Page 78 of A Very Addicted Christmas

Lo abandons the kiss to glance up and tilt his head. “Do you hear something, Lil?”

“Sounds like our kids,” I whisper.

“Unless our kids have tuberculosis, I’m not sure if these are ours.” He squints harder at them. “No, definitely not ours.”

They both stop fake coughing, and Kinney says, “We have something to tell you both. And we know how you two get when you’re together.”

“Obsessed,” Xander says.

Okaaay. I frown harder. “So you’re not embarrassed we’re kissing in front of you?” I wonder.

“What?” Xander’s face cinches like he doesn’t understand how I came to that conclusion.

Kinney adds, “If it embarrassed us, we’d be living inconstantembarrassment. No thank you.” She mock brushes it off like it’s dust on her shoulder.

Xander says, “Yeah, I mean you two love each other. Why would that be embarrassing?”

My heart fills up way too much.

“And look at that,” Lo smiles. “These areourkids.”

“I claim them,” I say into a confident nod, then I look to Kinney. “What do you have to tell us?”

Lo reaches around my waist to grab a cookie from the plate. “What your Mom is asking is what could possibly be so important that you stop ahellokiss?”

Xander and Kinney share a look.

“Just ask, Kin,” Xander encourages.

Kinney takes a deep breath. “I got asked to Winter Formal by a senior girl who is gorgeous and amazing and she’s graduating next year?—”

“No,” Lo says, dropping his arms off me and tossing his half-eaten cookie in the plate.

“Dad—”

“I saidno,Kinney,” Lo declares. “You just turnedfifteen. This senior girl is whateighteen?”

“Seventeen,” Xander says. “She’s seventeen.”

“Going to be eighteen then,” Lo says. “She’s graduating and you’re a freshman.No.”

I take Lo’s half-eaten cookie. “You two might not even be allowed to go to this Winter Formal thing,” I tell them. “We’re still deciding on a punishment for the party.”

Lo nods in agreement. “Exactly.”

Xander shrugs. “I wasn’t going to go to it anyway.”

Kinney gives him a look. “Not helping.”

He frowns. “You’ve barely talked to this girl, Kin. She just asked you to the Formal to say she went out withtheKinney Hale.”

Kinney’s face goes red. “You don’t know that.”

“I know a lotabout being used. It happens.”

That statement unsettles my stomach, but their teenage experiences aren’t totally the same as mine or Lo’s since they’ve grown up famous.

Kinney thinks this over, her face looking more and more pained.

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