Due Date: A Why Choose Romance - Stephanie Brother

CHAPTER ONE

GRACE MILLER

The teenage pregnancy cookbook gives us more than one way to put a bun in the oven.

Take two guys who’d just graduated high school, add two eighteen-year-old girls, and give them a house to themselves.

And alcohol.

Looking back, it was the obvious recipe for disaster.

At the time, I didn’t predict the evening would end the way it did. Not even when the guys suggested we strip for a dip in the pool.

The fact they had new bikinis for Kelly and me didn’t spark instant suspicion.

Us girls went into the poolroom to change into the new swimwear, as if it were perfectly natural to do so—because it was. We’d been to the boys’ home and swam in their pool many times over the years.

When we were done with swimming for a while, we kicked around at the edge of the pool.

Sam lay his palms flat on the concrete at the edge of the pool. “Beer, anyone?” he called as he lifted himself out of the water.

Much as I wanted to watch, I turned away from the delicious sight of his glistening wet flesh and taut muscles, scared one of the guys might notice the lust in my eyes and my tongue hanging out.

I didn’t reply, but the other two said yes in such a way that spoke for all of us. We’d already had a couple of bottles, but it was the weak stuff, fortunately, as I wasn’t an experienced drinker, and it would not take much to get me passed out in a corner.

And more to the point, none of us were nineteen yet, much less twenty-one.

Still standing in the pool, Ryan held his illegally sourced beer aloft when Sam passed him an open bottle. “Here’s to the rest of our lives.”

Sitting on the edge with his feet in the water, Sam clinked his prohibited drink against his brother’s. “I’m so glad to be out of there. Out of school, I mean.”

“Here, here,” I echoed. I meant this one thousand times stronger than they did. Four years of high school, AKA daunting hell. Many people told me they would be the best years of my life, and I hoped they were wrong.

The whole graduation ceremony was done: the caps and gowns were put away, students had eaten dinner with parents. Our own private after-party followed the traditional formal ending of compulsory schooling. We had full run of the twins’ father’s house post-graduation while their father had gone out to celebrate with the teachers—for him, our graduation was just another graduation.

“I’m eager to move on to bigger and better things,” Kelly said. “But it wasn’t so bad.”

“Not so bad? We’ll have to disagree . It might not have been so bad for you as the daughter of the drama teacher, but the pressure of being Mr. Perfect under Dad’s reign was very real.” Ryan glanced at Sam and held his bottle up again.

“Too right, bro.” Sam clinked their drinks together.

The twins’ father was the school principal, AKA Mr. Baker. The name struck fear in to generations of school students. The man had to be tough on them. School days were difficult enough for Kelly and me because our parents taught in the school.

Sitting on the edge of the pool, Sam contemplated the bottle of beer in his hand, the beer which he was still too young to drink. “Here we are today. Fully grown up.” I wasn’t sure whether he intended deliberate irony. “It’s official; we’re no longer schoolkids. And we’re free to do what we please.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” If Sam was about to say more, we never found out the direction of his train of thought because Ryan cut him off. “Our parents can kick us out now—no repercussions on them. No one would blame them. And I don’t think any of us are in a rush to have such a massive family fallout.”

“Oh, of course not, but we shouldn’t let their disapproval control our lives anymore. Not now we’re adults,” Sam replied.

“Being a teacher’s kids should be a free pass, if not license to get away with murder,” Kelly replied, “but it didn’t turn out that way, did it?”

“It most definitely did not.” Ryan sighed. “It put a target on our backs for the other kids and teachers to watch us super hard. We’ve said it before, but everyone seemed to treat us with suspicion all the time. We couldn’t be too good, and we couldn’t be too bad.”

“Hold on. Hold on, bro.” Sam raised a hand for