Page 5 of When We Met

Story of my life.

BARRON

Reaching for the envelope on the counter, I set it by my wallet and keys.

“What’s that?” Camdyn asks, curiously staring at the envelope.

I eye her over my shoulder and smile. “None of your business,little girl.” These kids are always in my business. There’s no privacy, and if I’m in the bathroom for more than five minutes, they’re knocking on the door, wanting to know when I’m coming out. Forget alone time. It doesn’t exist in this house.

Camdyn stares at me, then loses interest when she notices I’m making them breakfast. “I don’t want syrup,” she notes the very second I pull the toasted waffle from the oven. “It’s too sweet.”

“I likes si-rup,” Sev adds, climbing up on the barstool at the kitchen island. “I have it?”

Camdyn sighs, rolling her eyes. “Syrup.”

“I say that!” Sev grumbles, scowling at her big sister, her hands flat on the counter like she’s going to launch herself over it to prove her point. I wouldn’t even be surprised if that happened.

“No,” Camdyn corrects her, always needing to be right. “You said si-rup. There’s noIin it, dummy.”

“No!” Sev screams in her face, tears forming as she stands up on the barstool. “I not! I not dummy.”

Remember when I said they didn’t get along? Truth. Every damn day is like this. They’re eighteen months apart, and it shows on days like today. Sighing, I turn to face them. “Sev, sit down on your butt. Cam, lay off your sister.” I pour syrup on Sev’s waffle and not on Camdyn’s. “She’s three.”

“Stop calling me that.” Camdyn hates her name shortened to anything but the original. She also follows the directions on everything to a fucking T, and if you miss a number during hide and seek, she will call your ass out every time. “My name isCamdyn.”

“I named you.” I level her the dad stare and slide a fork her way. “I’ll call you whatever I want.”

Frowning, she takes her fork and pushes brown curls from her face. “She started it.”

“No, you did. Now eat, or we’re going to be late for school.” As I watch her angrily cutting her waffle and then giving up to eat it with her hands, I smile at how different these two are. While Sev has blonde curls, blue eyes, and a personality bigger than her tiny body can handle, Camdyn is more reserved yet wild in her own ways. Loves horses, wears cowgirl boots everywhere, hates her hair brushed, and wears as few clothes possible. She once went a whole day without pants before I realized she wasn’t wearing them. We went to the fucking bank like that, and I had no idea.

Gentle by nature, yet unforgiving, she’s got my brown hair and has beautiful dark, mysterious eyes with long thick eyelashes that curl up toward her eyebrows. She never wants to admit defeat, will argue until she can’t breathe, and you also never know what she’s up to. Always scheming and looking for trouble.

It’s funny that both of them have equal traits from me and Tara. While I was the wild hell-raiser of the South, always into trouble and cared little for rules, Tara was by the book, yet pushed her own boundaries.

Look at me talking about her in the past tense, as if she’s dead.

To me, she might as well be.

“Daddy?”

Sev draws my attention to hers. “Yeah?”

“I go to school too?”

“No, you’re hanging with me today.”

It’s hard to believe she’s old enough for this, but Camdyn started preschool this fall because she wasn’t quite old enough to start kindergarten this year. Turned five three days after the cutoff, and believe me when I say I heard for weeks about how unfair this rule was. She only goes half the day, but half the time spent at the shop with me is better than nothing. They need someone other than a bunch of roughed-up mechanics and cowboys as role models.

Still eating her waffles, Camdyn shakes her head, her eyes focused behind me. “Vader’s on the counter again.”

I scowl at the cat and hold up the butter knife in my hand. “Get down.”

He simply looks at me as if to say “try it, motherfucker. I’ll kill you in your sleep.” And I wouldn’t put it past the bastard either. I hate that cat. He’s Sev’s cat, and I wish someday his nine lives would be up.

Want to hear something real crazy?

The day we brought Sevyn home from the hospital, Vader showed up and never left. We don’t know where he came from, but there was this little black feisty kitten at our doorstep. It’s weird that she’s so into everything creepy and the fucking cat showed up, isn’t it?

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