Taming My Arrogant Husband novel Chapter 77

Sophia's POV:

"I'm sorry."

I turned around to see my father in a wheelchair and Mom is pushing him towards my direction. 

It's been two days when we arrived at our old house, or should I say 'our home'. The three of us were shocked to see Dad helplessly sitting in a cold, moving metal with two big wheels on the side...called...wheelchair. 

Who would have thought that these things would happen to us, and to our family? Who would have thought that a tough businessman, a dominant husband and a disciplinarian father in his younger years would turn into a helpless, defenseless and vulnerable man, who now needs help of the people he brushed off once in his life. 

I admit I was still mad at him when Mom convinced me to go with them and talk to him. For me, it was a wound from the past that, although it's already been closed but it left a scar. A scar that bleeds again when I saw him. 

But when I saw him in his current condition, how Steven accepted his embrace and how Mom cried in his shoulders, I don't know, but all the pain, disappointment and trauma that I was holding, suddenly vanished inside my chest. And all that I felt right at that moment was contentment. 

It seemed to me that I was taken back to my childhood days when Mom was still with us, Dad is the best father I could describe and with an addition to the family, my brother. 

"I'm sorry for always making you cry, my baby."

"H-Huh?"

I was suddenly pulled back from my thoughts and checked my face with my palm. I didn't notice the tears that flow down my cheeks. I didn't even know that I was crying while reminiscing those days, those memorable days of the past. 

"Belle, I will leave you two for a while and help Angie to prepare for dinner."

I just nodded and smiled at my Mom. My gaze followed her until she disappeared from our sight, then I turned to Dad and pushed the wheelchair onto the wooden bench on the veranda. 

"How are you feeling, Dad?" I asked him, taking his right hand with me. 

He sighed deeply before giving me a sad smile. 

"I wanted to say that I'm happy because you and your Mom are back, and of course with your brother..." He paused as he sighed again. 

"Dad?"

He looked up at and stared at the stars that seem so bright because of the light they borrow from the moon. And I couldn't but smile, a smile that doesn't reach my eyes. 

"I am happy, Belle. I am so happy that it also scares me. I only have a few months to live and in those remaining months or days of my life, I don't know how to show to all of you that I love you so much. And that I regret those days that I wasn't on your side. I became a greedy person, selfish and----"

"Dad!"

I stopped him when I noticed the tears in his eyes. 

"It's in the past and now we are here, a complete family. Dad, it's better to count the days forward than to count them backwards, where the pains and wounds of the past are still fresh and bleeding. We are going to make new memories for the future, and don't ever say that you will leave us!"

"Belle----"

"No, Dad! From now on, you will never mention your condition, your illness or whatever you call that. We will start again as a family and, whether you like it or not, you will play instruments again for me, for Mom and for Steven. It's an order! Do you understand?"

A light chuckle break through his lips when he heard the same lines he used to tell me when I was young while he was teaching me how to play the piano. 

"And we will not talk about again anything in the past, because all we have to discuss is about our family, you, Mom, me and of course, Steven."

"Yeah, that's right and after we discussed our family matters, we will also discuss your love life."

"Dad!"

My eyes widened and I unconsciously straightened my seat when I heard what he had said. 

"Or should I say, your married life."

"Daddy!"