LITTLE WITCH❣️ FOOLISHGAMERS

56 | irl + messages

tw/cw: meltdown, self harm

┃ALL AROUND┃
*:･ﾟ✧*

JULY 27, 2022

"HEY, IS EVERYTHING okay?" Lindsey murmurs into her cellphone. Damon sighs deeply from the other end, scrubbing a rough hand across his face.

"Are your sisters home?"

Lindsey rises from her bed, kicking aside blankets and pillows. Binx mewls in annoyance from the inside of her hoodie as he begins to slip. She drops an arm to catch him underneath his rear, keeping the cat pinned there even as his nails dig into her bra.

"Hey, Dad wants to talk to us for a sec," Lindsey announces as she enters Lauren's bedroom.

Lauren pauses The Hunger Games: Catching Fire while Lana looks up from the coloring game on her iPad.

Lindsey sits at the corner of the bed and taps around the screen until Damon's voice filters out on speaker.

"Your mother contacted me today."

The silence that follows is heavy.

"W-what?"

"Your mother contacted me today," he repeats, still not quite believing it himself. Almost twenty-three years without a peep from the woman who made him a single father. And suddenly he's receiving a voicemail from Khina Reza requesting for his daughters' contact information in order to schedule a meeting.

He'd thought she sounded incredibly business like—she always was. Nothing was just life. Everything was a game; a race to see who'd get to the top first.

Are my daughters a game to you?

"How did she even get your number?" Lindsey spits out.

"Something about a third-cousin working in another office division; overheard him talking about me at a family dinner, asked for my business number, I don't know. I wasn't—I stopped listening after she basically demanded to see you."

"What?" the triplets chorus loudly.

"It's been twenty-two years, what the hell changed?" Lauren murmurs.

Lindsey raises a hand to her face to furiously massage at the inner points of her eyebrows. The oncoming headache feels worse than her first ever concussion.

Damon unknowingly mimics her actions, pushing black-rimmed glasses up into his fluffy hair. He'd never felt so angry in his life when he'd heard Khina introduce herself over the phone.

Her voice had changed, gotten a little deeper, since high school. For a brief moment Damon had wondered if Khina was as beautiful as she was back then. The thought died when he remembered she had used her beauty as a weapon.

"I don't know," he answers honestly. "I haven't called her back. I don't plan to. I didn't give her any of the information she asked for. I just...you deserved to know in case she decides to find you on her own."

Lana glances at Lindsey the moment her fingers begin to shake around her cellphone. There's a wild haze of distress shining in her left eye where half her face is illuminated by the television.

"Thanks Dad." Lana's voice is gentle, her fingers gentler as they slowly unfurl Lindsey's from the device. "I'll call later, okay? The three of us need to talk."

Damon winces. Usually "three of us" and "need to talk" in the same sentence meant "Lindsey's about to have a mental breakdown and Lauren's gonna start yelling and I need to mediate." It's easier to say the former.