Page 60 of Badd Daddy

I longed to be able to have dinner with him…and even breakfast the next morning, someday. But I knew I’d done the right thing. I just hated how much it had hurt him to do so, when he’d already suffered so much.

I went home, pretending it hadn’t hurt me as much has it had Lucas.

*

“Mom?”This was Cassie, my second-oldest daughter, when I answered the phone Monday morning at 2 a.m.

“Cassie? What’s going on, baby? It’s two a.m., here.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I just…” she sounded shaken.

I sat up in bed, turned on my bedside lamp. “Cass, baby girl. Talk to Mama.”

“There was a wreck, Mom.”

My heart stopped. “Oh no, oh god. Who—”

“Rick, my fiancé. He’s in a coma.”

I blinked, trying to be fully awake process what she was saying. “Wait—Rick…yourfiancé?”

“Yes, Mom. Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, I just…” I shook my head. “He’s in a coma?”

“Medically induced. But now they’re not sure he’s going to be able to come out of it. Or if he does, that he’ll…that he’ll be…” She couldn’t finish. “He proposed three weeks ago. We were going to come up and visit you and tell you in person. That’s why you don’t know, yet. No one does.”

“God, Cassie, I’m so sorry.” I let out a breath. “Are you hurt? Physically?”

“I broke my leg.”

Oh. Oh no. Oh god, no. “Cassandra, no.”

“Shattered it in three places. I’ll need plates and screws.”

“Cass—”

“I’ll never dance again. Not professionally.”

Cassie was a dancer—she’d gotten a full ride to Julliard, had graduated with honors and had been hired immediately by a dance troupe which toured internationally. Dance was her life. It washer—who she was, and who she had been since she was a little girl.

“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“You don’t need to come, Mom. You have clients and things.”

Silly, silly girl. She’s always been the tough one, the show-no-weakness one. “Cassandra Danielle Goode, you don’t really think you could stop me from being with you right now, do you?”

“Mom—” her voice broke, and that was, for Cassie, the equivalent of a body-racking sob, an ear-piercing scream. “I…I—”

“First flight out, Cass. Where are you?”

A long, long pause. “Paris.”

“France?” I asked, stupidly.

“Yes, Paris, France.” I heard her gathering her strength, her courage. “That’s why you’re not coming. You don’t need you to spend that kind of money on a ticket all the way here. I’m getting the surgery the day after tomorrow, and I’ll be on a flight home to New York once I’m cleared for travel. You can meet me at the airport. Okay?”

She wasn’t the only one with a spine of steel—where did she think she’d gotten it from? “Cassandra, you will have your mother in that hospital with you.”