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And I was starting to think I needed a twelve-step program.

Hi, my name is Damon Lockhart, and I'm addicted to a woman who thinks scheduling sex is a perfectly reasonable use of a calendar.

Not that we'd scheduled sex.

Yet.

"There's my favorite son."

I turned to find Mom walking towards me, she smiled sweetly, which made me instantly suspicious.

I glanced over my shoulder. "Don't let Dean hear you say that. He'll cry."

"He's my favorite, too."

I staggered back a step, clutching my chest, thoroughly scandalized. “I’m beginning to think you just tell every son what they want to hear.”

“Where do you think you learned it?”

“Wow, Mom, that hurts.” I was joking, but it did concern me that even my own mother thought I was full of shit.

“You’ll survive,” she dismissed with a flick of her hand, then smiled warmly. "Thank you for rounding up Houdini.”

“He’s really living up to his name.”

“I swear, that horse is getting too smart for his own good."

"Smart? He got twenty feet from the barn before stopping to eat grass."

"Well, at least you caught him before he crashed the wedding."

"Pretty sure he was headed for the buffet."

"Then he fits right in with your brothers."

"Except Houdini knows when to stop eating."

Mom laughed and gave my arm a squeeze. "You're a good boy, Damon."

"I'm thirty years old, Mom."

"And you'll still be my boy when you're sixty." Her gaze drifted toward the reception. "Now, where's that pretty girl of yours?"

She was sitting beside me before you texted me with the equine emergency. Now, I had no idea where she was.

"She's around somewhere."

"Well, I’ll let you go find her before you start having withdrawals."

“Withdrawals?” Was it that obvious?

She nodded. “Obsessive thoughts, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, chest pain, loss of appetite⁠—”

"I’m not addicted to her,” I claimed, despite suffering from most—all—of those symptoms over the past four days and not five minutes ago, I’d been thinking I needed a twelve-step program.

Mom gave me the same look she'd used when I was twelve and tried to convince her I had no idea how a frog ended up in Dean's bed.

"Of course not, honey." She patted my cheek and walked away, leaving me standing there like an idiot.