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Tahari looked at me.

“He wanted to know what I saw.”

I hadn’t even thought about what Tahari might have seen. By the time Daddy threw himself over me, I hadn’t been able to see anything except pieces of the dashboard and his body covering mine.

“What did you see?”

Tahari went quiet. It wasn’t for long. Maybe two or three seconds, but I knew him. I watched his eyes move toward Daddy before coming back to me.

“Not enough,” he admitted.

Something about the answer didn’t sit right with me. I studied his face, waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t.

“Tahari…” I urged.

He reached over and took my hand.

“Mali, right now, I need you worried about your pops. That’s it.”

I wanted to push him for an answer; normally, I would have. But when I looked at Daddy lying there, suddenly I didn’t have the energy. I leaned back in the chair and rested my head against Tahari’s shoulder. His fingers remained intertwined with mine while we sat beside my father.

“I keep thinking about it,” I whispered.

“About what?” he asked as his thumb gently rubbed the back of my hand.

“The car.”

“Don’t.”

I lifted my head, and when I did, he looked down at me.

“Don’t do that to yourself.”

His brown eyes stared into mine, and after taking a deep breath, I finally looked away. My eyes filled with tears again as I looked at Daddy’s hand.

“I thought he was dead.”

The words came out quieter than I intended.

“When he stopped holding me, I thought…” I couldn’t even finish.

Tahari squeezed my hand. It was a gentle gesture to let me know that he was there with me. I leaned forward and reached for Daddy again. Slowly, I wrapped my fingers around his.

“You scared me,” I whispered.

I stared at his face, hoping for anything. A twitch. A change in his breathing. Something that would make me feel like he knew I was sitting there.

“You better wake up too, because Mama is trying to act strong, but she’s about two seconds away from losing it. MJ keeps walking around like he grown enough to handle everything, Maylee doesn’t know yet, and when she does, she probably wouldn’t even understand half of what’s happening, and I’m…”

My voice caught. I smiled through the tears.

“I’m not doing this without you.”

Everyone knew that I was a daddy’s girl. I loved my mother, I did, but if I had to pick a favorite parent, it was him, hands down. I rubbed my thumb slowly across the back of his hand.

“So, whenever you finish being dramatic, you can wake up.”

Tahari released a quiet breath beside me that almost sounded like a laugh. I smiled a little myself. He would always say that I was the Drama Queen of the family, and here he was getting shot and shit.