The Beauty's Groom

by Taylor Hart

  Tricia scrunched up her face and turned to Lu.

  Lu grinned, and she and Tricia burst out laughing.

  “What?” Marcus threw his hands up, still clutching his phone.

  Lu laughed harder. Marcus was hilarious, even if he was a lot younger than her. He was like the little brother she’d never had.

  Tricia pointed at him. “He really doesn’t understand how creepy it sounds when he says he’s falling asleep to Wonder Woman.”

  “I wouldn’t say creepy,” Lu said. “Maybe … telling.”

  Marcus let out a groan. “Great. You’re already psychoanalyzing me, aren’t you? Wait, is that in your professional opinion that you find it telling, or just in an immature kind of way? Because my girlfriend said I’m immature, but I’ve never thought of myself as creepy. Do you think I’m normal?”

  Tricia flicked water on him. “Seriously, stop rambling and being insecure. You’re gorgeous and talented and brilliant.”

  He flexed his bicep. “Don’t forget strong.”

  “Arrogant, did I mention that?” Tricia rolled her eyes and loaded plates into the dishwasher. “Ignore him. Hey, do you care if I practice my braiding on you? You have amazing hair, and I could do so many things. Like a French braid out of a butterfly kind of thing.”

  Lu wasn’t quite sure how she’d ended up in this world, but she liked it. “Uh, yeah.” Being here was comfortable, like she was fourteen and at a sleepover.

  “Awesome.” Marcus gestured for them to follow him. “I’ll get Cap playing and you guys can braid while we watch.” He grunted. “Where is Forest?”

  Tricia rinsed her hands and nodded to the living room. “You don’t know how nice it is to have a woman around, because usually I just have to put up with a lot of burping and farting during these marathons. I think they’ll behave more for you.”

  “Who’s behaving for whom?” Forest entered the kitchen.

  Lu was putting away a bowl and almost ran into him. The smell of aftershave or some type of cologne hit her. Her heart kicked up a notch, and she gazed into his blue eyes. He wore jeans and a tight black sporty T-shirt. Maybe Marcus thought he was tough, but Forest was tougher. “H-hey?” She tried not to dwell on the memory of his bare torso.

  “Are you going to watch with us, then?”

  “I don’t know.” She’d insisted on having her own space.

  “Duh, she has to, because I’m braiding her hair,” Tricia called out. “Hold on, I’m getting some hair bands.” She rushed past them, tromping up the stairs.

  Forest smiled. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” He moved away from her and winked. “Maybe we could count the movie marathon as a session. You can relate my life to all things Captain America.”

  Marcus yelled from the family room, “Did I mention my brother has a huge ego?”

  Forest pointed at him. “Next to yours, nah, not that big.”

  “True, but I learned from the best.”

  Forest picked up the plate and started eating standing up.

  Lu stood there for a moment, collecting herself. Just being near this man was affecting her. She slunk toward the family room. Should she say something funny?

  “Come on in,” Marcus said, still looking at his phone. “They always tease that I’m the tech guy, but I don’t know why I have to be.”

  “Because you won’t allow us to do anything,” Forest said, still eating in the kitchen.

  Marcus grunted.

  “Did you eat this?” Forest asked Lu.

  She knew her face was turning red. “Uh, yeah.” Dang it, why had she taken on the hard-line vegan diet? She walked back into the kitchen, cupping a hand to her mouth so Marcus wouldn’t hear. “I didn’t want to make Tricia feel bad.”

  The side of Forest’s lip twitched up. “Hey, I got no judgment. I like food and I eat it.”

  At least he wasn’t harassing her about it. “Thanks.”

  Forest finished, putting the plate in the dishwasher and grabbing two waters from fridge. “Want one?” He held one out to her.

  She took it. “Thanks.”

  “You bet.” He then rushed into the living room in three strides and literally dived onto the couch next to Marcus.

  Marcus elbowed him. “Bro let me work.”

