Love Under Two Reluctant Heroes by Cara Covington (ebook reader screen TXT) 📗

just had the best time ever. Mom had picked them up and taken them into Waco. They’d eaten pizza and then gone to see A Star Is Born. She was thrilled that Bonnie’s folks had given their permission. Bonnie told her that they’d actually seen the movie themselves on their last date night.

Mostly, Libby had loved the movie because…well, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper!

There had been scenes that made her laugh and scenes that made her sigh. But the ending…she’d thought the reason her mom hadn’t wanted her to see this movie was because of the possibility of sex scenes. As the credits rolled and her tears fell, she knew that wasn’t the reason at all!

Bonnie had cried, too. And as Libby looked at Bonnie’s tears, she wondered, all things considered, how her best friend felt about that ending. She wondered if Bumblebee maybe might have been a better choice of movie—for Bonnie.

They got into the back seat of the car together, and they’d sat close.

“I don’t get it,” Bonnie said quietly as Libby’s mom drove them back home. “I don’t get people choosing to do that. It makes me sad for them. Nobody has the right to do that.”

Bonnie stayed quiet until they got back to Lusty. Once in the house, Libby’s mom suggested they both join her at the table to make some baubles for a little while. Libby understood then that her mom knew Bonnie had been sad, too.

So Libby and her best friend had made a few pieces of jewelry while mom chatted with them, and pretty soon they were laughing, all three of them.

“Your mom’s pretty cool,” Bonnie said.

They’d just come into Libby’s bedroom for the next part of their sleepover. As long as they kept it down, noise-wise, they could stay up as long as they wanted. Libby thought about her mom and the way she’d been there for her best friend.

Bonnie looked down at the bracelet she’d just made. “Tasha is going to love this.”

“Your stepmom’s pretty cool, too,” Libby said.

“She really is. I’m lucky. I remember, back in Toronto, there was a girl in my class, Shelley Paulson. Her mom and dad got divorced, and then her dad got married again and his new wife hated Shelley—and Shelley hated her.” Bonnie shivered.

“Did you worry about that when your dad started dating Tasha?” It wasn’t unusual for Bonnie to talk about her real mom, whose name had been Victoria, and about her memories of living in Canada and about her dad moving them here, where there was no snow, Coffee Crisp chocolate bars, or ketchup flavored chips.

For her part, Libby had shared what it had been like having cancer.

“I didn’t. There was something about Tasha right from the beginning, something that reached me.”

Libby saw something in her friend’s eyes. It was like she wanted to say something more but was afraid to.

“We’re sisters, right?” Libby kept her expression serious. “We can say anything at all to each other.”

“You’re right.” Bonnie sighed. “Just after we moved here, my brothers were being jerks, which hasn’t really changed.” She gave a quick grin. “I was scared, not about being here, though it was different from what I’d known, and I guess maybe that was a part of it. But…I was kind of scared of losing my dad. I was scared he’d die, too. It could have happened. Mom had died, which I never thought would ever happen, so why not dad, too?”

Libby couldn’t even imagine that. For all she’d been through, she’d never considered for even a moment that her mom would not be there for her. “That must have been really scary.”

“It was. And then my brother Shaun started saying if I didn’t mind him, Daddy might get fed up with me and send me away. I was mad and scared, and so I ran away—but I didn’t really know anyone here. Well, I knew Grandma Kate, of course, but I wasn’t sure how to get to her house. So I went to the spa, and I hid under one of the tables there. I thought no one would know I was there, so I could just…” Bonnie sighed again. “I didn’t really know what I was going to do.

“But Tasha found me. She was kind and didn’t make me feel stupid for running away. I asked if I could stay with her, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. She took me home, though, and made me feel better. I think now that was the moment that Dad really saw her. That night, I had a dream, one I never told anyone about.”

Bonnie looked down at the bracelet in her hand. She ran her thumb over the beads as she talked. “I dreamed about my mom. She told me that Daddy would never give me away and that he was going to be with me for a long, long time. And she told me it was okay for me to open my heart to Tasha. She said it was okay to love her, because Tasha already loved me. That I was going to be the daughter of her heart.”

“So, you never were worried about your dad marrying her?”

“No. And do you know what? When I’m missing my mom, Tasha is there for me to talk to. It makes Daddy sad sometimes to talk about her. But Tasha gets that I need to, sometimes.”

“I don’t talk about my dad,” Libby said. “My mom? She doesn’t talk about him at all. But she’s never trashed him to me, either. In the school I used to go to, there was a girl whose dad had left her, and she said her mom did nothing but trash-talk her dad. But Mom doesn’t.”

“Even though he just up and left you because you got sick?” Bonnie sounded outraged. “I get mad every time I think about that. I know my mom would never have chosen to leave me. I hope I never see your dad. I just might tell