“I’ll do better.”
“Damn straight you will. But I still want to know why this happened. Are you doing drugs?”
“No!” He took his eyes off his shoelaces, at least. “I swear.”
“If you don’t straighten up, I’ll buy every home drug test they have at the drugstore, Nicholas. I mean it.”
“I’m not, Mom.”
“Then what’s going on?”
He shrugged, gaze back on his feet. “I dunno. I just screwed up.”
“Well,” she said as she pulled into her driveway,”now you get to call your dad and tell him you screwed up.”
“Can’t you tell him?”
“I’m going to talk to him once you’re done, but you’re going to tell him yourself.”
She went through the mail while Nick made the phone call, though she didn’t really register the return addresses. Mostly bills, probably, so she tossed them on the counter unopened. Nick sounded on the verge of tears as he told Dean what he’d done, and she could hear her ex-husband’s voice, loud and angry, from halfway across the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said into the phone, and then he held it out to her. “Dad wants to talk to you.”
Lucky her. “Hello?”
“What the hell is this about Nick working for Ryan Kowalski?”
“He’s going to work off the damages.”
“Don’t you think you should have asked me first?”
She wasn’t in the mood to have a pissing contest with her ex. “No, I don’t. Since you cried poverty when I asked for extra child support for school clothes and supplies, I’m guessing you don’t have an extra grand in the cookie jar.”
“I don’t want my kid working for him.”
Through the anger, Lauren felt a familiar tiny poke of guilt. Dean had a lot of resentment toward Ryan, but it was for the wrong reason. He didn’t know the truth of why his best friend had left town and never looked back. “You don’t have any choice.”
“I don’t like it.”
“This isn’t about you, Dean. This is about Nick breaking the law and Drew and Ryan giving him a chance to make it right rather than pressing charges, and whether you like it or not, he’s going to do just that.”
“Why did it have to be him?” Dean muttered, and Lauren silently echoed the sentiment.
“I have to go,” she told him. “Needless to say, Nick’s grounded. I trust you and Jody will follow through with that when he’s at your house.”
“Yeah.”
With nothing left to say, Lauren ended the call and leaned against the counter. Nick was still sitting at the table, picking at his thumbnail. “Do you have anything else to say?”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, too frazzled to keep running in circles. “From now until I decide otherwise, your life is school and the Northern Star Lodge. No iPod, no video games, no anything that isn’t homework or work.”
He nodded, his shoulders sagging a little more.
“You can spend the rest of today cleaning your room.” He practically ran for his bedroom. “And don’t slam your door.”
She pulled a few fun-size candy bars out of her secret stash and sat down in the chair Nick had vacated. This was just the kind of day that had spawned the what-if fantasies. As stressful and worrisome as the day was, she was going to have a hell of a time nodding off and imagining Ryan’s hands on her had always been just the thing to soothe her to sleep.
It was a little different now that she’d actually seen Ryan and had a very real, not pretend reaction to the man. And, thanks to her son’s stupidity, she was going to be seeing a lot of him.
Popping chocolate into her mouth, Lauren walked to the fridge and slid the shopping list out from under a magnet. After rummaging on the counter for a pen, she wrote, Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate, on the bottom of the list.
She had a feeling she was going to need it.
*
“I can’t believe it was Nick Carpenter,” Josh said. “His name never even popped into my head as a possibility.”
“He’s always been a good boy,” Rose agreed. “But I can tell you with some authority that teenage boys do really stupid things all the time.”
Three of them around the table had the good sense to keep their eyes on their plates. Ryan knew he was a major contributor to her knowledge of teenage stupidity, as were Josh and Mitch, who also developed a keen interest in their meatloaf.
As soon as Paige had called to tell Rosie that Mitch was on his way home from Miami, Rosie had rummaged through the pantry and started throwing together a family dinner. Ryan figured his brother would rather crawl into bed with his fiancée and stay there for a couple days, but you didn’t turn down Rosie’s meat loaf.
“How’s the house hunting going?” he asked before Rose could start trotting out some of their less intelligent, youthful moments.