Page 227 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“Naomi, you’re not going to graduate at all if you keep doing the drugs. You’re going to die. I don’t know how much plainer to say it.”
“It’s only three more semesters. Mom says I just have to cut back?—”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Please stop talking, honey, before I punch something.”
“Sorry, Daddy,” she whispers.
When I can open my eyes without seeing red, I take her hand again. “You’re going to use the next twenty-eight days to figure out who you are. And if at the end, you want to go back to Queens and finish your degree, then I will do everything in my power to support you. If you decide you want to do something else with your life, I will do everything in my power to help you achieve it. The only choice you can’t make anymore is the drugs. That door’s closed to you. Do you understand me?”
She nods.
“I’m not fucking around with you. I’ll have you committed for the rest of your life rather than sit in another room like this all night, listening to the machine that’s keeping your heart beating. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m so sorry.”
“I am, too.” I squeeze her frail hand gently. “I’m here for you and I will always be here for you. I’ll call you every day and I’ll see you as soon as you’re allowed visitors.”
“You’ll call every day? You won’t forget?”
“Every day. Seventeen hundred. Our time, kid. All those years I was away, I never forgot our time, did I?”
She sniffs and wipes her face with her free hand. “No, you never did.”
“I’ll call and you’ll answer and we’ll talk about what you think you want to be without the drugs. You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to. But we will talk about that.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll think about it.”
I lean in and kiss her forehead again. “I love you, kid. I loved you before you were born, and I’ve loved you every minute of your life, and I’ll love you when we’re both just stardust again. Never forget it.”
She sniffs and the tears roll. “I won’t.”
She doesn’t say she loves me back. She hasn’t since she was fifteen. That was the first overdose, on her mother’s fucking diet pills. That’s when I found out her blood type and realized she couldn’t be mine biologically. That was when I realized I didn’t care; she’d always be my daughter. That was the first time she looked at me with those dark blue eyes from a hospital bed and lied about wanting to live. I have to believe she’ll find something to live for this time, because I’m not sure either of us will survive another overdose.
When the white coat returns, we hug our goodbyes and I walk them out. There’s a van with “New Horizon Rehabilitation Center” stenciled over a stylized sunrise on the side. The wheelchair goes straight up a ramp into the back and she waves before the door closes.
I wait until the van pulls away before I head back into the health services center to complete Naomi’s discharge paperwork.
A shower and a change of clothes, a short call with Naomi to make sure she’s gotten to the facility safely and a much too-long call with Amy, during which she makes it clearagainthat Naomi’s addiction is my fault for being an absentee father, and I’m back at Logan’s just before twenty hundred. Emily pulls me into a hug as soon as I’m through the door, then drags me to the dining table where she sets a steaming plate in front of me.
Logan and another man, who Logan introduces as Cappa and I vaguely remember meeting at Logan and Emily’s collaring, join me at the table. It’s clear that they’ve already eaten when Emily puts drinks down in front of them but no food, because that little girl would feed the whole world if she got the chance. Emily fusses over the second man, propping him up in his chair with a pillow from the couch, before going to kneel beside Logan’s chair. Cappa looks like he was on the losing end of a heavyweight bout: his brow, eyes, cheeks, lip, and jaw puffy and purple with bruising, a long bandage along his cheekbone covering what I have to guess are more than a few stitches. From the way he’s sitting, he has broken ribs and some stitching down below, too. He doesn’t offer to shake but smiles hesitantly around his bruises.
I don’t miss the plain, leather collar that sits just inside the neck of his T-shirt, either. It looks exactly like Brenna’s.
“You’re part of Logan’s club?” I ask him gently, because injuries aside, there’s something fragile about this fellow.
“Yes, sir. I’m a house submissive.”
I figured. “You know DirtyGurl?”
Cappa nods. “She’s one of my best friends.”
“I think she’s very special,” I say, which makes Cappa’s eyes widen as much as they can with the swelling. “What do you think she’s looking for in a Dom?”
Cappa glances at Logan, who nods. Cappa chews at his lip before he remembers his injuries and winces.
“I think she’s looking for someone who won’t let her down,” Cappa says slowly.
Whether he knows about me abandoning her the other morning or it’s simply an inconveniently-timed truth, it’s a direct hit.
