“Yeah, thanks to you.” He pulls his cap off his head and shakes his head to loosen his hair. “You kind of saved my life.”’

“Please.”

“Seriously. I’ve never…I mean, fans have surrounded me before, but I usually had security…How long do you think they’ll wait out there?”

I snort. “For HartHeads? I bet they’d camp out here.”

He releases a frustrated breath.

With my own sigh, I drop down on the floor. “Might as well get comfortable. I should have food in here.” I rummage in my backpack for the potato chips and candy I put in this morning that I didn’t have a chance to eat today. “Wait, huh?” I open it wide and look inside. “Oh my gosh, I’m going to deactivate that robot.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks as he lowers himself next to me.

“WillowBot somehow took my snacks out of my backpack. She’s always trying to deny me junk food because she claims I have bad eating habits.”

Declan holds up his hands. “Can’t argue with a robot.”

“Out of all the times she did this, why today? Now what are we going to do? Starve?”

“I have some cookies,” he offers as he pulls out a bag of sandwich cookies from his backpack.

“Oh my gosh, gimme!”

He hands me the bag and I quickly rip it open. “Thanks!” I gobble one down and sigh happily, then frown. “Great, now I’m thirsty.”

Declan is quiet as he munches on his cookie. Then he says, “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. Maybe you can try to slip out?”

“They’ll probably chase after me and demand to know why we were together.”

“Oh. Yeah, good point.”

We’re quiet. There are still many voices outside, but at least the banging has stopped.

Then something dawns on me, and I find myself laughing like a total moron.

“What?” Declan asks with pinched brows.

I just laugh harder, clutching my stomach.

“Seriously, what?” Declan says, his own lips lifting in a smile. “The situation is pretty ridiculous.”

I shake my head as I try to stop my laughing fit. “It’s…not that.”

“Then what?”

My laughs have finally died down enough for me to say, “I can’t believe I’m living my parents’ life. Again.”

His brows pinch even more. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m trapped in a room with a movie star. Just like my mom was.”

Now his brows fly up. “Your parents were trapped in a closet? Your dad was?”

I shake my head. “Not a closet. When my parents were our age, they were having a tutoring session in the library. My dad said something to tick off my mom, and she stormed away. She was so angry that she didn’t pay attention to where she was going and went downstairs to the basement. And she somehow ended up in an old bomb shelter and got trapped in. She didn’t know that my dad followed her there. They were trapped in there for a few hours before they were rescued.”

His eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. “Wow. That’s quite a story. Why ‘again?’”

“What?”