For approximately three seconds, the cabin was utterly silent except for our ragged breathing and the now almost cartoonish sounds of “White Christmas” still playing on the TV.
“Merry Christmas, girls,” I muttered under my breath, scrambling to find the T-shirt I’d tossed off my body without a care in the world. Back when I was carefree, and my biggest concern was whether we ate all the casserole, not whether my children—who were supposed to be in Texas—would be popping in unexpectedly. “Maybe call ahead next time.”
I turned back to find Teddy tugging his zipper up and trying very hard not to laugh.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned, fighting the persistent tug at the corner of my lips.
“Right. Sorry. This is serious,” he managed in a strained voice, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
“Theodore Riggs?—”
He doubled over, his entire body convulsing with laughter so hard no sound came out at first. Just this silent, shaking thing that made him look like he was choking.
“Stop,” I gasped, locating the T-shirt and tugging it over my head even as my own laughter bubbled up. “This isn’t funny. Our daughters just—they saw?—”
“Your face,” he wheezed, tears streaming down his cheeks. “When the door opened—you looked like you’d been caught robbing a bank.”
“I was naked!” I shrieked, smacking his arm. “On your lap! Mid-orgasm! What face was I supposed to make?”
That set him off again, and this time I couldn’t help it—I dissolved into hysterical laughter right along with him.
“Sky called them her sweet, innocent eyes,” I choked out between giggles. “Oh my God.”
“Same girl who, at sixteen, thought we wouldn’t find out she was watching Game of Thrones because she logged in through her laptop and not the TV. Ain’t nothing innocent about that one.”
We collapsed against each other, laughing so hard we could barely breathe. Every time we’d start to calm down, one of us would repeat something the girls had said, and we’d be off again.
Eventually, we managed to pull ourselves together enough to get fully dressed, my pants-free lifestyle ending almost as abruptly as it had begun.
Once we were both presentable—or as presentable as two people could be after being walked in on mid-orgasm by their adult children—we opened the front door to find our daughters huddled together like refugees in a war zone.
“It’s safe,” Teddy announced dryly. “We’re decent.”
“Are you sure?” Sky asked through her hands. “Do you have clothes on? All the clothes? Like, not just pants, but shirts, too? Because I just saw your?—”
I cut her off. “Skylar Jade Riggs, do not finish that sentence and get in here before you both freeze. And next time, maybe knock first?”
“Next time, maybe lock the door,” she retorted with a raised brow. “Or I dunno, keep your clothes on outside the bedroom?”
“Wasn’t exactly expecting company,” Teddy gritted out before raking a hand over his face.
Addie stomped the snow off her boots before brushing past us with a shudder. “There are some things a child should never have to witness, and her parents ‘celebrating Christmas’ is definitely one of them.”
“Was actually more of a sitting on Santa’s lap type thing,” Teddy began before I elbowed him hard in the ribs.
“Not helping,” I hissed, then turned to our daughters. “What are you two even doing here?”
“We were worried!” Sky burst out, still refusing to make direct eye contact, so it appeared she was yelling at the coffee table. “Mom, you sent that text?—”
“What text?” Teddy asked, and my stomach dropped.
Addie pulled out her phone, scrolling before reading aloud: “Ahem, ‘Your dad’s built a life here. He’s the president of the Colorado chapter. We can’t just pretend that doesn’t change everything. We’re not the same people anymore, and I’m just not sure there’s room for?—’”
She looked up. “And then nothing. You just stopped mid-sentence.”
I watched as Teddy’s expression went from amused to carefully neutral in the span of a heartbeat. The kind of neutral that meant he was working very hard to keep whatever he was feeling off his face.
“I was texting them back this morning, when you were on the phone with your mom,” I explained with a wince. That half-formed text, sent in a moment of panic before I understood what the president patch really meant. Before Teddy had made it abundantly clear that nothing—not the club, not the distance, not our own spectacular capacity for self-destruction—mattered more than us.
