Here we go then, Mama Ambrose in da house!
xXBalorBabeXx, Yep as if it wasn't bad enough what I just put them through I'm throwing Mama Ambrose in too! By the end you'll have to tell me whether you think the drunk or Mama is worse!
Skovko, Oh absolutely, sarcasm is the national identity. It's a way of life not a choice! Yep, Dean's hometown really is something, well, at least the part that he grew up in, the rest could be lovely?!
Mandy, As always you're super welcome my lovely! Glad you could picture it all happening even though it was probably a bit tense! Got more drama in this one but not as action packed!
Wolfgirl2013, Thought it was time I threw a bit of action at you in that last one and there's more drama here too but not on quite the same way because here comes Mama Ambrose again!
Minnie1015, I'm just working on the next Dean and Lauren and then I've got a plan for the one after that if that helps? Just when I think I'm done with these two an idea hits me. I can't give them up!
LunaticxLass, Mama Ambrose has a lot to say in this one and in the next few chapters too so look out! Also, Lauren is not even remotely done finding trouble in this story because we've still got a way to go!
Labinnacslove, Yep, expect lots of drama in this chapter and most of the rest of the chapters to come...not that Mama Ambrose features in all of them but she's sure a handful in the ones she's in!
Moxley Gal1, Lauren probably did have her cell phone, but we know she's not the best thinker in situations plus she thought it would be quicker to simply run to Dean herself. But the drunk was fast!
Ohana1337, Don't worry I got your reviews (thank you as ever). Haha, I think most of us would be happy to look at Dean all day! Lauren is sweet and Dean's mama takes note too, strap yourself in!
Mama Ambrose time...
Meet The Family
Mama Ambrose was at once both everything I had pictured but also nothing like I had imagined her to be at all and I honestly wasn't sure which one of those two things momentarily threw me off my stride the most. Her eyes were blue much like her offspring but not mottled in the beautiful way that his lusting orbs were and while his face carried some flesh and a pinky color hers was impossibly pale and thin.
Maybe that was the drugs?
I swallowed my nerves back and in the deafening silence it sounded like a bomb had gone off or must have because the cold gaze then snapped towards me and with such sudden intensity that I almost instinctively backed up.
Uh oh.
Her skinny arms were clad in a battered looking sweatshirt and she was perched on the only free pew on the couch with one of her knees bouncing up and down repeatedly like she was trying to blow up an imaginary air bed and with her fingers picking and fussing at one another like she was physically unable of keeping herself still. Perhaps that was even where her son got his twitchiness?
Dean grumbled the word out in shock again,
"Mom?"
In response to his surprise she actually sneered at him and it was by no means a kind or welcoming little sound but instead was loaded with the type of raw bitterness that as far as I knew was a sure fire way to start a brawl.
"Mom is it now huh? Kinda figured you'd forgotten me along with the rest of the folk in this town. Not good enough anymore for the big successful wrestler."
"Fuck."
His fingers tensed readily in mine and made me remember our hands were still tangled since he had recently been slashed at by a knife wielding loon and I wasn't prepared to let him go prematurely or more than likely ever again. Dean was positively vibrating with anger and so to lessen his frustration I stroked his bicep with a loving hand, hoping to remind him that I was still there with him and that I completely intended to support him through the meeting but which then brought the biting focus rapidly back to me,
"So this is her huh?"
"Mom – ,"
Dean interrupted her with a warning but he still wasn't quite quick enough to stop her penetrating blue eyes which slung up and down then examined my figure in a way that made me feel about a half an inch tall and forced me to lift a hand in an awkward wave gesture,
"Hello, um, it's nice to meet you at last."
His mother ignored me like a hadn't even spoken and her reluctance to acknowledge me was a hugely crushing thing because it was literally everything I had been worrying about happening with the exception of the whole being-punched-in-the-face-thing and so therefore was like having to live a waking nightmare with the earlier added bonus of the inebriated knifing thrown in.
"Your girl is way too skinny and pretty, she'll be like a lamb to the slaughter around here."
I blinked,
"Um – ,"
"She won't last five minutes in these parts before the scumbags show up to try and eat her alive. Christ boy you sure know how to pick out the live ones. Disneyland hasn't got shit on this kid."
For a second or longer I simply stood blinking because I honestly had no idea how or what to throw back or whether she was being an absolute bitch to me or actually complimenting me in a roundabout way, since being called pretty sounded like a fairly nice thing but was tempered by the more scathing cartoon princess bit. Had she meant to offer out a full verbal clapback or was she poorly trying to tell me I looked sort of sweet? I was about as confused as I could ever remember being and it apparently turned me speechless.
Dean however was not so stumped,
"Leave her outta this, she hasn't done anythin'."
From that I assumed that the compliments had been bad and the realization made me hitch a little breath in because there went my hopeless attempt at playing nice. In the moment I wished I was more like Kelly since I was pretty sure she would have thrown a pithy statement back or managed to pull off the front of not being bothered since she had always been a girl who was effortlessly cool. Back in our school days I had sorely wanted to be her but that had luckily faded the older I had become until for the most part I was happy with the woman I had blossomed into, although I possibly would have killed for a little of her confidence right then.
Ugh.
His mother snorted derisively back at him,
"Not done anything huh? So where have you been? Your ass hasn't shown up here in months and I'm thinking that it probably has a whole lot to do with her."
In trying to emphasize her bitter little argument she pointed pretty harshly at me, with the tip of a finger that may as well have been a gun point or some sort of spy-movie futuristic laser since it honed in across the space in near enough the same way and stabbed me right in the middle of the breastbone until the sensation of her nail-tip made me actually want to wheeze, but which was stupid because she was twelve feet away from me and from what I could tell, not armed to the teeth.
