Page 33 of Wicked Brutal

“Very reassuring.”

I squeeze her hand. “They’re going to be shocked, Ally. That’s all it’s going to be. Shocked is not the same thing as mad.”

Her head turns. “You promise it’s not the same thing?”

“I promise.” She doesn’t answer, and I can feel exactly what she’s doing — waiting for the other shoe, waiting for the adult in the room to look at her differently, to see eighteen and pregnant and their son’s baby and decide the girl is where the blame goes. “Ally,” I say. She looks at me. “My parents are going to love this baby.” Her eyes fill immediately. “And they’re going to love you. They already do.”

“Your mother barely knows me.”

“My mother has known you since you were little, and she already likes you, and when she finds out why we’ve been hiding all of it, she’s going to be furious.” Ally goes tense. “Not at you,” I say, hard enough that she blinks. “Never at you. Not for one second of this.” I lift our joined hands and kiss her knuckles. “Okay?”

She looks down at our hands. “Okay.” And this time she almost sounds like she believes me.

We walk in through the kitchen. Mom’s at the island with her laptop open and her reading glasses on; Dad’s at the counter with his jacket off and his tie loosened, scrolling his phone. Both of them look up, and Mom’s eyes go to me, then to Ally, then to our hands — and stay there. Dad notices too, his eyebrows going up a fraction. Not much. Enough.

“Okay,” Mom says slowly. “That already answered one question I didn’t know I had.”

“What?” I ask.

She points at our hands. “That.” Ally immediately tries to pull hers free. I tighten my grip. “Oh, honey, no,” Mom says, catching the movement. “I didn’t mean it like that. Please don’t do that.” Ally goes still.

Dad sets his phone down and looks at me, then at Ally, then back at me, and because he already knows enough to be dangerous, I can watch understanding start assembling on his face faster than I’d like. “How long?” he asks.

Mom turns toward him. “How long what?”

I sigh. “Can everybody sit down?”

Mom takes her glasses off. “Ryan Harrington asking people to sit down before he speaks is genuinely one of the most frightening things that has ever happened in this kitchen.”

“Mom.”

“I’m sitting. I’m sitting.”

Dad doesn’t — he leans against the counter instead, arms crossing. Ally stays glued to my side, and I can feel her pulse going in her fingers, fast. I rub my thumb across her hand, and Mom watches that too, and her whole expression softens.

I had versions of this planned. Several. Every one of them sounds fucking stupid now, so — fuck it. “Ally and I are together.”

Mom blinks. Dad doesn’t. “Together,” Mom says.

“Yeah.”

“As in, together together. Dating.”

“Yeah.”

“Since when?”

“Summer. Sort of.” Ally makes a tiny noise, and I look at her. “What?”

“That’s a terrible answer.”

Mom’s mouth twitches. “Okay. I already like her,” she says, and Ally turns pink.

I try again. “We got close over the summer, at the lake. We started actually dating once school started. We've been hiding because of Roman…"

Mom looks between us. “So you’ve been hiding your entire relationship from her father, ince the summer, and you didn’t think to tell us.”

“The fewer people who knew, the safer it was,” I say. Mom opens her mouth, and I cut her off before she can build momentum. “And that’s not even the important part.”