  Tricia rushed past Lu. “C’mon, let’s do this.” When she sat next to Forest, he pushed a pillow into her face. She shrieked and shoved him. “Quit picking on me!”

  “Oh yeah?” Forest nudged her. “I think I’m gonna like having my little sis here all weekend to pick on.” He tugged at a piece of her hair.

  She glared at him. “You know the hair is precious. Never mess with the hair.” She dived on him, rubbing his hair all kinds of ways. He chortled.

  Lu watched them having fun. She was a tad jealous that these siblings were so close.

  Marcus got the movie playing and wore a look of triumph. “Got it.”

  Tricia patted the spot in front of her on the floor. “Are you okay to sit on the floor while I braid?”

  Lu nodded and sat.

  Marcus patted her shoulder. “This movie’s gonna change your life, I promise.”

  “Wait, you’ve never seen Captain America?” Forest blurted.

  Halfway into the movie, Forest stood, checking his phone. “It’s time.”

  “Okay.” Marcus paused the movie. “Let’s go.”

  Tricia stretched and surged to her feet. “Let me get my shoes.” She dashed out.

  Forest moved past her, grabbing his keys off the counter.

  Lu stayed in her spot on the couch, where she’d moved after Tricia had finished the French braid. “Right, you guys have last-minute Christmas shopping.”

  Marcus held the remote out to her. “Hey, you know what? Why don’t you keep watching, because we’re totally starting Iron Man after this, and we’ve seen all of them.”

  She took the remote, but she felt strange about watching without them. “No, don’t worry. I can wait.”

  Marcus turned to Forest. “How long do you think the shopping will take us?”

  “Oh …” He checked his phone. “Probably an hour.”

  Marcus pointed at her. “You watch, girlfriend.”

  She noted that Forest was staring at her, and she tried not to feel awkward. Clearly, they did this as some kind of tradition, and she didn’t want to invade. “Okay.”

  “Are you taking notes for our session tomorrow on how much I’m like Captain America?” Forest asked. “I mean, really.”

  Unable to stop herself from smiling at him, she nodded. “Pages.”

  He laughed and pointed finger guns her.

  Marcus grunted and smacked him on the shoulder. “Smooth, bro, so smooth.”

  Was Forest flirting with her? Lu kind of liked it, but she reminded herself that she was she here in a professional capacity.

  “The hair looks awesome, by the way,” Forest said.

  She hadn’t even thought about what her hair looked like. She whipped out her phone and put it in selfie mode. “Wow.” On the side, it did look like a butterfly.

  “You like it?” Tricia beamed at her.

  Lu laughed. “I love it. You’re hired.”

  Tricia moved toward the door. “I may take you up on that offer if I come back to Denver after hair school.” She scrunched up her nose at Forest. “Big bro wants me to come back.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He followed his sister, but paused to say, “Uh, go ahead and watch. We’ll be back, and we’ll keep going.”

  Lu was grateful for this smooth sailing. She hadn’t imagined this night going so well when she’d driven up here this afternoon. “I might. Or I might head to bed.”

  Forest nodded. “Right, our eight-o’clock session tomorrow.”

  She smiled at him. “Maybe we can do nine.”

  “Really?” Forest asked. “You sure are flexible.”

  Marcus stopped and turned back to her. “Wait, you’re skiing with us tomorrow, right?”

  Forest grinned. “You
should come.”

  “No,” she said, feeling a bit self-conscious. “The last time I skied was my first year in college. It’s been so long.”

  “Like riding a bike,” Marcus said.

  Tricia put her hands together, begging her. “I need you, Lu. You have to ski with us.”

  “C’mon.” Forest moved to the door. “She can think about it. Let’s do this … shopping.”

  After they’d all left, she stared at the frozen picture of Captain America in the heat of battle. She leaned back and turned the movie back on, but she couldn’t deny that she was actually looking forward to doing this session in the morning. She wanted to get to know Forest Hightower.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Forest walked into the office where they’d decided they would have their sessions and dived into the couch by the fireplace. “How old are you, Doc? This is way too early, by the way, when I’m staying up so late.”

