Free Naked by Megan Hart

stepsisters, or having a small, dank bedroom in the basement. I didn’t mind the prayers before meals, because at least they were giving me plenty of bacon, ohhh, bacon. Every morning, bacon and eggs. I didn’t even mind church so much, because the altar boys were cute.
    My mother didn’t like any of this, but caught up in her own journey, she let a lot of things slide. So long as I was with her for the holidays she wanted to celebrate, she didn’t mind what I was doing the rest of the time. If I was there to light the menorah, she was all right with me going home to my dad’s to stuff the stockings. I was smart enough not to tell her about the youth group Marjorie encouraged me to join, or how my dad had been hinting that it might be a good idea for me to get baptized.
    I escaped salvation by heading off to college. Where I met Patrick my sophomore year. He lived in my dorm, and the first time he smiled at me, I imprinted on him like a duckling. Tall, fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked…and Catholic. As in can-name-all-the-martyred-saints Catholic. I was smitten.
    I like to think of life as an infinite jigsaw puzzle with somany pieces that no matter how many you fit together, the picture’s never finished. Meeting Patrick was the culmination of a hundred thousand choices. He was the end of only one path, but it was the one I took. No matter how it ended, he was the choice I made, and while I’d always felt I would never waste time in regretting it, I was beginning to think I might.
    I thought I knew what love was with a handsome boyfriend who was a very good kisser. I thought I knew what it was for three years, all through college, even when all my friends were fucking like bunnies and the sheen of chastity was wearing off. Love is patient, love is kind, right? Love forgives all things?
    That’s what I believed then. I wasn’t so sure now.
    Our senior year, Patrick got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, with a princess-cut diamond ring in one hand and a bouquet of twelve red roses in the other. We set a date. We planned a wedding.
    And two weeks before we were due to walk down the aisle at my father’s church, I found out Patrick had been lying to me all along.
    I hadn’t been raised stupid, but I’d sure ended up feeling dumb.
     
    The week passed. I heard the sound of voices as I passed Alex’s apartment, and I saw his car come and go, but I didn’t see him. I ended up watching Pride and Prejudice alone and somehow blaming Patrick for that.
    The week before Christmas is busy for most people, even those who don’t celebrate the holiday, and I had a to-do list as long as anyone’s. I hadn’t put up a tree, but I had bought presents. I’d be spending the day with my dad and his family, though my brothers and their wives and children weren’tgoing to be there. I’d also picked up a slew of last-minute design jobs for after-Christmas sales promotions, and a few portrait sessions for friends looking for down-to-the-wire stocking gifts for friends and relatives.
    The little girl in my camera’s viewfinder didn’t have wings, but she was a little angel. Four years old, mop of curly black hair, stubborn little rosebud mouth and a pair of crossed arms. A tiny, badass version of Shirley Temple, including the dress with the bow at the waist.
    “No! No, no, no!” She stamped her foot. She pouted. She glared.
    “Pippa. Sweetie. Smile for the picture, please?”
    Pippa looked at her daddy Steven and stamped her foot again. “I don’t like this dress! I don’t like this headband!”
    She tore the bow from her hair and threw it on the ground, and to make sure we all knew just how much she hated it, stepped on it with her patent leather shoes.
    “I blame you,” Pippa’s other daddy, Devon, told me.
    I raised a brow. “Gee, thanks.”
    Devon laughed as Steven grabbed up the bow and tried to salvage the look. “She’s stubborn, that’s all. A lot like you.”
    “Pippa, princess, please—”
    “Oh, and