Late one evening, he dropped a thick folder on my desk.
“Business plan,” he said. “My own firm. Sustainable ventures. Clients no one else pays attention to.”
I flipped through the pages. “You’re serious about launching this?”
“I need someone to help me run it. Not as an assistant. As an operations manager. I trust you.”
No one had ever said that to me before. I trust you.
It was risky. Terrifying. And it felt more right than anything I’d done in years.
“When do we start?”
The firm launched quietly. We called it Reynolds Capital Partners.
I handled the structure, he built the vision. Within a year, we had our first major client. Within two, we’d outgrown our shared desk space and moved into a corner suite.
Somewhere along the way, friendship blurred into something deeper. One night, we were reviewing quarterly reports on my living room floor, our shoulders touching, when he looked up from the spreadsheet.
“Marry me.”
I laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. Be my partner in everything.”
Three months later, we were married at the courthouse with Jamie as our witness. No fanfare. No family.
Just us.
Our partnership thrived—at work and in life. Patrick remained the dreamer, and I was the one who grounded those dreams into strategy. We were a team in every way.
