They Chose Their Adopted Daughter, So the Real Heiress Walked Out novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Sunday Dinner

The stitches over my eyebrow came open at the end of Saturday's class, when a nine-year-old's elbow caught me on a fall.

I pressed my sleeve to it and kept teaching.

Eli stood at the edge of the mat, holding it down for the kids, and watched blood soak into my cuff.

He looked ready to say something, and I shook my head.

When the last parent left, Caleb came over with the first-aid kit and a face I hadn't seen on him before.

"Sit."

"It's fine."

"It's been bleeding for an hour."

"It's a scratch."

"Talia." He crouched in front of me and took my sleeve away from the cut. "You've been bleeding on my mat since ten o'clock, and you haven't asked anyone for anything."

"I'm handling it."

"You signed yourself out of a hospital with three cracked ribs. You've never once said, 'Caleb, help me.' You'd bleed out before you said it."

I looked at the floor.

It stung because it was true.

Pop used to say that asking was how you gave somebody a place to hit you.

My father had texted that morning: Dinner tomorrow at six. Everyone. Please come.

"I have to go to Orchard Lane tomorrow," I said.

"I know. I saw the text over your shoulder."

"Would you come with me?"

His hands stopped on the gauze.

"You're asking."

"I'm asking. Don't make a thing of it."

"I would never."

He closed the cut with three strips of tape, very gently.

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