He was grateful and thankful his sister was okay with them. Now he just had to speak with Calvin about all of this.
One week later
“You need to talk to her.”
“I’m pissed, Ginny.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, knowing his wife meant well, but also that he was having a hard time getting over this.
“They care about each other,” Ginny said, and he knew that.
“She’s my daughter, and he’s your brother.”
“And?”
He glared at his wife. For the last week he’d been working long hours, coming home late when he knew his daughter would be asleep, because he honestly didn’t know how to handle this. Reese had moved out, found a condo in town, and he knew that Lake and Reese would see each other if they wanted. He couldn’t stop that, but that hadn’t meant he liked it.
“Just go talk to her, tell her that you were an ass, and that you know she can make responsible decisions.”
“And you just accepted it?”
She shrugged. “He’s my brother, and I love Lake like a sister. If they’re happy I’m happy.”
He took a minute to let that sink in. He’d come to that conclusion already, knew that he needed to let Lake live her life the way she wanted to. Maybe Ginny sensed the conclusion he’d come up with, or maybe she saw the fact he agreed with everything she’d said. She smiled and came up to him.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
“I know, because you’re always right,” he said and smiled down at her. He hated that his little girl wasn’t little anymore. She might only be twenty, but she was an adult, a young woman who knew what she wanted in life. Yes, it was really damn hard to think that his daughter was with Ginny’s much older brother, but since finding out, he’d done a lot of thinking. They may have fought in front of Ginny and Lake, but he trusted Reese with his life, and with Ginny’s and Lake’s as well.
“All I can think about is Lake getting with a man that just got out of a divorce and is taking advantage of my little girl.”
“You know that’s not the truth,” Ginny said. He hugged her, wrapped his arms around his wife’s slender body, and kept her close. “I know that’s not the truth, but that was my first thought and reaction. Now that I’ve thought about it the last week, I realized that Lake has her own life to lead, and that she can decide what’s right for her. I know that I can’t stop this.”
Ginny tilted her head back and stared at him. “What I do know is that if there was one man on this planet that you trusted to treat your daughter with respect and protect her with his life, who would it be?”
He didn’t even need to think about it and didn’t need to picture Lake with anyone else. “Reese. I’d want her to be with a man like Reese.” He sighed. “I just didn’t think one day it would actually be him.”
15
For seven days Lake’s father had avoided her, avoided the conversation she tried to have with him. Even Ginny had tried talking to him. She’d at least come around more than her father, and although they didn’t talk about everything that had gone on between her and Reese, Ginny supported her and wanted her to be happy.
Lake just wished her dad were the same way.
She put a stack of her clothes away, clearing off the bed because she was going to study here tonight instead of her dad’s office. She just didn’t want to be around his stuff, reminded that he was so very angry with her he didn’t even want to talk to her. It had never been this way between them, and it killed her. She hated things turning out this way, that Reese had left, even if she knew it was the right thing to do after what happened.
He was staying at a condo in town, not more than twenty minutes away, but she hadn’t seen him since the fight.
They talked on the phone, but it wasn’t the same as seeing him like she had for the past several months. It was harder now because they’d opened up. Was this whole situation crazy?
Yeah, it really was. She’d gone from seeing Reese as this man that was married, who kept to himself, but who was incredibly strong, to seeing him being alone, divorced, and her feelings for him growing into something she couldn’t handle or understand.
But the craziest part of all of this was that he wanted her, too. Yes, they’d slept together, and the fact he’d been drunk had made her worried that he wouldn’t remember what they’d done, or that he’d regret it. Those hadn’t been the outcomes, and instead he’d told her he wanted her as more than what she ever thought they could be.