Page 98 of Taken By Storm

“I’m…” Daddy cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Kasi.”

She frowned. “For what?”

“For everything.” This time, it was her father who sat with his head bowed. “I fell apart when you needed me.”

“That’s not true,” she countered.

He raised his head. “Itistrue. I never imagined… It never occurred to me that Trina would go first. I was ten years older than her, and she was larger than life, full of energy. I wasn’t prepared…”

“None of us were.”

“She completed me, Kasi. Before her, I was living, but I wasn’t alive. I worked all day, every day on this farm, but there didn’t seem to be a purpose to it until she walked into my world. She stepped in and took charge of the things I struggled with. She always said we were the perfect couple because I had the strong back and she had the strong mind.”

Kasi smiled sadly, recalling that. Her father was one of the hardest workers Kasi had ever known. He was always the first one out in the field in the morning and the last one home each night. He didn’t mind the backbreaking tasks associated with working on a farm. In fact, he seemed to thrive on them.

“Youwerethe best couple,” Kasi said, her voice thick with tears.

“When we lost her, I felt like I’d lost the best part of me, and all I was left with was…” Daddy raised his hands. “This. A shell of a man. Without her, it felt like it had before we met. Like there wasn’t a point to anything. She was everything to me, my reason for getting up every day, for working so hard. She knew my shortcomings, my inability to make a plan, my messiness, my complete lack of organization, but she didn’t care. She simply took them off my plate, keeping the budget, paying the bills, plugging all the numbers into that little calculator of hers a million miles an hour. I don’t know how to function without her, and for too many months, I didn’t bother to try. I shut down.”

“You were grieving.”

He sighed. “Grieving is no excuse. Because today, I realized I was wrong about something.”

“What?” she asked.

“Trina was a huge part of my world, but she wasn’t all of it. I have you and Keith. And I’ve let you down. Both of you.”

Kasi rose from her chair, walking around the table to kneel in front of her father. She took his hands in hers. “No. You haven’t.”

Daddy looked at their linked hands. “I left you to do everything on your own. Then I let Levi step in, doing the things I should have been doing. Your mother…” Daddy lowered his head again. “She’d be so ashamed of me.”

“Stop, Daddy. Please.” Every word her father spoke slashed through her, cutting her into a million little pieces. “Don’t say that.”

Daddy looked at her, tilting his head. “You look like me.”

Kasi nodded. She did. She’d gotten her father’s coloring, hair, eyes, skin tone. Keith, with his dirty-blond hair and hazel eyes, took after Mama.

“But you are just like your mother. Strong. Smart. Caring. Brave. When you look at me, even after all the ways I failed you this year, I can see how much you love me.”

“I do love you,” Kasi said, not bothering to hide her tears from him now. “You’re kind and gentle and so good.”

Daddy gave her a sad smile. “Just like your mother,” he repeated. “Seein’ things that?—”

“Arethere,” she insisted.

“I love you, Kasi.”

The two of them rose, and she curled into her father’s arms, her cheek pressed tight to his chest as he slowly rocked her. They remained like that for several minutes, and Kasi felt the hope that tended to flicker, flare, then fade in regard to her father coming back to them, burst into flame. For the first time since she’d lost her mother, it felt like she’d gotten her father—her real father—back.

Daddy released her, looking down with sad eyes. “Keith heard a rumor today. About you and Scottie Grover.”

Mrs. Grover had definitely made the rounds.

“His mother is saying the two of you got engaged.”

Kasi sucked in a hard breath, her chest growing tight. “He proposed, but I haven’t given him an answer yet.”

“Say no,” he demanded. “Marry Levi. He loves you, Kasi. He looks at you the way your mother used to look at me. You deserve that. And nothing less.”

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