August

day twenty-four | to live for the hope of it all

 Camila wakes up in the middle of the afternoon to find Taylor sleeping next to her. The blonde probably found her passed out on her bed and decided to join her instead of waking her up. Camila grabs her phone from the nightstand and smiles to see she got a few texts from Shawn, not answering with a text, but calling him instead.

 " Hey, baby." Shawn answers the call almost immediately and her heart melts with the sound of his voice.

 " Hi." She says quietly, not wanting to wake up her best friend. " I miss you."

 " I miss you more." She can tell by his tone of voice that he’s smiling. 

 " How are you feeling?" She sighs, hoping he would actually tell her the truth.

 " I'm fine, Mila. I told you that already." He reassures her for the hundredth time, knowing she's feeling guilty for how her father reacted. " Are you sure about tonight?"

 " Yes." Camila says with confidence. " Taylor is here, so she'll help me out."

 Taylor and Camila came up with a plan for her to get out of the resort and meet Shawn without her father getting in the way. He's been watching her every move, so it will have to be at night, after everyone is asleep. Shawn will pick her up, but she'll have to get through the resort's security guards, who know she's not allowed to leave and will most likely call her father if they see her. Taylor of course came up with a plan to distract them, making Carlos help them out, even though he'll for sure hear an earful if their father finds out.

 “ I don’t want you to get in more trouble with your father after everything that happened.” Shawn says with concern in his voice.

 “ I’ll be fine.” At this point Camila doesn’t even care about the consequences, she’s just pissed at her father and dying to see Shawn again, especially since he’ll be leaving town soon.

 The two of them keep talking for a while until Taylor wakes up and Camila puts Shawn on speaker so they can talk about Camila’s scaping plan. Taylor and Carlos will cause a scene on the main entry of the resort, distracting security long enough for Camila to pass through them unnoticed and meet Shawn down the street.

 When it starts getting dark, Taylor goes looking for Carlos, but since the whole thing it’s planned for after midnight, Camila decides to look for her grandmother in the meantime. Meredith told her the day before that she might have more information on what truly happened between her parents, so even though she’s scared of finding out that maybe her father is right and her mother was actually going to leave them, she can’t just walk around not knowing.

 Camila makes her way to her grandmother’s room, knocking on the door a few times, but not getting any answers. She then walks downstairs carefully as the cut on her feet still hurts from the day before, but also because she’s grounded and is not supposed to leave her bedroom. Looking at a few places with no results, she finally finds the older lady in the dining area drinking a cup of tea while looking at a magazine.

 “ Hi, darling.” Her grandmother says when Camila sits down next to her. “ How are you feeling? Carlos told me about your feet.”

 “ I’m fine, grandma.” Camila says with a smile. “ I wanted to ask you something.”

 “ Is this about your mother? Meredith told me you and your father had quite the argument yesterday about her.” She takes another sip of her tea and Camila watches her, wondering how her father turned out like he did with such a lovely and calm mother.

 “ He said she was going to leave us because of her career. Is that true?” Camila asks, fearing the answer she might get.

 “ I wish I could tell you he’s wrong, but he’s not. You know I loved your mother like my own daughter, but she made a lot of mistakes and I think you deserve to know the truth.” She takes Camila’s hand over the table and squeezes it with reassurance. “ She had just got an offer to play in an orchestra in Europe. It was her dream, so she didn’t think twice before accepting it, but of course your father wasn’t pleased about it. They’ve been fighting for a while already and that was the last drop to make her decide to leave. She never made it to the airport though, the accident happened and you might not believe it, but your father blamed himself for years for it. I’m pretty sure he still does.”

 “ How could she just leave me and Carlos behind?” Camila asks, feeling a tear roll down her cheek.

 “ I’m so sorry, darling. I don’t have an answer for that, but I know she loved you both very much.” Her grandmother enveloped her in a tight embrace, making more tears leave her eyes.

 “ Why were they fighting so much before that?” She asks with curiosity.

 “ I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you deserve to know and I know your father won’t tell you.” They both pull away and Camila somehow knows the next information might change her life forever. “ He had found out a few months earlier that your mother had an affair a few years back.”

 “ She was cheating on him?” Camila asks in disbelief, thinking that maybe her father did have some reason to hate her mother after all. She didn’t know her mother was capable of something like that, but maybe she just never knew her mother well enough. She was just a child after all.

 “ Yes, it was around the time she got pregnant with you. It took your father years to find out.” Camila can see in her grandmother’s eyes that there’s more. “ He’s not your biological father, Karla.”

 Camila’s eyes are wide open as the words hit her with force. Out of all the things she thought she would find out, this was definitely not one of them.