𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘 𝐃𝐀𝐃𝐃𝐘 [MONTGOMERY DE LA CRUZ AU]

THIRTY ONE ૐ A LOVE ONCE LOST

ON A SUNDAY MORNING, Michael Connelly sits on the wooden chair on the front porch of his house, staring out into the early beams of the sunlight on the just-waking-up neighborhood. A steaming hot of an almost empty coffee held in his hand while the other hand sits comfortably on the armrest. Quiet padded footsteps were heard inside the house and stops just by the doorway and he looks up and meets the eyes of his daughter.

Olivia awkwardly stepped out of the house and joined her dad by the wooden coffee table, her eyes darting everywhere as a a lump forms in her throat, giving her a hard time to speak.

"You're up early." Michael pointed out monotonously, his eyes finding its way back to the front yard again.

"Dad.." She begins, her voice pleading and desperate. "I wouldn't want to leave with us still on bad terms."

Michael got up from the wooden chair and finished the remains of the coffee on his mug with one gulo before nodding his head at the street, "Let's go out for a walk."

Olivia look at him, stunned. She stood up from the bench and hastily followed her Father down the steps and to the empty sidewalk. They don't speak for a solid five minutes before Michael spoke up, "You're coming back to LA tomorrow, correct?"

"No need for small talks and clipped, businesslike tones with me, Dad. You can stop talking to your daughter like a stranger, you know." Olivia bites out bitterly, rolling her eyes.

"I do not."

Olivia arcs an eyebrow. "You just did."

Michael doesn't say anything before he continued, "It was nice to have you back, Liv."

"Really? That's very hard to believe." Olivia rebutts hotly and she knows she shouldn't talk to her Dad like that because he was the one who should be mad at her but for some reason, she couldn't bite down her tongue to keep the words from ushering out and do more damage than she had already done. "I'm pretty sure you rejoiced upon my absence. That's how much you hated me."

"I didn't. I never did." Michael replied smoothly, his blue eyes sweeping across the path ahead of them. "A father could never hate their own child. No matter how bad they did wrong, no parent could ever hate their children."

"It did feel like it.."

'Underneath anger, there is pain.' Noah's voice rings on her ears.

"I could never hate you. You're my little girl. You've always been my baby girl, Livvie." Michael says softly. "When I found out you and Montgomery started dating, I told you how I hated having you around guys who only makes trouble wherever they go. I don't want you having your heart broken from guys who would only take away your smile with them when they leave you."

"And it hurt me, more than you could ever imagine, to see you come home every single night looking so tired and devastated after a fight with that de la Cruz boy, it hurt me too to see your smile that your mother and I have always loved be taken away by some boy who you think loves you when he's made you cry more than he's made you laugh." He continued. "And when that day came, when you came home crying, I was on the verge of finally giving the boy a chance until I found out what he did to you. No father could ever want that for their daughter. No father could ever want their daughter to go through that heartbreak."