Tyler Family Meeting

He hadn't planned it. At least when he and Riley had started planning what their lives were going to be like when they had a baby, he hadn't planned on being the overprotective dad. He had wanted to think that he was going to be able to be much more laid back about things, like bedtimes and what they could wear to school, but once they had found out that they were going to have twins, something shifted within in. Suddenly it wasn't just one baby that they needed to watch out for and care for, it was two. And when they were born, he had realized that he had never felt so overwhelmed in his life, not just with the responsibilities that were going to come from it, but by the love that he felt for both of them. The older that his daughters got, the more he realized that there wasn't anything in the world he wouldn't do to keep them happy, and to keep them safe. It wasn't until they entered their teenage years that he really began to feel challenged by it.

Ellie, the youngest by just a few minutes, had quickly proven that she was going to be their rebellious little problem child and so over the last several years she had tried his patience, among other things, in ways that he would have never believed. Morgan, on the other hand, she reminded him of Riley so much that he couldn't help but see her protests and dedication to her schoolwork as a bad thing. He loved both of his daughters more than he ever thought possible, and he was continuously amazed by how proud he was of them, despite their immense differences. Adam was constantly reminded by the three women in his life how lucky he had gotten to have them all as part of his family.

He had been reading through some legal forms for work when he felt Riley take a seat beside him. "You can't ask me to promise I'm not going to be upset about something when I don't even know what it is," he teased, looking at her with a smile. "Okay, fine. I promise. What is it?"

As soon as Riley had mentioned that Morgan had been studying with Brody, a sinking feeling in his stomach had begun forming. Based on everything that he had seen between the two of them, he supposed that he didn't have any right to be surprised by the fact that his daughter was having sex with him. It was the fact that his daughter was having sex that surprised him the most. It just seemed so out of character for her, and so very grown up. He just wasn't sure that he was ready for either of their girls to start growing up into the beautiful young women he knew they were, but he especially wasn't ready for either of them to be having any sort of physical relationship with boys. "She what?" he found himself questioning sharply. It wasn't even that he was angry about it, he just couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that any of this was happening now. The fact that it was happening with Brody Finn brought a whole new level of discomfort with the situation. "Did Amber stop them at least?"

Ignoring the idea of dinner at the sound of Morgan's voice he waited for her to come into the living room, otherwise he was sure he would have gone rushing over to meet her at the door, demanding to know where she got the idea to have sex with Brody. On a school night. In his bedroom. When they should have been studying. Already Adam had begun to list demands in his head, starting with the fact that Morgan and Brody were no longer allowed to be together unsupervised. Better yet, he amended, they should probably just not see each other anymore.

At the sound of her sister's voice, Ellie had left her bedroom to see if her family was ready to make a decision on dinner. She had been starving up until she heard her parents' voices coming from the living room. Particularly she took note of the fact that her father seemed to have raised his voice for some reason. Hiding just out of sight, but close enough that she could still listen to the action, she decided that dinner could wait if there was juicy gossip to be had.

Part of Adam was having a hard time looking directly at his daughter. He kept thinking that he was going to see something different now that he knew that she was having sex. What he thought was going to be different, he wasn't sure, but his fear was that suddenly he would see every smile as one that signaled that she was thinking about sex, or thinking about a boy, and he wasn't ready for that. In his mind both she and Ellie were always going to be the little girls that couldn't wait for family time, whether it was a vacation or a game night. The idea of sharing his time with them with boys wasn't something that he was ready for, despite the fact that as teenagers, he knew that they were. Maybe it was because he remembered what he was like as a teenage boy, or maybe in the case of Brody, he remembered what Brandon had been like as a teenage boy too. Either way, he didn't like thinking of either of his girls being on the receiving end of what he or Brandon had been like.

At her question of getting tacos he frowned. "No, Morgan. We can't get tacos. Not until you explain to me why Amber Finn called your mom earlier today." Saying the words out loud seemed impossible. His daughter was caught having sex. He couldn't even think about it without feeling a flash of some sort of emotion. It wasn't quite anger, and it wasn't quite disappointment, but there was something pulling him closer and closer to either of those feelings.

