Page 13 of Ruling Scar
“Don’t mess with those!”
She gasps, her mouth dramatically hanging open. “Lennie, you do realize this is the equivalent of hiding a porn stash.”
“It’s not like that.” I tug the basket toward me.
It doesn’t matter. There’s another stack of books under the bed she discovers.
“Smut is not porn,” I defend, lovingly holding one of my dark romance novels to my chest.
“I’m not the one forcing you to hide them,” she points out with a wicked smirk. “You could always, I don’t know, put them on your bookshelves.”
She turns her head, eyeing up two shelves on either side of a window bench. I love my little reading nook and yes, I know it’s not bad to read smutty romances. Does that mean I’m ready to display them to the world?
“You know how nosy Mom is.”
Adeline rolls her eyes, digging through the books. “More like sexually repressed.”
“Who is sexually repressed?” Nat asks from the doorway.
With the way Mom acts, you’d think Nat lived in Russia instead of Brooklyn. She’s the only one who lives away fromhome so she promised to spend Christmas weekend at the house.
“Mom,” Adeline explains.
Nat scrunches up her nose. She’s in her socks and a pair of jeans, but there’s an effortless beauty to her casual appearance. “What’s all this?”
“Dirty books.” Adeline holds one up.
I grab it back. Luckily, Nat’s phone goes off and she turns to leave.
“Hey, are you okay?” I call after her. “You look tired.”
“Tired of you!” she yells back.
“Rude,” I say under my breath. When I turn back to Adeline the hair on the back of my neck stands. Why is she making that face? “What?”
She smiles coyly. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah, of course.”
I’m off of work for the next few days, and once I get Adeline out of my room, I’ve got a new dark romance series to start.
“Mom says you’re still going to book club.”
I pick up bits of wrapping paper. “Yep.”
“Read anything good?”
“Uh. . .” I point to the pile of books. “Yeah, you know, just. . .”
“I fucking knew it!” Adeline bursts, pointing at me. You’d think I admitted to murder with the way she shouts. “You’re not going to book club. Admit it.”
“I am too!”
“Every week?”
“Yeah.” Now that she lives here, she knows I come home late on Thursdays after work.
“You are such a liar.”
