Page 159 of Daddy, Take Me Away
“The Grand Canyon.” Cas looked at me with excitement sparkling in his brown eyes, and I melted. “Have you ever been?”
“No,” I lied. It was only a half-lie. My parents had taken us when I was about seven. I barely remembered it, besides a few pictures.
“Me either. I hope you brought your hiking shoes.”
I sighed. I liked seeing things, and taking pictures, and making memories, and sometimes hiking was a necessary evil. “Yeah, I brought them. So we’re staying… at the Grand Canyon? We’re not… camping, are we? Cause I didn’t sign up for that.”
“Ha. No. I’m not that much of a sadist. We’re staying at Maswik Lodge. Inside the park. I thought waking up and having my morning coffee with a view of the sun rising over the canyon sounded pretty cool.”
“It sounds expensive,” I grumbled. So far Cas had paid for everything, but I’d spent years setting aside money for this trip, and I intended to pay my way.
“It’s not, and I’m paying.”
“You can’t pay for everything, you know,” I grumbled.
“I mean, I certainly can, but I know you won’t let me and it's not worth the fight. But I am at least paying for the stops I added.”
“Fine,” I huffed, hiding a smile. I kind of liked Cas taking control. I also liked that he knew me so well. Sigh. He was total Daddy material, but I couldn’t think about that right now.
“Where are we going after the Grand Canyon?” I wondered if he even knew. I’d had my schedule all written down, but even if he’d done that, he couldn’t look at it while he was driving.
“Horseshoe Bend, of course. And then on to Farmington and Aztec. What was it you wanted to see there?”
“Aztec Ruins National Monument and Bitzi Badlands.”
“Oh. Right.”
“We should be able to make all three stops in one day and stay the night in Farmington before we move on to our Colorado stops.”
“Stops?” I questioned. I’d only had one on my list. The Colorado National Monument in Grand Junction.
“Colorado Springs has a zoo on top of a mountain. You can feed the giraffes.” He turned long enough to shoot me a blinding smile. “Thought it might be pretty cool.”
“How long are we planning to be gone?” I asked. Every time I turned around it seemed Cas was adding a stop.
“As long as we’re gone.”
I sighed. My job was pretty accommodating, so I could do whatever from wherever if I needed to, and Cas… well, I wasn’t sure what Cas did, but he didn’t have a regular nine-to-five. “You could have told me about the extra stops ahead of time,” I grumbled.
“When? When you were stomping around, refusing to talk to me?”
I had been a bit of a brat leading up to the trip. I regretted it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now. I wasn’t even sure if it was going to stop. Cas seemed to bring out the brat in me.
“Fine, whatever,” I huffed in response.
“I think you meant ‘thank you Daddy’.”
My eyes went wide, my throat went dry. And suddenly we were back to that.
“We should probably use this time to talk about expectations,” Cas said.
“Expectations?”
“Well, I’d call them rules, but that didn’t go over so well last time.”
“Oh.” My cheeks heated. “Okay. What… ah… expectations do you have?”
“Well, number one, it’s pretty all encompassing. You do what you’re told. Whether it be drinking water, going to bed early so we can get an early start or whatever, you do what I say.”
