Page 84 of Mafia Kings & Wedding Rings 2: The Finale
“Girl, you had the whole house searching the grounds. I remembered how much you loved going to the stables, though, and watching the horses, so I decided to check for you there. What were you doing?”
“Running away.” Tavi winced.
“Why?”
“Look, you don’t have to pretend to care about me just because you’re my daddy’s girlfriend.”
“I care because you’re his daughter, and I know that he loves you. Like he loves your brothers and your sister too, Tavi. I can’t help that. You kids are a packaged deal with your daddy. I might not like you, but . . . that doesn’t mean I don’t care,” she confessed.
“I don’t like you either,” Tavi muttered.
“Because you’re a hater,” Cam noted with a shrug. “Your siblings adore me. You just don’t want to like me because you think I’m here to take something from you, but I’m not. The sooner you see that, the better off we’ll all be. If you haven’t noticed, we kind of walk on eggshells around you, and I don’t think that’s fair to anyone. Do you?”
“What’s fair?”
“Not you,” Cambrie tittered.
Lifting my head from the bed, I locked eyes with my daughter first and smiled. I reached out and stroked some of her hair.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” She guiltily looked down at the hospital sheets.
“You got something you want to talk to me about?” I pried.
“It doesn’t matter.” She plucked at the sheets with her fingers like she was picking lint.
“It does to me,” I responded, clearing my throat. “You scared me, baby girl. You can’t just run off like that.”
“I didn’t think you would notice. You were in your own little world with Cambrie all night,” she pouted.
“Tavi, haven’t I always tried to make time for you and your brothers and sister? Even since Cam’s been around?”
“Yeah,” Tavi admitted like it would cost her.
“And she’s made an effort to get to know you, but you keep shutting her down. Tonight, she’s the one who found you and prayed over you and sat with you until the medics came to getyou,” I explained, watching her gaze shift to Cambrie briefly before returning to the hospital sheets covering her lower half. “Do you think now you can try and give her a chance? I care about her, and she ain’t going nowhere, so it would be nice if you tried to be OK with this. She’s not your mother, and she’s not trying to be, but she’s who I want to share my life with. Your mother and I love you. We just aren’t in that place where we should be together. Don’t you want us to be happy too?”
“I guess,” Tavi sighed with an eyeroll.
“Girl, you know you already kind of like me,” Cambrie teased. “You just feel like you’ll be disloyal to your mother if you do, but . . . she’s a grown woman, and she’s always going to be your mother.”
“It feels like she’s mad at me,” Tavi voiced. “She didn’t want us to come home for the summer, and she doesn’t talk to me and Saga like she used to since she left.”
“That’s not on you, Tavi,” I spoke up. “Your mother is going through some things, and it has nothing to do with you kids. She loves you. She just needs to figure out how she’s going to move on with her life. She’s on her way now to come and check on you.”
“Thank you for helping me, Cambrie,” Tavi mumbled, sniffling.
Cambrie’s head whipped in her direction so fast she almost caught whiplash when she faced her. Pressing her hand against her chest, her mouth slipped open while her eyes bucked. Slowly, the door to her room was pushed open, and Dr. York entered wearing a smile. She stopped at the foot of Tavi’s bed and peered up at the monitors to check her vitals.
“How are we feeling, Ms. Tavi?”
“My leg and side hurt.”
“Yeah, I expect you will be in a little bit of pain for a while, but we have medicine we can give you for that. Now that you’re awake, we have to schedule your surgery to fix that leg of yours.”
“Surgery?” Tavi repeated fearfully as her eyes stretched in her head.
“Unfortunately. You messed that leg up pretty bad, sweetheart. So tomorrow morning we’ll take you in to repair it and get you in a cast. You’ll be in that for about 6-8 weeks.”
