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“You’re always in a hurry, Caden,” Aspen chides me. “If you keep living like this…” Again, she stops short of completing her sentence for Lily’s sake. “Pike, why don’t you and Lily go find Papa Caden a coffee?”
“I’m going to be discharged any minute,” I protest. “You really?—”
Aspen’s eyes bore daggers into my skull.
“A soda sounds great,” I conclude weakly.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt, Papa Caden?” Lily asks worriedly. “You have a band-aid on your head.”
“I have a little boo-boo that’s going to heal in no time,” I reply. “Go with Papa Pike now.”
She slips off the bed and takes Pike’s hand, the pair disappearing down the busy corridor.
“Are you out of your mind? Your Porsche is totaled!” Aspen lays into me.
“There go my good insurance rates,” I joke, but she’s not amused. Tears fill her eyes, and I extend a hand toward her. “Hey, come on. Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
“It’s not funny, Caden. It could have been so much worse. Don’t you think that Lily’s suffered enough loss in her life? How are we supposed to explain that you’re not here anymore because you just like to run around chasing thrills?”
I’m stung by her over-simplification, but I also understand her point.
“Look, I was careless today, but that’s because I was distracted,” I explain. “I’m not going anywhere, and neither is Lily.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “You better not be.”
Folding her into my arms, I hide my grimace of pain in her hair. “I’ll be more careful,” I promise. “I’m not leaving you or Lily. You can bet your ass on that.”
CHAPTER 26
Flint
I feel cursed. Every time I leave the state, all hell breaks loose at home, and I’m pondering this as I sit by the pool, sipping on sweet tea. When I tell Aspen this, she teases me pityingly.
“Do you really believe that all this wouldn’t happen if you were here? The papers were for you, after all. And Caden’s always been a daredevil.”
“Look at me, Aspen! Look at me, Papa Flint!”
The little girl swings from the newly installed monkey bars of her treehouse play structure, delivered for her fifth birthday the previous afternoon.
“She really loves that thing,” Aspen comments, sipping her drink through a straw.
“I hope so. She’s been bugging us for one since she learned how to talk,” I chuckle. “I was torn about setting it up before her party, though. You know how little kids are.”
Aspen sits forward on her lounge chair. “Party?” she echoes. “You’re having a party for her?”
I stare at her. “On Saturday. I didn’t mention it?”
“No… You didn’t want me to help plan it?” She sounds hurt, and I immediately feel shame.
“Oh… no,” I offer. “We hired party planners.” I stop and take her hand. “It’s what we’ve done every year. Sonia was way too old to handle planning a party for a toddler. We’ve used the same planners every year.”
A grin touches my lips as I think of the two old-timers who run the party service, Irma and Thelma, twin sisters who look like they’re from opposite ends of the planet. But they know how to throw a party, involving the entire town in some form or another.
“That’s okay,” Aspen sighs, but I wish I’d thought to ask her.
I squeeze her fingers. “Hey.”
She forces a smile I’m sure she doesn’t feel and looks at me. “It’s fine, honestly.”
