Free Before I Wake by Rachel Vincent Page A

the amphora around my neck. “Hey, do you wanna go out for…” His words
melted into a sigh when he noticed Tod, but then he rallied with a smile. “Hi,
Tod, I didn’t realize you were here. In my daughter’s bedroom. With the door
closed.”
    “Happy to be here,” Tod said, and I groaned out loud.
    “Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute, please?” my dad said
with a glance at the rumpled comforter.
    “Um, yeah.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he pulled a
soda from the fridge and popped the tab.
    “I know things are inevitably going to change, but I’m not
going to pretend to be happy that the two of you were here, alone, behind closed
doors.” I didn’t bother to tell him that doors no longer mattered. The only time
I didn’tfeel alone was when Tod was with me.
    “I don’t really want to have this conversation with you,
Dad.”
    “I don’t want to have it, either, but you’re kind of forcing my
hand.”
    “No, I’m not.” I took a soda from the fridge for myself, and
after a moment’s consideration, I grabbed one for Tod, too. “If you think about
this logically, you have to admit that most of the reasons for me to wait to
have sex died when I died.”
    My dad flinched. “You said it out loud. There’s no going back
now, is there?”
    “Nope.”
    He was thinking about my mother. Wishing she was here for this
conversation. I knew, because I was thinking the same thing. But wishes were
worthless, so I launched into logic.
    “I can’t get pregnant, and I can’t catch anything.” Not that
Tod had anything for me to catch. “And I love him. And he loves me. Shouldn’t
that be enough?”
    “Yes. It should. And it will be.” He closed his eyes and
gripped the edge of the countertop, like it was the only thing holding him up.
Then his eyes opened and his gaze met mine, his swirling with brown twists of
regret and nostalgia. “But you’re still so young.”
    “I’m as grown up as I’m going to get, Dad. And hell, I died a
virgin. I died because I was a virgin. So I hope you
can understand why I no longer see the point in preserving something that only
served to get me killed.”
    “Okay.” My dad nodded slowly. “Those are valid points. Just
promise me you’ll think about this before you jump into anything.” He flinched
again, and met my gaze with what looked like great effort. “You haven’t already
jumped…right?”
    “No. There’s been no jumping yet. And I promise that I’m not
done thinking. How’s that?”
    “Is that as good as I’m going to get?”
    “It’s as good as I have to offer.”
    “Okay.” He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look exactly mad,
either. He looked…disappointed. And maybe a little scared. “You do understand
that if we were to add up all the time we’ve actually spent together, you’d
still only be around five years old to me, right?”
    “I know,” I said, and his sad smile made me ache. “And you
understand that I grew up during those years you missed, right? That’s not how I
wanted it, but that’s how it happened, and I can’t go back and fix it. I can’t
go back and fix anything, Dad.”
    “I know. And I’m so sorry. So, how ’bout I start making it up
to you with Chinese delivery? We got this coupon in the mail… .” He set his soda
down and started digging through a pile of junk mail on the counter.
    “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry, and Tod and I need to do
something. Something work-related,” I added when his brows arched in
suspicion.
    “Oh. Okay.”
    “But maybe we could watch a movie tonight?” I said when his
disappointment nearly broke my heart. “Just the two of us?”
    He nodded and forced a smile. “I’ll be waiting.”
    Tod caught my gaze from the hallway, where he’d waited, unseen
by my father, and when he took my hand so we could blink out together, he leaned
close to whisper in my ear. “I’d say he took that pretty well. You know your
dad’s the coolest dad on the face of the