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“You’re sick. Any man trying to, to . . .” He trails off, not able to finish his thought.
“Any man trying to be with a sick woman is trying to take advantage? I don’t deserve to be loved if I’m sick?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he says and runs his hands through his hair, pulling on it with frustration.
“Then what, Dad? Please. Explain.”
His head hangs for a moment before he looks back up at me. “I don’t know,Mija. This is all too much of a shock. Seeing you yesterday like this, and then seeing that—” he points to the door in reference to the man who just left. “Love, huh?”
My eyes widen. “What?”
“You said he loves you.”
Did I? “Um, well, I don’t know if he does, I was just—”
“Do you love him?”
That takes me aback. I had used the wordlove, though I’m not sure why. “I don’t know, Dad. I’ve only known him a few weeks. I don’t think we can say we’re in love yet, but he’s special. And I owe him a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“He took care of me after surgery.”
Dad shuts his eyes, his brows knitted together in pain. “You had surgery?” he asks as his gaze fixes on me once again.
I nod. “I’ll let Dr. Ramirez fill you in on anything medical going on, but Rory, he took care of me and brought me to the hospital. If he hadn’t been there—”
“Don’t finish that sentence. I don’t even want to know what could have happened.”
I smile. “See? It’s good he’s been around.”
Dad’s shoulders finally droop with resignation. “I’ll apologize to him later, though I don’t like this. Not one little bit.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
When Dr. Ramirez comes back, I sign paperwork granting her permission to disclose my medical record to Dad. I ask them to leave the room so I can nap because I’m too tired to go through my entire medical history. Besides, I’d rather Dad ask Dr. Ramirez a million questions instead of me, and I’m glad she’s more than willing to take one for the team.
When I’m awake again, he is in my room, smiling at me, but I can tell he’s been crying from his puffed-up, red eyes, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
He acts like the strain between us was all in my head, but I know it wasn’t. Dad has never looked at me like this before, at least not in my adult life. It was always disdain and disappointment because I refused to marry the men he lined up for me.
He told me once that no man would want to marry a professional fighter—a woman who had more muscles than him. I told him that’s exactly the kind of guy I would never end up with. When Pilar married, he finally stopped pushing me toward the destiny he’d drawn out for me since my birth. Since then, we’ve hardly spoken, and if we have, it has been mainly to argue.
Now, he is here pretending like that history never existed. Like I imagined it all. He is doting and loving like he had been once long ago when I was just a little girl. I bite my lip hard to hold back my emotions. I hate that it’s taken me getting sick for him to care again. Why couldn’t he show me his love before now, when it might very well be too late?
