ARABELLA
Another summer at the Hamptons.
The warm breeze from the sea tingled my skin as I sat at the table on the patio. It was midday, and I’d spent a few hours out here just drawing.
Dad insisted we stay here every summer since Mum died seven years ago. I wasn’t even sure why; he was never around. There was no father-daughter time spent together. He’d thrown himself into his beloved baseball team—the LA Knights that he owned.
I spent my days around the house with the staff and drawing the views from the garden. I hardly left the house unless I needed to. As much as I hated spending my summers here, I was not looking forward to going back home to LA. I’d finished High School and would be starting at UCLA in September. I never wanted to go after the disaster of High School. I wanted to go to England, where my Auntie lived, and study art there. Instead, Dad had made me enrol in LA.
“Arabella, there you are,” Dad said as he walked out onto the patio.
“Where else would I be?”
He gave me a deadpan expression. “We are going out to dinner tonight.”
I shifted in the chair, sitting up straight. “What? No. That’s not a good idea.”
He let out a breath and sat down in the chair opposite. “The restaurant is aware, and I made sure we were not situated in the middle.”
“Dad—”
“You can’t avoid everything because of your condition. Your medication has not long been upped, and it seems to be working.”
I’d done pretty well avoiding things during high school. That’s why I didn’t have any friends. No one wanted to sit with the weird girl who ended up at the nurse’s office more than class. I’d managed with extra tuition at home to get top grades still. Maybe he was right. It had been six months since they changed the dosage, and nothing had happened. Maybe it was finally under control.
“Ok,” I said faintly.
Silence filled us as he sat there for a moment, looking out at the view and tapped his finger on the table. There was something else he wanted to say.
“Just say it,” I said.
He cleared his throat and looked over at me. “The reason for dinner…I want you to…” He trailed off.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”
“I’ve met someone, and I want you to meet her tonight.”
My brows knitted together as I tilted my head, and my lips slightly parted. He’d met someone? When? How? He hadn’t mentioned anything before. My pulse started to race. How long had they been together? I tried to stop my mind from racing, but all these questions kept swirling around.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you’ll have a lot of questions, and I should have told you sooner, but I wasn’t sure how serious it was going to be until now.”
“It’s serious?” I questioned.
“I asked her to marry me.”
My eyes widened as I slowly leaned back in the chair, trying to wrap my head around what he was telling me. Acid swirled in my stomach that started to turn into anger. How could he not tell me this? I shot up out of my chair as it scraped across the stone tiles.
“Arabella.” He held his hands out to gesture for me to sit back down. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have, and that was my mistake, but you will love her and her son.”
“Son?” I spat out.
“Yes, he’s eighteen like you and will be starting at UCLA this September.”
“No, Dad. You can’t just throw this huge bomb on me and expect me to be ok with it.”
“I know it will take time. This is why I’ve set up dinner tonight so you can meet them.”
“When did you even meet? How long has this been going on? Why wouldn’t you tell me?” My questions came out at a rapid speed.
He let out a heavy breath. “We met a year ago when I was out with John, scouting for the LA Knights at some of the high schools to draft them. We’d heard about a few showing extraordinary talent and went to check it out.”
John was my dad’s best friend. He did all the scouting for the baseball team, and my dad would join him at times. He was quite hands-on with the team, even though he didn’t need to be, but he loved baseball. Always had.
“Wait,” I said, trying to understand what he was saying. “Was she the mum of someone you were scouting?” Shock ran through my voice.
“It wasn’t like that,” he awkwardly replied.
“So you thought you’d secure some player by banging his mum?”
“Arabella!” He rose from the chair. “Do not speak like that. Sarah is a good woman and an amazing mum to Cayden.”
“Have you already met him?”
“Of course. I drafted him.”
“So you’ve all been playing happy families for the last year and couldn’t be bothered to mention any of this to me, until now?” I snapped.
“No. I didn’t want to stress you out with your condition and how bad it was a year ago. Now that it’s under control, I want us all to be together.”
“So if the medication hadn’t worked, you’d have carried on lying to me? Would you have married her in secret and then been like ‘surprise’ here’s my new wife and son?”
Was Dad for real right now? I couldn’t listen to this anymore, and if he thought I was going to play happy families tonight, he was wrong. I couldn’t believe he’d just sprung this on me out of nowhere.
“No, Arabella, of course I would have told you.”
“It doesn’t look that way. You should have just let me go to England to stay with Aunt June, then you wouldn’t need to tell me anything.”
“I’m not having this, Arabella. You will make sure you are ready tonight to attend dinner, and you will be on your best behaviour,” he snapped.
“Whatever,” I replied, pushing past him and making my way into the house.
