LOL: Laugh Out Loud (After Oscar, #2)(70)

I suddenly felt put on the spot. “Um…”

“Mom,” Scotty said. “Can you just—”

“Hush, darling, Roman is a grown-up. He can handle some basic get-to-know-you questions. Can’t you, Roman?”

I chuckled. “Of course I can. I guess I just don’t know what you mean. What’s my life like? What’s my personality like?”

“Yes,” she said with a wink. “All of that.”

“Well,” I began, pulling out a napkin and utensils for her, “my life is oftentimes all about work. I’m either preparing for a role or actively filming it. If not, I’m promoting a release. When I do get free time, I enjoy being outside. Believe it or not, I have a little kitchen garden behind my place in the city. I spend more time than is normal taking care of my plants.”

“Kitchen garden?” Scotty asked in surprise. “You don’t even cook.”

“I… well… it’s mostly herbs. I read an article that gardening is supposed to be good for managing anxiety.”

Scotty’s face turned from shock to a knowing smirk.

“Your fence didn’t really get pulled down by the paparazzi, did it?”

Shit.

I felt my face heat. “It did, but that wasn’t the only reason Nugget couldn’t…”

He smirked, quirking an eyebrow. “You just didn’t want her messing up your precious garden, did you?”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “Some of those things are delicate in the winter.”

He shook his head, his smile knowing. “You’re so fucking adorable. I can’t even with you right now.”

“Shut up,” I mumbled. “All I could picture was Nugget stepping on my chives and flooding my rosemary with horse piss. It was a nonstarter.”

He barked a laugh. “You would have rather her shit in the foyer than in your kitchen garden that you don’t even use to cook with? That is hysterical.”

“Marble is easier to clean than organic soil,” I said with a sniff, moving past Scotty to grab a place mat from the drawer.

Scotty smacked my ass as I passed, and when I turned to gripe at him about it, I caught the instant of remorse that flooded his expression. His eyes darted over to his mom and back to me before he noticeably winced.

Regret. He hadn’t meant to be so intimate with me in front of his mom for fear of giving her information she could use against me. I hated seeing the moment he realized he couldn’t be open and free with me, and I knew it was only the beginning. If he stayed with me, there could be many more moments like that in his future.

I couldn’t give him a nice, steady relationship like almost anyone else would be able to. Being with me meant horrific invasions of privacy, no detail of life or someone’s past left unexamined, and no future in which someone could even go to the corner coffee shop in ratty sweats without being photographed.

I shook my head, trying to remind myself to stop worrying about those things when they weren’t a problem right now. Right now, we had privacy and space to enjoy each other. It was temporary time in a bubble, maybe, but I was going to try and enjoy it without wasting it with worry.

I pulled the meal out of the microwave, transferred it to a nice plate, and set it in front of Cyndee before turning to fix her a drink. “Would you like something in addition to water?” I asked. “Soda? Wine, beer?”

She gave me a knowing smile. “You have any hard liquor? I would kill for a shot of anything strong right about now.”

I turned to her in surprise. Those were hearty words coming out of a sweet little woman.

She smiled at me. “I don’t normally partake, you understand, but I’m still feeling a little jittery from my awful experience. You wouldn’t believe what kind of people there are in the prison system.” She whispered the two words like contraband.

“Of course,” I said, moving to the liquor cabinet. “I can’t imagine.”

“And thank god for that,” she said. “I’ll never go back, I promise you that.”

My gaze flicked to Scotty in expectation of seeing him smile with approval or relief. Instead, his eyes were narrowed in suspicion at his mom. I decided to give them some time to themselves to catch up.

I dropped a kiss on top of Scotty’s head. “I’m going upstairs so you two have some time together. I’ll see you after you help your mom get settled?”

He looked up at me with an expression of gratitude and a little insecurity. “You sure?”

I clasped the side of his neck and angled his head with my thumb under his chin so he was looking at me.

“Very.”





21





Scotty





WikiHow To Deal With Your Mother



As soon as Roman left the room, I snapped my head around to glare at my mother. “Explain yourself,” I hissed. The last thing I wanted was for Roman to hear this conversation.

“Don’t be like that, Scotty. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Her whining voice grated on me, and I wondered how other people didn’t see right through her bullshit.

“I sent you two hundred dollars!” I said, exasperated. “You could have rented a room anywhere with that money. That boarding house I told you about by the detention facility is like thirty bucks a night.”