  Her eyebrows rose in appraisal. “I’m not the one who’s here to answer questions.”

  He looked over at her. She was sitting at the big desk with her laptop out. “How long have you been up?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I get up at six-thirty. I just wake up at that time naturally.”

  “Ah.” He couldn’t imagine just naturally waking up that early.

  “That’s why I ditched out on you guys.” She wore jeans and a black sweater that made her red hair contrast more vividly with her skin. Dang, she was gorgeous. She looked good. Casual, but still professional.

  “No biggie. We actually didn’t get back until around eleven. It was a lot of shopping.” Forest thought of the secret Santa-ing he was hiding. He shoved his face into the couch pillow and closed his eyes. “So how old are you?”

  He wouldn’t tell her that he’d fallen asleep thinking about his sister braiding her hair last night. He was still reeling from how easy she’d fallen in step with his siblings. The whole time they’d been out last night, Marcus and Tricia had peppered him with all kinds of questions about her—including what her age was.

  “Look, I’m a professional. We need to stay professional.”

  He opened his eyes and turned to look at her. “Look, I’m not here because I have problems; I’m here because I punched out the idiot who left my family thirteen years ago.”

  “The court ordered these sessions, and I’m the one responsible for giving them. I need to keep my distance.”

  He rolled his eyes and lay back. “Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t view you as my official ‘therapist.’ I’d probably loosely call you a coach. A skills coach, possibly, assigned to work on helping me not punch my father out, but that’s all.”

  “Interesting.”

  It irritated him that she was taking this court appointed thing to the next level.

  “It’s my job to help you,” she softly protested. “We need boundaries.”

  “I think this whole situation is unique. Can we agree to that?” He sat up, taking this more seriously. Dang, why did it matter to him so much that she didn’t just think of him as some patient? He needed to get his focus back. He stood and put his hands on his head.

  She thought about that for a while before letting out a breath. “Fine. I can agree this isn’t a normal situation.”

  Relaxing again, he collapsed back onto the couch and turned on his side to face her. “Good, because Marcus kept asking me how old you are last night. And when we came home, you were asleep and we couldn’t ask. Plus—I’m going to say this again—I think it’s only fair I ask you questions, too.”

  She stood and moved to sit in the chair next to the couch, crossing her legs. “I’m not saying I’m comfortable with blurring professional lines, but … how old do you think I am?”

  He noted that when she wasn’t wearing makeup and glasses and her hair wasn’t braided, she looked young. “Nope, not answering that questions.” He wiggled a finger at her. “My last girlfriend constantly obsessed about her age. Which isn’t attractive in a woman, by the way. She would harass me about how old she looked in this color or that color or with her hair up or down.”

  “So we’re talking about your ex-girlfriend now?”

  Oof, he didn’t want to do that. “You can look her up on Instagram if you want. That’s where she really lives, anyway.” No, he wasn’t resentful.

  “Hmm.”

  “Age, please.”

  “So now you’re harassing me about my age?”

  Was she serious about feeling harassed? When he saw the smile playing at her lips, he sat up, crossed his legs, and hugged the couch pillow. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  “You’re not easily goaded. Hmm. That’s interesting.” She opened the black file from the first day in her office and wrote something down.

  “What are you writing?” he asked uneasily.

  “I’m filling out some paperwork from the court because you’re early and I hadn’t gotten to it yet. Is that okay? Can I do that as a professional?”

  Ah, so she was toying with him. “Okay.” He closed his eyes.

  After a while, she said, “Twenty-eight.”

  He smiled, satisfied that she’d shared. “Marcus said you were twenty-nine, but I guessed twenty-eight.”

  Her scribbling stopped. “Okay, should we get started?”

