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And Isaac?
My throat begins to sting as I imagine how that would play out. He’s just a kid. Barely fifteen. There are camps out there that our father would gladly ship him off to if he thought it would fix this "problem."
I can’t let that happen.
Tearing my eyes away from them, I turn toward my father.
“Yeah, big game,” I reply with forced enthusiasm. Maybe I can distract him from the boys. “But I think we’ve got this one in the bag. TCU is three for eight on the road, and their defense just lost its biggest player.”
My father nods, chewing his food as he glances proudly at me. It’s easy to please him by acting interested in the things he’s interested in—a skill I’ve watched my brother, Adam, perfect over the past twenty-one years.
“You keep your head in the game now,” he adds. “You’ve been distracted lately.”
My brows furrow. What is he talking about? My game is better than it’s ever been, and my grades are nearly perfect.
“Don’t think we haven’t noticed your little friend who likes to make late-night visits.” There’s a playful smirk on his face as he takes another bite as if I’ve been caught, but I’m not entirely in trouble.
But why? Sure, I’m a grown man now, but I’m still living in their house. If Luke or Isaac pulled some shit like this, they’d be hounded.
“‘Bout time,” he adds, knocking my shoulder. “Your mother and I were starting to worry.”
“Huh?”
“Truett…” my mother scolds delicately from the other side of the table.
“You were worried because I wasn’t sneaking women into my room?”
This catches Isaac’s attention, and he looks away from Dean to stare awkwardly at me. I force myself to swallow as the conversation grows more tense. Even if my parents think this is funny, I don’t.
“No, baby,” my mother says sweetly, and for the first time in my life, my molars clench at that pet name. I’m tired of feeling like her baby. I’m not even the youngest, but she treats me like I am. “Truett, let’s just drop it.”
“What?” my dad replies with a laugh. “I’m not hurting his feelings. I’m just glad he’s interested in girls after all.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Keeping my mouth shut, I swallow down all the things I want to say, like how they should be glad I’m focused on things like school and football and not on girls and dating.
And how I had plenty of sex in high school. Just because I didn’t have serious girlfriends doesn’t make me some sort of freak.
“Regardless,” my mother says, giving my father a stern glare, “I trust you are being a perfect gentleman.” She turns that glare on me. “That you haven’t been sinning under our roof.”
She’s keeping her language concise and innocent because of my younger brother and his friend at the table. If only she knew whattheyhave been up to.
“No, ma’am,” I reply with my head down.
My father snickers to my left because he knows the truth. No twenty-one-year-old man brings a girl into his room after hours for anything less than sinning, but it seems that he’s relieved that I’m even having sex, never mind that it’s before marriage.
“I sure hope not,” she replies with a tight-lipped expression as she lifts her glass of sweet tea to her lips. “Why don’t you invite her to dinner like a proper gentleman would?”
A proper gentleman. At this point, I should inform my mother that I’m not a gentleman at all. That myfriendhas a boyfriend and that premarital sex is the least of our worries.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply.
Glancing across the table, my gaze meets Isaac’s, and I notice he seems more tense than before. As if seeing me get in no trouble at all for having sex in my room with a woman knocked some sense into him.
He won’t be so lucky, and he knows it.
I try to convey that through my eyes, and when Dean’s arm touches his as if he’s trying to hold his hand under the table again, Isaac quickly pushes him away.
