The Lyon's Cub Caitlin (Lyon The Next Generation 1)

I thought for sure my parents would’ve allowed me to move back home to finish the last year of high school, since they’d been having talks with the neighbors about letting me move back to stay with them. Or even letting me move back into the family home which was still ours and hadn’t yet been rented out, and finding someone to stay with me.

But at the last minute that fell through, dashing my hopes and dreams to be reunited with her. Though they understood my feelings for her, and wanted me to be happy, mom thought it best not to let me move away on my own before I turned eighteen.

Since then I’ve gone on to finish my first year of university and am just waiting for her to join me. I pretty much knew her dad wasn’t going to let her leave home two years early but I was hoping that this year, since she was now seventeen, that he’d ease up. But from our conversations here of late it looks like I might be wrong.

She’d given up on going to prom, though I promised to come home to take her. But at my old high school only the graduating class was allowed, and since she’d lost all the excitement over that, I took it to mean her dad hadn’t yet given the okay for her to leave school a year early.

I don’t push her, I hate seeing her sad and upset, especially since I’m not there to hold her and tell her everything will be okay. And I know from experience that there’s nothing that will change her father’s mind when it comes to her or any of her siblings.

I can’t say that I blame him. I imagine he just wants to spend as much time as possible with his precious daughter as my mom had wanted to spend with me. I understand my soon to be father in law much better than he thinks.

It can’t be easy being responsible for something that beautiful. Of course he’d want to protect and safeguard her from anything and everything that may hurt her. The same way I do.

Understanding the way he feels doesn’t make my heart ache any less though. I want her here with me. Want to bury my face in her hair the way I used to and inhale her sweet scent that didn’t come from any man made secret, but was all her. I felt almost teary at the memory of those times and my heart squeezed with longing.

Todd

Five Months Earlier

The phone rang just as I placed the key in the door to my dorm room. It wasn’t her special ring so I didn’t rush to answer but the number was another I knew very well when I finally took my phone from my pocket. “Hello?”

“Todd, it’s me, Catalina.”

“Catalina? Is something wrong with Caitie?” As usual my heart picked up speed and that sick feeling I always get when it comes to worrying about my girl came over me. It’s been this way ever since I had to move away from her and has only grown worst with time.

“No-no it’s not that. I have to tell you a secret.” I smiled with relief as I headed into the room closing the door behind me. Her and her secrets! She has a new one at least once a week. Most of the time I can’t make heads or tails out of what she’s saying to me.

I’ve known her since she was about five and I still have yet to understand if the things she says are just the ramblings of an innocent or if her mind really is as brilliant as I’m beginning to suspect. The one thing I know for sure is that she’s never set me wrong, not once.

So where most people might brush her off as nothing more than a nuisance kid, I’ve learned to pay close attention to the things she has to say. “What is it this time sis?”

“Do you know how to fight?” This kid.

“I do yes, why?”

“How good?”

“What do you mean? Why are you asking me this?”

“Daddy’s not going to let Caitlin go to school with you if you can’t protect her.” See what I mean? Her think process is way too advanced for an eight year old going on nine.

“I see, and how do you know this?”

“Hmm! Let’s just say I know stuff. I know someone who can help you, I’ll tell him to call you, just let me talk to him first okay.”

“What? Who, what’re you up to?”

“You want Caitie to come to school with you or not?”

“Okay Catalina, I’ll wait for your friend to call.” I laughed after we hung up, wondering what trick she had up her sleeve this time and just who it was she was planning to give my number to.