it was clear that version of me was long gone.

Working at Jinx, focusing on Tess and the things that made me happy, that’s what mattered. Leading people, connecting them, fostering their passions, and helping them bring businesses to life. Books. Soccer. Pasta on Tuesdays.

That’s what I wanted. Unfortunately, in the harsh light of the morning sun, I felt like I was just back to where I’d started: In Nashville, crashing at my dad’s house, with the weight of a multinational organization on my shoulders.

Until I saw the note.

Good morning. Brush your teeth and come find me. Don’t forget to drink some water! 3

Right back where I’d started, except for one massive difference. Tess was here.

***

My dad’s recently renovated Brentwood bungalow was nice, but it wasn’t huge. It was easy to follow the sounds of scraping and rustling in the kitchen.

I looked at the stale art on the walls while I padded down the white carpet. It reminded me of our old condo. A memory flashed.

You need life. Color. Plants.

I stopped dead in my tracks on the threshold of the kitchen. Had I told Tess we should have a baby? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember anything other than snippets of our conversation in the car last night. Had she been mad? Disappointed?

She was here, right? Wasn’t that a good sign?

“Dylan?”

I glanced up to find my dad sitting at the kitchen table with his computer, surrounded by piles of papers and folders.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He looked at me, taking in the rumpled clothes I’d been wearing for over twenty-four hours. “Rough night?”

I laughed humorlessly, looking around. Tess wasn’t here. “Yeah.”

“Tess told me about Henry. I was sorry to hear it.” Dad’s lips tilted down before he shoved away from the table to pour a cup of coffee.

“She told me a lot of things, actually.” The look he speared in my direction froze me.

I’d been about to excuse myself to find her, but something about his face locked my knees.

“Oh?”

“Oh. Your girl’s feisty. Never realized.” He handed the mug over without meeting my eyes. “I should probably apologize for that. In fact, maybe I should apologize for a lot of things.”

In the morning’s fuzziness and with everything that had happened clouding my brain, my last encounter with my father had faded to the back of my mind. Now it came roaring back. The accusations. The bristling fight.

I sighed, staring down into my coffee. “Dad, I don’t think now’s really the time—”

“No, I think it is.” He motioned for me to sit on one of the upholstered chairs at the kitchen table. “Tess came knocking late last night, and before I could get a single word out, informs me that my son has been through a trauma and that I was going to open the door and let you both sleep here.”

Even with the tension filling the air, I smiled. Tinker Bell really had relocated that spine of steel. “Yeah, that’s my girl.”

Dad grunted. “Since she woke up this morning, she’s been on a tear. Commandeered my office.” He gestured at his laptop and the papers on the table. “She’s been in there on calls and video meetings all morning, and she has your phone.”

“My phone?” A wave of relief crashed over me. I hadn’t left it behind.

“It started buzzing three different times when she was in here grabbing coffee. She checked the screen, silenced the call, then flipped it back over.”

Everything inside me was liquifying. She’d told me…yesterday? Two days ago? It didn’t matter when. She’d told me she’d fight for me.

I hadn’t expected a warrior.

I should have.

“I’ve been, er, thinkin’ a lot about what you said to me the last time I saw you,” Dad began, fidgeting with a pen. “I know I might have…overstepped some. I assumed a lot of things about your relationship that I shouldn’t have.”

“Dad,” I started again. I didn’t want to have a come to Jesus moment right now. I wanted to find Tess.

“And Tess didn’t mind telling me this morning that I’ve made a lot of assumptions about other areas of your life, too.

” Dad winced, finally looking up at me. “I always just wanted you to be happy, son. And I realize now I might have pushed you too hard to do that on my terms. I haven’t given you the chance to find your own happiness. And I’m sorry.”

I let the words sink in, taking a deep breath. “Thank you for saying that.”

Dad grunted. “Well, I mean it. I might have…well, I know I’ve been hard on the twins, too. Maybe…takin’ some things out on my kids that I need to work on myself.”

“What did she say to you?” Magic words, maybe? Only something supernatural could have caused my bitter, single-minded father to apologize, let alone admit to his failures.

He surprised me again by chuckling. “Plenty of things. She told me about everything goin’ down at Worther, and I said that was great.

” He winced. “She practically ripped me a new one, talkin’ about how I should be ashamed for pushing you so hard into a job that might have run Henry Worther into an early grave.

And how you’re happy, really happy, for the first time in a long time, and maybe you wouldn’t have stayed so long in that place if I hadn’t put so much pressure on you to… be something you didn’t want to be.”

My throat tightened. Dad took a sip of coffee before he continued. “I’ll give her credit, though. She didn’t totally throw me under the bus. She said we’d both failed you in our own ways, making you feel like you weren’t good enough when you were just trying to do right by the people you loved.”

I glanced away before my father could see the moisture gathering in my eyes, but I couldn’t escape him entirely. His calloused hand closed over mine .

“She and I agreed on that. She said you’ve been doin’ a lot of work to figure out who you are outside your job. I’d like to hear about that someday, if you’d like to share.”

“Yeah?” My voice was rough with the grip of emotion I was trying to ride out. This was the most vulnerable conversation I’d ever had with my dad, and it was hitting me when my defenses were down.

“Yeah.” He sounded a little choked up, too. “I might want to take some notes.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, finally looking up at him as I flipped my hand over. “Sounds like a deal.”

“Deal.”

We shook once, a fragile thread of lightness winding through me.

My dad wouldn’t change overnight and, hell, maybe he wouldn’t change at all.

But this was a step. His words, his recognition of how he’d affected my life trajectory, closed a cut I hadn’t realized was open.

For now, at least, I could appreciate his outstretched hand for what it was.

An apology, a deal, for something new.

“Well, you weren’t too far off base, pushing me so high at Worther,” I told him, smiling when I thought about Jinx, how excited I’d been to start over there, how much fun I’d been having in a smaller, more laid-back environment.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m…really good at my job.”

“Course you are. You’re my son, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I just need to try it in a different place. ”

Dad clicked his tongue, smirking. “Nashville not good enough for you anymore, hot shot?”

I grinned. “Something like that. Now,” I sat my empty mug down. “You know where I can find my girl?”

***

My dad’s office was an add-on in the back, decked out with oak paneling and floor-to-ceiling windows. Tess had, in fact, taken over. Her bright pink laptop case and rainbow notebooks spread across the heavy wood desk in the center of the room.

I took my time, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to watch her work without other people around. The little crease at the top of her nose. The way her eyes flicked back and forth across the screen.

I sighed, hoping my ramblings about impregnating her hadn’t completely bombed.

She smiled when she caught sight of me. “Hey, you.”

Thank God. Maybe I hadn’t said something totally out of line during my sleep-deprived monologue. “Hey…you look good in here.”

She spread her hands on the table in front of her, taking up more space. “It just screams ‘Beer Angel,’ doesn’t it?”

The laugh that left my mouth went straight to my head. “Tess, I’m sorry I had to leave like that. I was right there with you, so happy, then suddenly Ron’s yelling in my ear and Henry’s in the hospital, but no one can know yet…I didn’t know what to do. ”

“I think you did what you needed to do. Even though I sat alone in that hotel room for like an hour trying to figure out what had just happened.”