(xviii) Father's Daughter

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xviii

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xviii.
Father's Daughter

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               Ward Cameron didn't only love Blair the most because she constantly picked him over her mother (though she could've had all the opportunities she could've dreamt of if she went with Georgia; travels, the best boarding schools, beaches oversees . . .) but also because she was so much like him it almost hurt sometimes to stare at her. He found his reflection with a mind of her own, oblivious to the words playing over a broken record in his head. She valued family most, just like him.

She was carved from domestic rage . . . just like him.

Yet she was a sweet girl and he was an even sweeter father. To her and Sarah, he'd always be the greatest man on Earth. Wheezie sometimes felt like she was just an ornament over the fireplace; Rafe never understood why his father couldn't love him like he loved his daughters. But Blair? She was well-aware that she was the favorite. And she wasn't too proud to say that she loved milking it to its extent.

But isn't that what people do when they grow up with everything handed to them: take advantage of it? There was nothing like the reality check that were the Pogues to let her know that her sweet, cherry-bubblegum-flavored reverie was over. It was about damn time she realized that the real world was nothing like the bubble-wrap her father suffocated her with, nothing like the words of her mother whenever she told the tales of Italy. Or was it Spain? Whatever. They managed to bring her out of the ivory-boned box and give her a taste of the adrenaline and bliss that came with real life.

          Except, every time she went back home, it was as though she was slipping right back into the old, nasty habits of breaking into her own mind and shutting up everything that wasn't the seeds her father planted when she was still a kid. And she broke her jaw trying to keep it in.

          Now, he was in the other room but she hadn't heard him say a single word since he came back from his fishing trip with John B. Not a single peep; not to Sarah or Rose, either. It's been a couple hours, too, and she was starting to get concerned.

          That morning, Blair woke up with a soundless JJ Maybank asleep beside her in the comfortable bed of a vacant room in the Outer Banks's most prestigious hotel. She could've sworn he'd never wake up again, seeping in the coziness that came with a king-sized bed and a double mattress. Anyone watching from afar wouldn't have been able to tell where her limbs started and his ended. One of his hands was tangled in her hair, pad of her palm pressed to her cheek. The other was draped over her shoulder and he worked on getting her close all night and so she fell asleep with the faintest of smiles, a hand on his neck and the other wrapped around his waist. He didn't smell like mint anymore and long gone was her cinnamon scent. It was just kind of a messy mix of both at that point, and the wind that blew through the window distributed it unevenly across the whole room. She kissed his forehead and accidentally woke him up, and then he hesitantly pressed a kiss to her lips with his bruised ones.

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