Chapter thirteen
Caine
Devyn turned fourteen today. And for the first time in her life, she wasn’t home to celebrate her birthday. That shit had been sitting heavily on my chest since I opened my eyes this morning.
I had sent gifts… plenty of them., probably too many.
I sent clothes, jewelry, shoes, a new phone case and some money.
A few things I knew she’d like and a few things I bought because I didn’t know what else to do.
I even bought her a new Chanel bag because buying things was easy. Fixing feelings wasn’t.
I sat in my office staring at my phone for a few minutes before I finally made the call. It rang three times before she answered.
“Hello?”
My chest tightened immediately. She didn’t sound sad, but she didn’t sound happy either.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” I said in what I hoped was a cheerful and celebratory tone.
“Thank you,” she replied dryly.
That was it. Just those two words without any excitement or teasing behind them. No, ‘Daddy, guess what’. No long story about her day. Just a dry ass ‘thank you’.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my forehead. “You get the gifts I sent you?” I asked.
“Yeah. Thank you for everything.”
“You like them?”
“They’re nice,” she replied.
Nice. Damn.
“That’s good. I wanted to make sure you had a good birthday.”
“I did,” she said.
“You do anything special?” I asked.
“My roommate got me a cake.”
That surprised me. “Oh, she did huh?”
“Yeah. Her and a few girls even threw a little party for me in our room,” she added.
For the first time all day, I was able to relax and smile. “That was nice of them.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Silence fell between us and I hated that. For the past three months, things between my daughter and I had been strained. I thought by now we would have worked things out. I hoped that she would have tried to understand why I felt the need to send her away to school.
But shit was still fucked up between us.
Devyn was my daughter… my baby. The same little girl who used to talk my ear off about everything. Now I was struggling to keep her on the phone for more than two minutes.
“How’s school?” I asked.
“It’s fine.”
“You keeping up with everything?”
“Yep.”
“You need anything?” I inquired.
“No.”
Another long moment of silence. I closed my eyes because this was honestly making my head hurt.
“Devyn…”
“Daddy, I have to go.”
The words hit me harder than they should’ve.
“Oh.”
“We’re about to do something.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I sat forward, trying to think of something else to say. Something that would make her stay on the phone a little longer, but nothing came to mind.
“I miss you,” I said.
She was quiet for a second.
“I love you too,” she said in a strained tone.
That wasn’t what I said, so hearing her tell me that she loved me instead of that she missed me made the feeling in my chest worse.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
Then the call ended.
I stared at the screen long after her name disappeared. Five minutes., maybe less. That was all I got on my daughter’s birthday. Five minutes and a wall I didn’t know how to climb. The office door opened and Tara stepped in.
“How did it go?” she asked.
I laughed, but there wasn’t a damn thing funny. “She still hates me,” I replied sadly.
Tara sighed. “No, she doesn’t.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“She’s just hurt,” Tara said.
“That’s the same thing right now,” I said.
Tara walked deeper into the room and sat across from me. “Caine…”
“I don’t know what to do to get us back to where they used to be.”
Saying it out loud made my chest feel tight. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to make her understand. I don’t know how to get my daughter back.”
Tara’s expression softened.
“The only thing I can think to do is bring her home,” I admitted.
Tara immediately shook her head. “And if you do that, it defeats the whole purpose of sending her to that school in the first place.”
I looked away because I knew she was right.
“And honestly…” she continued. “If you bring her back now, she’ll probably have trust issues with you anyway. Because then she’ll know if she gets upset enough, you’ll change your mind. Or worse, she’ll think you put her through all this pain for nothing.”
I sat with that. I hated it but I sat with it. I had no choice.
“You’re right,” I finally said.
“I know you miss her.”
“I do,” I admitted.
“And I know today is hard,” she empathized.
“You don’t know the half of it.” I shook my head. “I honestly didn’t think it would be this hard.”
Tara didn’t argue. For a while, neither of us said anything. Then I stood up.
“Maybe I should go visit her.”
Tara frowned. “She’s not even done with her first semester yet.”
“So?” I shrugged, not really seeing her point.
“So maybe you should let her settle in before you go dropping in.”
“She’s my daughter, Tara! I don’t need to wait for shit,” I retorted.
“Don’t you think I know that by now?” she countered in an angry tone. “But she’s trying to build a life there now.”
That sentence bothered me because as hard as it was to admit, Tara was right he. Because of me, Devyn was trying to build a life in Zurich… away from me, Atlanta, and her home.
Tara stood too. “Wait until school is out for the summer. Then go for a visit. Give her a chance to breathe.”
I grabbed my keys from the desk.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer right away because the truth was, I didn’t really know what I was going to say once I got there. I just knew I couldn’t sit in this house feeling like this.
“I got somebody I need to see.”
Tara’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Caine.”
“I’ll be back.”
I walked past her before she could ask another question. By the time I made it outside, my mind was already somewhere else… Natalia.
Because right now, I needed someone who wouldn’t look at me like I was wrong.
Someone who wouldn’t tell me to wait to go see my daughter.
Someone who wouldn’t remind me that I was the one who had created this distance between me and my daughter.
I slid behind the wheel of my Bentley and started the engine.
Then I pulled out of the driveway and headed towards the one woman I knew would let me fall apart without making me explain why.