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“Why couldn’t you have asked me yourself?” I refuse to cry. Not in front of him. Not about this. “If you wanted to know so badly, why didn’t you ask me?”
I rub my forehead, wishing away this headache.
It doesn’t work.
Damn it.
“I’m sorry. Did you call me back and I missed it, principessa?”
“Did you apologize and I missed it, Daddy?”
He didn’t raise me to take any shit. From anyone.
“I don’t apologize when I wasn’t wrong. And I wasn’t wrong. I did what I had to do to protect you,” he argues calmly.
“Protect me from what?” I glare as the throb in my head intensifies.
“Caitlin, when have I ever shared my business with you? I don’t discuss it with your mother, and she’s my equal, not my child. I’ve spent your life keeping you out of my business. Keeping you safe. That’s not going to change now. It’s not going to ever change. I don’t know why you’d think it would.”
"Are you really going to stand there and not even tell me if the threat is gone?" I yell, so unbelievably frustrated.
"Threats against you and my family will never be gone, principessa. They will always be there. There will always be something. But you are safe, and that needs to be enough, for now."
I feel my blood pulsing in my ears as I dig deep and try to control my anger. “You don’t get to make decisions about my life without talking to me about them. Especially when you can’t even tell me why. Callen is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and you tried to ruin it.”
“I tried to save you,” he argues back. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe, Caitlin. I’m your father. It’s my job and my right.”
“Stop trying to save me. Stop interfering. Just be my father,” I yell and grab my head as my vision gets blurry, and the room spins. “Daddy. Get Callen.”
Shit.
Callen runs in a minute later and gathers my face in his hands. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Something isn’t right,” I cry, and he picks me up. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you in the car. I’ll call Kenzie and see if we’re going to her or the hospital. You don’t complain, Cait, and you’re scaring me.”
Yeah . . . I’m scaring me too.
Callen
Istand in the hospital room, my back against the wall, out of the way, while they hook up monitors to Caitlin after Kenzie has checked her over.
“I don’t understand, Kenz,” I whisper as Cait asks the nurse something about the monitor. “She was fine at your office.”
Kenzie slips on her professional face, and I want to scream at her. “Preeclampsia is like that, Callen. She could have a textbook pregnancy, which Caitlin had, and it can still happen. We’re giving her a shot of corticosteroids today to help the baby’s lungs develop and will try to hold off delivery as long as possible.”
I fist my hair and stare at my entire world in one bed.
This isn’t fucking happening.
“How long do we need to hold out?”
“Ideally, I’d like to give the steroids at least seven days. But that may not be possible. The good news is she’s thirty-six weeks.” Kenzie leans back against the wall next to me and presses her shoulder to mine. “Even though it may not technically be full-term, I deliver babies every day at thirty-six weeks who are completely healthy with beautifully developed lungs. I know I’m not going to be able to calm your racing nerves, but I swear to you, we’re doing everything we can to get Caitlin and your daughter through her delivery as safely as possible.”
“I need them to be okay, Kenz. Promise me they’ll be okay,” I plead.
And I know her answer before she ever says it.