  “Shoot.” This wasn’t his first round of so-called therapy or anger management or life coaching. Granted, he hadn’t done it since he was fifteen, but it’d been every week for a year, rain or shine. The social worker had insisted. He lay flat on his back. “Okay, here we go.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He glanced at her. “I’m ready for therapy.”

  “So cliché. Lying on a couch.”

  “I don’t know, I just thought you might want to dig deep and I was prepping myself for it.” He pointed at her. “Only because I’m letting you coach me.”

  “Hmm.” She wrote something else.

  The writing in the file really bothered him, but he just endured. Nine sessions. Nine sessions to get through, and then it’d be over with. “What are we supposed to do in anger management? Like, should I talk to you about what happened?”

  She shrugged and refocused on him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  This was getting old quick. He stood and moved to the window, gazing out at the skiers and longing for the slopes. “I don’t care.” After a while, he asked her, “Is this going to be like a Good Will Hunting kind of thing, where Robin Williams’s character sits for hours with Matt Damon’s character until he cracks?”

  “Do you think it is like that?”

  Oh man. “Will you not answer my question with a question? What’s the whole point of this?”

  She let out a long sigh. “Please sit. We’ll go through the process if that will make you feel better.”

  “Good.” Yeah, he didn’t want to be jerked around. Was that so hard to ask—to be taken through the process? He sat back on the couch. All of the playfulness that he’d woken up with was gone.

  She tapped the notebook. “The way I have found to be most effective in a situation like this is to let you talk. Explain the situation. Explain the context. Basically, talk about what triggered you to behave the way you did. Then we keep going, digging deeper—as you said—with every session.”

  Forest’s temper flared again as he thought of his father and what he’d said. He didn’t like talking about his father. “You’re not going to get much.”

  “Fine. If I’m acting in a coaching role …” She cleared her throat. “My primary outcome would still be to help you discover what triggers you. Nothing you say is wrong. Nothing you reveal will shock me. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot over the years from athletes.”

  It might be stupid, but he didn’t like how she compared his case to every other athlete she’d helped.

  “I want you to know that this coaching can be something that’s really useful. It can be something that helps you with your triggers and this anger th
at might be waiting to come out. I feel like this process can help you become the best in your sport.”

  He stared at the floor. “I think I’m doing fine.”

  She coughed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hightower, I wasn’t meaning to imply—”

  “Oh, I’m Mr. Hightower again? We’re back to that?” He shifted his gaze to hers.

  She met his eyes, not challenging him but not backing down, either. Why did it matter to him if she called him Forest or Mr. Hightower?

  By this point, he’d lost whatever hope he’d had that someone would understand why he’d hit his father. “This is ridiculous. My father should have been in therapy a long time ago.” He pointed his hand to the door. “Just like Tricia said yesterday, why didn’t anybody do anything to my father thirteen years ago when he walked out after my mother died?”

  “Is that what this is about? Your mother?”

  “Off-limits,” he said quietly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I punched my father. I’m not here to talk about my mother.” Yet the memories assaulted Forest anyway, and he remembered seeing her snort up the crack cocaine. Later on, he’d seen her lying on the couch and tried to wake her. When she wouldn’t wake, he’d called 911. Marcus had leaned over her and cried, and Tricia sat in the corner, yelling hysterically.

  Forest stared out the window and tried to focus on the skiers getting on the lift. He tried to think about how the fresh powder would feel beneath his skis when he flew down the mountain. He had to get out of this office. His heart pounded like he’d just run wind sprints. “I don’t talk about my mother.”

  She sighed. “Forest, I hope I’m not overstepping bounds here, but sometimes when people have had a childhood trauma, they mistakenly feel like it was somehow their fault.”

  He didn’t look at her. His thoughts were with the slope and the cold air hitting his face. He needed to think about anything but right now.

  “I got a file from your old social worker, and I know about everything. I know you called 911. I know you told them about the drugs. I know your father showed up and went ballistic. Forest, I feel like I need to tell you that it wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.”