Page 94 of Whenever You Call

I’dneverbe that coward again.

My daughter needed a lioness willing to fight for her, and now was the time to remind myself of who I’d been before Cole. I only had to glance at Bella as we drove along the I-5 back to SeaTac Airport to know that I needed to find my way back to that woman, and I would. I’d make her proud.

“Are you ready to go home?” I asked with a smile, watching as she moved her ever-messy, long hair out of her face.

She turned to me with those bright aqua eyes that were all Cole. “I don’t know. I like being on adventures with you.”

“I like being on adventures with you, too.”

“You do?”

“Of course. You’re my partner in crime.”

Her small smile turned into a beaming grin for just a second before it faded quickly, and she turned away to look out of her window again.

“Bug?” I scowled. “What is it?”

“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” she admitted quietly. “Here, it feels like Daddy is really with us again. At home…” she turned back to me. “It doesn’t feel like he’s there so much anymore.”

I wished like hell I could have pulled the damn car over, reached for my daughter, and hugged her to me, but we were on the busiest interstate highway on the western coast of America, and there was no way I could get to her for at least another ten minutes when we’d pull into SeaTac.

“You’re right,” I said, focusing on the road. “It doesn’t feel like he’s there much anymore, does it? Perhaps because, even though his stuff was always there, Daddy never really was, huh? His job took him away from us a lot. Too much. We never really got to see his messy socks beside the laundry hamper. We never watched him trip over the stupid, big rug he bought, or fall asleep on the living room couch every night with drool pouring out of his mouth. We never saw him try to make dinner and burn the spaghetti, and we never had to laugh at him as he struggled to do math homework with you, or when he tried to read you a book before falling asleep himself.”

I chuckled at the thought of my extremely handsome, party boy husband alive and well, sprawled out beside Bella and me every night, living a life of domesticity instead of always being on tour, or with the band, or out partying, or simply… out with anyone. Even imagining it seemed bizarre.

That wasn’t who Cole was. It wasn’t who he was supposed to be, no matter how much I thought I’d wanted it at the time. He was the rebel king who got off on causing mayhem, and nobody or anything could ever have really tamed him. He wouldn’t have been his true self if they had. He’d been a damn good father in so many ways, leaving Bella wanting for nothing, but he’d been a stranger in so many other respects, and I blamed myself for allowing that as much as I blamed him now.

We were both at fault, and the little girl beside me was the one suffering because of it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask him to stay home more for you, Bella,” I said, full of regret. “I could have done that, and I didn’t.”

“Do you think he’d have stayed with us more if we’d asked him to, Mommy?”

“I don’t know, baby. But what I do know is that you were the best thing in his life, even if he didn’t always know how to show you.”

“He showed me,” she said, her voice small. “I know Daddy loved me.”

She thought about that for a while, and it wasn’t long before we pulled into the parking lot of Seattle-Tacoma International to find my way to the rental station. When I eventually found it, parked the car, and turned off the engine, I spun in my seat to give Bella my full attention.

“You’ve been awfully quiet for the last ten minutes, bug.” I reached up to brush her hair back with a soft smile on my face. “Did I say something that upset you again? I seem to do that a lot lately.”

She shook her head. “No… but I think I’m ready to go home now.”

“You are?”

She nodded once, a smile of her own coming to life. “Daddy wasn’t perfect, Mommy, but he was still Daddy, and I think it’s time to stop being sad about everything he did wrong and start remembering all the good things he did instead.”

“You do?”

“Yep. Daddy would be mad if we were sad all the time.”

I continued to brush her hair back. “When did you grow up and get so smart, huh?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, that sounded very smart and grown-up to me.”

“It wasn’t my idea. I stole it from Mr. Logan.”

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