My Forbidden Doctor - Stephanie Brother Page 0,17

I dragged down the notifications bar only to pause. The blood drained from my face, my shoulders slumping as defeat beat me down. My dad's name flashed in white on green, and I closed my eyes briefly before answering the call.

"Yeah, Dad?" Instantly, I was tired and a little queasy from the knowledge that I wouldn't even get a 'hi, how are ya?'. True to form, my dad took a breath to begin talking at me, and I propped both my elbows on the table to hold my forehead against my palm.

"I met a woman, and you'll never guess how loaded she is. She makes your mother look poor."

I put my phone down, but I could still hear my dad spewing out sewage about this woman. My stomach flopped dangerously, my mind focused on those six, awful words no dad should say about his daughter's dead mother. Terry is right.

In a daze, I put the call on speaker, but nothing much my dad said managed to process in my head. "Pretty soon, I'll be able to retire for good. Sell the auto shop, finally. I'll admit, I'm gonna miss working on cars, but with her kind of money, I can always just buy a fixer upper and do whatever I want, no matter how expensive it is. It'll be so great not to pinch pennies anymore!"

"... You're a horrible person, you know that, Dad?"

My dad blubbered a little in shock at my soft, almost wispy declaration. It almost felt like the words weren't coming from my mouth even as they slithered into my ears.

"I really don't understand why you sound so proud. You have nothing to be proud about. You literally triggered me to have a really bad asthma attack, and then you didn't want to own up to almost, intentionally, putting me in the hospital, so you don't call me for days. Then, when you finally work up the courage to call me, you're talking about scamming some poor woman? Do you honestly think I care? Do you think it makes me anything but ashamed that you're my dad? The only time you call me is to tell me how you screwed someone out of thousands of dollars for auto parts when you really just pocketed it. But 'they're unfathomable rich. It's not like they'll miss a few thousand dollars' as if that gives you an excuse to be a terrible, ugly human being.

"You know, Dad... now that I'm thinking about it, I don't remember the last time you said, 'I just want to see how you're doing'. You never call me unless you want to brag about something shady you did, or something you just bought, and it's always about you. You never ask me about my cat. You never ask me about my day. If you didn't have to breathe, you'd never stop talking about yourself. So... stop calling me. I don't care, and you obviously don't either." And I hung up on him. This time, I wasn't going to let him talk over me. I wasn't going to let my dad dismiss me. If he ever contacted me again, it better be to say he was sorry and he'd be better. And then, if he didn't live up to that, I wouldn't give him a second chance.

He didn't deserve anything from me.

Straightening to flop my head back, I winced when I hit something, and I twisted sharply. Opening my mouth to yell at whatever inanimate object had the audacity to bang my head, my mouth dried immediately. The naked, dripping wet chest that whirled around to face me rippled with tension, and my eyes almost boggled out of my head. Trailing up, my pupils blew as a familiar, shocked face flooded my vision.

"Melissa?" Carl sounded as surprised as I felt.

My chest tightened as all my emotions hit me square in the gut. He pulled out his ear buds, his features twisting in concern. Huge, fat tears started streaming down my face, and I grappled my chest with both my hands. My lungs were on fire, unable to expand from the sheer magnitude of my feelings crowding them.

"Oh, shit— hey—"

He leaped over the wooden railing of the cabana, crouching on the bench to snatch my purse off the table. My wheezes rose above the rain, blood pounding against my ear drums as my heart rampaged through my chest with no care.

"Here— here, close your eyes and focus. It's okay." Holding my inhaler to my mouth, Carl cupped