She raised her brows. Is this as weird for you as it is for me?
I raised my brows. Bizarre. But roll with it.
I relaxed in my seat and spread my arm across the back of the sofa. Might as well settle in. “Did you bring any hot chocolate with marshmallows? Or how about some of those sugar cookies?”
My dad scowled, his voice gruff. “That’ll be enough from you, smartass.” He was still on thin ice with my mom and would be hearing about this for a long time to come. But I didn’t think we were off the hook yet either, so I shut my mouth.
“As Patrick was saying before I interrupted,” my mom said, shooting daggers at him. “We have to think of Jesse and Gideon and the message it sends.” She clapped hands together. “So we’ve decided that if you’re going to sleep together, you’ll do it out in the open.”
“What?” I choked out.
“You can sleep with the door open.” She beamed, like she was Lady Bountiful and had just given us the best Christmas gift ever.
I sagged against the sofa. What was this insanity? “You want us to sleep together with the door open?” I repeated, just to make sure I’d heard correctly.
“We’d prefer you didn’t sleep together at all until you’re out of the house. But if you feel you must do it, you can do it with the door open.”
Yeah, well, we couldn’t do jack shit with the door open.
My dad laughed as if he’d read my mind. “Exactly,” he said, making me wonder if I’d actually voiced my thoughts.
“So that’s settled then,” my dad said, rubbing his hands together. I got the impression that he would have preferred to have dental surgery than to have this conversation. All in all, it had gone a lot better than I’d expected. Awkward as hell, sure, but my dad hadn’t been a hard ass about it. I suspected it was because of Lila. He never raised his voice to her or treated her with anything but kindness. It made me question whether it was because she was a girl or because she wasn’t his daughter. Either way, it had worked in our favor.
“And no more climbing that trellis,” my mom said as we walked out of the barn. She swatted my arm. “You’ve trampled my wisteria. I’m worried it won’t come back in the spring.”
“I can plant some new vines for you,” Lila offered as my mom looped an arm around Lila’s shoulders and the two of them walked ahead of me and my dad on what had to be the strangest Christmas morning ever. I’d taken Lila’s virginity and afterwards we had a family discussion about it.
“You know when we say that you can sleep with the door open, we really mean that you won’t be sleeping together at all,” my dad told me.
“Yeah, I got that.” A laugh burst out of me. “Well played.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said with a chuckle and a shake of his head, pretty damn proud of himself.
But thankfully, we still had my truck, the barn, and plenty of other hidden places we hadn’t even explored yet. It just meant we’d have to be more creative.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Chapter Twenty
Lila
Time was running out. I wanted to slow it down. I wanted more of it. The rest of our senior year had flown by so fast it made my head spin. No sooner had I celebrated my eighteenth birthday then it was prom night and before I knew it we were graduating.
Three days ago, we received our high school diplomas. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new adventure, but to me it felt like the end of something good. Yet another milestone that my mom had missed. Yet another step closer to Jude leaving.
Now, I stared at my phone screen, my initial excitement replaced with a stone of dread sinking to the pit of my stomach as another message came in. I’d just done laps in Christy’s pool and I’d come out feeling all Zen, my muscles relaxed, but now I was all keyed up and tense. Because of a stupid text message.
“They’re home,” I told Christy, who was sitting cross-legged on a lounger, a bowl of cut-up fruit in her lap. It was hot as Hades out here but she looked cool as a cucumber in a black bikini and enormous black sunglasses.
“What did he say?” she asked, popping a grape into her mouth. “Did he give you any more info?”
I shook my head and tossed my phone in my canvas tote. “Nope.” Gathering my wet hair into a knot, I secured it with the elastic band on my wrist and sat on the edge of the lounger across from her. “All he said was that they went camping and it was a male bonding thing. Now he said we need to talk.” I gnawed on my lip, dread pooling in my stomach. It would only take a few words from him to destroy me. “Nothing good ever comes of those words.”
“It might be good news. Maybe he has a surprise for you. Or maybe it’s code for, I’ve been away for three days and I need pussy.”
I laughed but it sounded feeble. “If that was it, he’d be sexting. This is not sexting. It sounds serious.” I stared at the back yard where her mom was teaching a yoga class under the trees. “Ground yourself,” she said as she led the group of ladies through the poses. They were supposed to be trees, standing tall and strong.
“I just don’t understand why they couldn’t be honest. Jude and Brody don’t need to keep secrets from me,” I said, absently spinning the silver charm bracelet on my wrist. It had been there since my eighteenth birthday three weeks ago. The Swarovski crystals on the silver star sparkled in the sunlight. So bright it was almost blinding.
Jude bought me a star for my birthday.