Ellie had pieced two and two together pretty quickly upon hearing her father's words and a small gasp escaped her lips before she had the chance to stifle it by placing two hands over her own mouth. In any other circumstance she was sure she would have launched herself at her sister and given her a big hug, but she wasn't sure that her dad would appreciate that very much.

Adam had almost wanted her to lie to him. He would have loved to have heard some sort of story about how they were studying human anatomy in school and had just been having a hard time grasping the complexity of the way that everything fitted together. That would have at least allowed him to pretend that he was ignorant to the whole matter and then he could go on thinking that nothing had changed. He hadn't wanted her to be honest, particularly not as bluntly honest as she had been. But that in itself wouldn't have been the worst thing. The fact that she had slept with Brody was something that he already knew, and while he was still wrapping his mind around it, it hadn't surprised him to hear it repeated. It was her statement of it being between her and Brody that really had upset him.

"Excuse me?" he asked her firmly. "As long as you're in school and living in this house, nothing is just between you and Brody. I'm not happy about what happened today and quite frankly, I don't want to know if it's happened before, but I don't necessarily want it happening again. I'm glad you were safe about it, but that's not enough. You're young, you still have a lot of time to meet the right person and I don't think you should be rushing into anything right now." He was sounding a lot like the overprotective father at the moment.

Normally it wasn't Adam that was on the receiving end of her defiance. If she was standing up for a cause she believed in at school then he was usually on her side, proud of the way that she used logic to argue her way to whatever her end goal was. It wouldn't have surprised him at all if she decided that she wanted to become a powerful lawyer some day with the hope of saving the world, much like Riley had set out to do. But when the tables were turned and it was him that she was fighting against, it did nothing but make him angrier with her. "I think you're too young to know that right now, and I think you're making decisions that might be too adult for you right now." The more she fought against him about it the more he just wanted to tell her that she wasn't allowed to have sex again and that she wasn't allowed to see Brody anymore.

"Your mother and I took the time to make sure that we knew what we wanted in our lives before we jumped into anything," which wasn't entirely true, he realized, considering the fact that Riley had actually been engaged to another man the first night that they had slept together. "We had already graduated from college, from law school, and were pursuing careers. You haven't even finished high school yet, how are you supposed to know that Brody is the person you want to be with? And what's going to happen when he does go off to college and he meets someone else? I just don't want you to get hurt, Morgan. It just isn't a good idea."

Adam figured that the best thing to do was to ignore her question about whether or not he and Riley had waited until they found each other to have sex. It wasn't going to do any good to go into it at this point. The entire point of this discussion hadn't been about whether or not Brody Finn was the person that Morgan was meant to be with in the first place, it had been about her being too young to be having sex with anyone. It had been about prioritizing things in her life right now. School had just started and this was the year that she needed to start looking into where she wanted to go when it was her turn to go to college, boys weren't supposed to be a priority at all. "For as long as you live, I will try and protect you," he said it to her softly, if only to soften the blow of what he was about to say. "I don't want you seeing Brody anymore. Not for a while at least. I think you need some time to think about what's important and it's not him."

Adam didn't like arguing with her and he knew that a lot of the reason why he was starting to feel like he needed to put his foot down came back to his own stubbornness. If Morgan's own defiance hadn't played such a large part in their current argument, he felt like he probably wouldn't have felt like he needed to keep her from seeing Brody anymore. The look on Riley's face proved that he may have made a bad move, but it was too late to back down now. "Yes, I can," he said, trying to stand his ground. "From now on you are to go to school and then come right home afterward. No more studying sessions at Brody's place, no more having him over - just no more Brody for a while."

Ellie had reached the point where she didn't think that she could just lurk behind the furniture anymore without coming to the defense of her sister. She popped up from her hiding place and tried to make it look like she hadn't been there the whole time, walking into the living room with as much nonchalance as she could muster. "Hey family, what's going on?" she asked innocently.