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But a noise from the outside of her house had me pausing.
I frowned, glancing toward the window that faced the street. “What was that?”
Lucy tipped her head to listen, only for her eyes to widen. “Oh shit,” she hissed. “My parents are here.”
Since she was still wearing my shirt, she ripped it off and tossed it my way. “Go ahead and go. We’ll talk about this later.”
But she had to wipe at the wetness on her cheeks and sniff from a runny nose as she rushed to her dresser and pulled open a drawer, extracting a pair of underwear.
“What, no,” I insisted, still holding the shirt in my hand. “I can’t leave like this. You’re fucking crying.”
She turned and looked at me before another rush of tears ran down her cheeks. “Dammit, Vaughn. Stop caring so much. You’re only making this harder.”
I opened my mouth, wondering how she thought I could just automatically stop caring about her. She was the most important person in my world. I didn’t want her to be upset.
But from the front of the house, the main door came open.
“Wha…?” I started in confusion. Had we not locked the damn door last night?
“They have a key,” Lucy explained, answering my unasked question as she yanked on a T-shirt.
But she didn’t have time to find any bottoms.
From the hall, her mother’s voice was saying. “Let’s go see if we can find Mama down here, shall we?”
“Mom,” Lucy started in warning, shifting to move in front of me and block me from view.
I pulled on my shirt, yanking it down just as Aspen appeared in the open doorway of the bedroom, holding Ava in her arms.
Of course, I still wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks, and Lucy only had a shirt and panties on, so it was beyond obvious what we’d been doing.
“Oh!” Aspen froze in the doorway, her eyes wide with unprepared shock. Then, she began to backpedal right back out the door. “Sorry. We’ll, uh, we’ll just be in the living room.”
She gave a professional nod that was completely out of place at that moment and promptly disappeared from view.
Lucy whirled to face me, apology written all over her face. But her voice was about as calmly out of place as her mother’s professional little nod had been when she said, “Well, that didn’t go as planned.”
No shit.
When we heard her mother’s voice from the front room, followed by a deeper one, Lucy winced. “And great. Dad’s here too. That’s just...swell.”
I blew out a breath and sat on the bed to tug on my socks. “Then I guess we better put our clothes the rest of the way on and get out there,” I said, shoving aside our conversation for later to deal with this right now.
She met my gaze. “You don’t have to go out there. I’ll handle them.”
I frowned darkly, fully understanding that she was just trying to be helpful and kind and ease me from an uncomfortable confrontation, but I felt insulted by her offer, anyway. No way in hell would I leave her to deal with them by herself.
“Find some pants,” I ordered before dragging up a shoe and jamming it on.
Lucy was just pulling on a pair of flannel sleep pants by the time I finished.
Reaching for her hand, I asked, “Ready?”
She bit her lip and met my gaze before tightening her fingers around mine. Then she winced. “No, but let’s get this over with, anyway.”
I nodded back, and we left the room together.
Aspen had clearly warned Noel to expect me. And though he didn’t say anything, he didn’t look pleased as his gaze immediately dropped to our clasped hands.
