How was that possible?
“Kids?” Patty’s voice echoed in the room.
“Quick!” I jabbed him in the chest. “How’s my hair? Is there lipstick on my face?”
He grinned. It was a bad grin, a wicked grin, a grin that promised punishment.
Without any warning, he ran his hands through my hair, fully messing it up, then tore at part of my dress.
When his mom walked into the wine cellar, I knew what she probably saw.
A girl who’d just seduced her perfect son, and tried tearing off her dress to do so.
“Oh!” Patty covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh dear.” She did a full circle and then glanced at us again. “I, uh, I didn’t mean to intrude—we just need to put our orders in.”
“Great.” I forced a smile.
Lucas wrapped an arm around me and chuckled. “Oh, Mom, sorry. We just got so carried away with all that baby talk that, well, I think it got Avery excited to start trying, and before I knew what was happening, my pants were already—”
“Okay, pumpkin!” I slammed my hand over his face. “Let’s leave the details to the wine in this room . . . and us . . . and the table. No need to share!”
Patty’s grin literally could not get any wider. “Oh, grandchildren!”
“I should, um”—I gestured toward the ladies’ room behind me—“fix my hair.”
Patty nodded.
When I didn’t move, Lucas grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed me in the right direction.
Once I finished freshening up, I headed back to the dining room, only to find Lucas waiting for me with a smug grin on his face. “I thought you were fixing your hair?”
I let out a little groan and marched toward the table, with Lucas Thorn slapping my ass, like I was a cow in line for the fair, the entire freaking way.
I was going to kill him before the night was over.
And I would do it with a smile on my face.
Chapter Eighteen
LUCAS
Dinner was an absolute disaster, like something you’d see on TV and assume never happens in real life—but it does.
Then again, I grew up with that. The insane mother who talks too loud in the grocery store and mistakes K-Y for cooking oil. The father who buys beer but never drinks it, and just stocks his fridge so that company can be impressed with his ability to pick a good IPA.
When I was in high school, my parents were known as the Thorns, and it wasn’t said in an excited, cheerful way. It was whispered behind my back as my oblivious parents marched to the beat of their own drum and hosted Harry Potter costume parties in their front yard and naked bingo on Friday nights, with an Indian dream catcher as the grand prize.
I wasn’t sure if they were weird on purpose.
Or just found it entertaining to shock people.
“So . . .” My dad stabbed his last piece of broccoli and shoveled it into his gaping mouth. “When’s the wedding?”
Avery pinched my thigh and then gave the flesh a little twist.
My mom, sadly, had seen the entire ending to our last kiss, and wrongly assumed we were so in love we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
Well, she at least had one part right. Since sitting down, we hadn’t been able to keep our hands off each other—I had bruising to prove it.
I spent most of the dinner making sure that all steak knives were pushed away from Avery. Knowing her, she’d stab me in front of my parents, then make up some shit about how blood turned me on.
I wouldn’t put it past her, bloodthirsty wench.
She finally stopped twisting the flesh on my thigh long enough for me to catch my breath and think of a logical excuse to get out of the predicament we’d found ourselves in. So far the dinner had done nothing but encourage my parents. And it’s not like I had another choice; telling them the truth would devastate them all over again.
And as for admitting that my faux engagement to Avery wasn’t going to help our families reestablish their broken and then lost relationship—I couldn’t even imagine that possibility. Not after seeing their reaction to us as a couple.
I imagined the aftermath: Mom would cry and ask where she went wrong. She’d stop at every table in the restaurant, point and beg to be told why she was getting punished again and why her son felt the need to show his penis to a different woman every day. She’d shout “Penis!” because she never said sexually charged words quietly. And then she’d end up telling the whole god-awful story about when I’d started to go downhill—the night I made a bad choice and ruined their lives forever.
Dad would make the sign of the cross over his chest and stare down at his plate until it either came alive or Mom escorted him from the restaurant.
Nope. The truth would be a disaster.
“Um,” I finally found my voice. “You know, right now we’re really just enjoying this . . . time.” I nodded. “It’s nice just”—I waved my hands in the air—“being together.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Lucas, I hate to tell you this, but you are thirty-two.” She leaned forward, though she didn’t lower her voice. If anything, she took a deep breath, ready to put every ounce of energy she had into whatever advice she was about to give. “SPERM START DYING AT YOUR AGE!”
“Thanks, Mom,” I mumbled. Avery shook with laughter.
“WELL!” Mom threw her hands in the air as if I was a hopeless case. “DO YOU WANT your SPERM to die?”