clearly annoyed that she’d been left out. She was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and my dad’s fleece jacket. She wore the same ugly, tan shearling-lined boots as the ones on Lila’s feet. They were all the rage and girls claimed they were like walking on a cloud.
“Patrick.” She quirked her brow at him. “Would you mind explaining why you didn’t wake me up?”
“It was early.” My dad looked visibly uncomfortable and I coughed into my fist to cover up my laughter as he squared off with my mom. Sometimes he was so overpowering that I didn’t notice how strong my mom could be when the situation demanded. She chose her battles wisely, I suppose. “I didn’t want you to lose any sleep over this.”
My mom planted her hands on her hips. “I’ll deal with you later,” she told him before turning to face us with a bright smile and a cheery voice. “Merry Christmas.”
Lila and I wished her a Merry Christmas then exchanged a look.
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