In The Heat Of Los Angeles [H.S.]

BONUS: Stray Cat Blues (The Rolling Stones)

So I got this idea. A really cute one and needed to write it. And felt it was perfect from Harry's POV. So welcome to the first time I'm writing from Harry's POV for In the Heat of Los Angeles. If this goes over well it might happen more often. It's obviously not a full chapter but it was just too perfect of an idea to pass up. I hope you enjoy it!

*****

"Thanks for taking me golfing today," I said to James as we were walking to our cars in the parking lot. I had just managed to survive an entire 18 holes of golf with my girlfriend's father and actually had fun. We'd started with lunch at the country club he belonged to and then a great round of golf. By the time we made it to the second hole I was significantly less nervous than I had been when I left the house this morning.

Evie had pep talked me before she left for work about how I was going to be fine, that her father was harmless. She was lying through her teeth the entire time. I'd learned how to tell when she was lying not only to me but more importantly, to herself. She was a pro at trying to convince herself that if she said something enough times it became real. She had done it about us early on, that we couldn't work because of the things she made up in her head. She had evidently done a number on herself when she and Drew split because until the night she finally told me about it she basically acted like she fully accepted the blame for the failure of their relationship. That was how I figured out that she did this to herself. That her crazy inner monologue often was full of negative self-talk.

Before she left for New York we had a long dinner together and she finally told me what happened in their relationship, both the start of the decent and the end. She completely broke down. Admitted that she had started to hate visiting New York because it was filled with memories of them together, despite a lifetime of visiting the city. That his memory had managed to ruin some of the places she loved at home in Chicago even. I made a promise to her that night, I promised that we would make memories to replace her bad ones. That she deserved to learn to love again and that the downfall of their relationship was not her fault, despite the fact that she had over the last year she had convinced herself that it was. I promised to stick by her until she learned to truly allow herself to learn to love with her whole heart and not be afraid of that feeling. I was almost 100% positive that she had gotten to the point where she believed that she deserved to love and be loved in return but I was going to remind her as much as possible of just how much I loved her.

Part of helping mend the broken parts of her heart was to build a relationship with her father. It hadn't taken long to develop a relationship with her Mom and Dad. Grace and Marco were easy to get along with, James, on the other hand, put up a fight. I often wondered if he also had the crazy inner monologue running through his mind that Evie did. She didn't even realize that sometimes she talked to herself while she worked, I pointed it out to her one night when I heard her mumbling about how stupid one of her employees was and shortly later started to scold herself about how she shouldn't call her employees stupid, even if they were. I started to laugh and she asked why. It was pretty entertaining to watch her face as she realized she was speaking the thoughts in her head.

"I'm glad we could do this. It's nice to be out of the office for an afternoon and it was a great chance for us to get to know each other without Evie's prying eyes." I laughed a little bit. "She's never been very comfortable with me knowing the men in her life."

"She started out with a lot of walls when I met her. I'm tearing them down, brick by brick, it's a slow process but she's worth it."

"I'm glad you are willing to do the extra effort and I apologize for the slow process, that's my fault. I set a terrible example for as she was growing up. She saw me with a lot of different women, I regret that now. I regret a lot of decisions I made but potentially being the reason that she allowed herself to stay in a terrible relationship and refused to open up with people is one of my biggest. I've always worried that she felt abandoned by me and that I always picked whoever I was married to or dating at the time over her. I hate that I didn't stop her from feeling that way."