Black and white

Chapter 16

[Shawn's POV]

 I stop Alejandro's car at the cafe's parking lot and I can feel Camila is nervous, so I hold her hand in mine.

 " You can do this." I say leaving a kiss on the back of her hand.

 She nods her head but doesn't say a thing, just opens the door getting out of the car. I step outside too as she walks to me intertwining our fingers and guiding me inside the cafe. Neither Camila nor I know how he looks like so we don't really know what to look for, but before we can think of what to do I hear a voice calling her name.

 " Camila?" A man asks from one of the tables in the back. He has short dark brown hair with eyes that are undeniably like Camila's. He seems to be in his fifties and his voice carries a latin accent.

 We walk to his table but Camila stays quiet, I know she sees the same similarities that I see and is visible in her eyes that it scares her. He tries to pull her in for a hug but she turns him down and take a sit.

 " Hi, I'm Shawn." I say shaking his hand before sitting next to her.

 " I'm Diego." He says looking at me and then taking a sit across from where Camila is. " It's really nice to see you, Camila."

 She looks up at him but doesn't say a thing, so I take her hand under the table and give it two squeezes to calm her down a little.

 " You're pregnant. Your mom didn't tell me that. Congratulations." He says smiling at her.

 " Why now?" She asks after taking a deep breath.

 " I know I don't deserve your forgiveness after leaving both you and your mom, but I really do regret not trying to be in your life before. I know I can't replace those missing years but I would like to get to know you if you allow me to." He says looking into her eyes and he seems to mean every single word. " I don't know what your mom told you but I got married a few years later and I wanted to contact you when you were a teenager but I was afraid you would hate me. I had another daughter, her name is Lucy and she's thirteen now. She was the one who convinced me to talk to you."

 " My life was going so well. Why did you had to come to mess everything up?" She says with tears in her eyes. " You don't know how many times I wished for you to come back when I was younger, but now it's too late. I'm about to become a mother and all I can think right now is that I could never let my daughter go through the same things I did. All I want is to prove that I will never be like you and that she won't have to feel the same way I did. I don't want her to feel unwanted or like she doesn't deserve to be loved."

 " I'm so sorry you had to go through that. If I could go back in time I would." He says with tears rolling down his face.

 " That's not enough." She says before getting up and walking outside.

 I get up and follow her and when I get outside I see her next to the car crying like a baby, so I run in her direction and hold her tight. I try to comfort her but I know nothing I say will make her feel better right now. I manage to get her home and she stays quiet for the rest of the day. She won't even talk to Sinu, who asks me for details on what happened. I tell her how it went but she doesn't seem surprised, I guess she expected Camila to react like that. I walk up to her room and she's laying down looking at the ceiling while her hands rest on her stomach.

 " How are you feeling?" I ask laying next to her. She puts her head on my chest while I play with her hair.

 " I don't know." She says quietly. " Do you think I was too hard on him? That maybe I should've given him a chance?"

 " It's not my place to decide that for you, but either way I think you needed to get those feelings out of your chest in order to get closure and move on, or to finally forgive him if that's what you want."