Dean stepped forward and out of my fingers,
"Well I'm here now but guess who wasn't earlier? Oh that's right the answer to that is you mom an' it was her that was out there tryin' a help track your ass down."
I wasn't sure I liked being constantly referred to in such a hotly spat out little word as her and so I lifted a hand, looking a lot like I was back at school again but not having the confidence to make myself sound more loud,
"Um, excuse me?"
Both of them ignored me which actually made it my worst reaction so far and to prove that point further was then rapidly drowned out by his mother sneering dismissively once more but across the room at us in a crumpled expression that appeared to be a signature move of sorts.
"Didn't fucking ask you to come out looking for me."
"Are you fuckin' kiddin' me here? That's exactly what you just said. Bitchin' about me never comin' to see you an' not carin' an' shit. Well then what the hell is this? Because it's not like I came here for the good times y' know mom?"
"So go back to your nice big house then."
"Don't tempt me on that."
Briefly the pair of them fell suddenly silent like they were taking a moment to prepare themselves or breath and which hinted at a round two rapidly building that I wasn't sure I could cope with listening to again since I had never been good at confrontation of any sort and especially between families.
I stepped forward after a beat,
"Um, hello again I'm Lauren. I – I never got to that part before and I wanted to say thank you for letting us stay with you and also for having such a wonderful son."
It was the speech I had basically been mentally rehearsing since the moment the two of us had stepped on the plane and when I had assumed that the first meeting with my soon-to-be-in-law-mother had the potential not be a total train wreck of a thing. Really in lieu of the fact that she clearly hated me I very probably should have spent time switching it up or possibly have made the choice to can the missive totally but in the moment it was literally the only thing I had left and seemed so much better than the tense and building silence that it had blathered right out of me before I had the chance. In response to it his mother blinked at me for maybe a minute and then snorted before looking away,
"I'm going to bed."
"Oh."
If it had physically been possible for me to deflate balloon-like then that was apparently totally what I did because the next thing I felt were two hands on my hip bones as Dean stepped in behind me and then gently pulled me back, pillowing me up spine-first against his muscles in a way that let me know he was aware I had been crushed and stamped into the ground like a tiny little beetle that had met the heel of an inebriated boot –
Because wow was his mother ever completely hammered.
I hadn't really noticed it when she'd been safely sitting down, but as she stood upright it became readily apparent in the way that she stumbled and then grabbed the arm of the couch, before frowning towards the floorboards like they had the gall to be moving in a way that they obviously never had done before. Halfway into her bedroom she flapped a hand at us,
"Go stay in a hotel or something."
"We're stayin' here mom."
"Suit yourselves then but don't go expecting some fancy breakfast."
Dean snorted wryly,
"Never have done before."
He waited a second longer until she had stumbled across the threshold and then stood watching her try to pointedly slam the door which turned out to be pretty genuinely impossible since she had too much trash piled up in front which she then had to boot in a clumsy kicking move as she cussed in way that was both impressive and desperately sad. By the time she had it clear the momentum had been lessened and so she simply blew a breath out and then gently pulled the thing shut and plunged us into both silence and solitude.
I shivered a little, feeling shell shocked,
"Dean – ,"
"Hey."
Knowing where my pathetic little mumble was likely heading, my fiancé spun me to face him but fractionally not fast enough because I blurted the rest of the sorry sentence out anyway in a whisper like I thought that his wasted mother might hear.
"She – she hates me."
"Princess, she hates everyone so I wouldn't take it too fuckin' personally, okay?"
"But she'ssupposed to like me, besides you said she would love me."
I shook my head and then pouted a little but couldn't really help it because I felt like a kid, who had literally had someone take a hammer to their dolls house or had who watched someone kick their favorite teddy bear in the crotch.
"Lauren."
But he might as well have been talking to a brick wall since I was so entrenched in misery that I barely heard him at all, because none of it seemed fair in the general scheme of things and my run of bad luck was starting to drive me insane.
I hung my head heavily,
"Why is everything always difficult? I just – I just wanted this one thing to go right. I wanted to come here and be accepted by your family and find someone who would love me and fill the hole left by my mom and maybe take me shopping but – I mean – I guess that's not important just so long as she liked me which she doesn't at all. But then we get here and there are all these people shouting and I tried so hard to like your hometown but I'm scared all the time which makes me feel pathetic because I'm letting you down and then I got in myself trouble with that guy and I wasn't even looking at him or anything, he just suddenly came over and then he pulled out that knife and – ,"
Dean reached up and caught my lips between his fingers, pinning them shut gently.
Huh?
"Sorry Princess, but this is for the best here, because if I let you carry on we'd be here 'til – like – the mornin' an' the birds would be singin' an' all that kinda shit."
I mumbled back and he lifted his fingers,
"But I was trying to apologize."
"You've done nothin' wrong."
"What about that guy trying to break through the window and – ,"
Dean huffed a breath out and then pulled me into his chest, letting me nuzzle myself a space in his slashed shirt front as he wound his arms around me then rested his chin against my head and predictably being buried almost totally in him and breathing in his aftershave did wonders for my nerves, because he smelt all spicy and musty and pepperminty from the piece of chewing gum he habitually turned about and all of those things were like smelling salts or opium.
He was my drug and I couldn't get enough.
"Princess, like you said okay? The guy bein' an asshole is never gonna be on you. I mean, I can't even blame him for tryin' to bust in you because – like – I mean, you're pretty fuckin' cute."
"He tried to stab you."
"Tried an' missed baby, besides, that's fuckin' better than him tryin' to stab you."
I huddled in closer,
"I'm really trying to fit in here."
Dean snorted back at me in a sour little note and then brushed my hair back before palming my forehead in a ham-fistedly teasing move that tipped my skull back and therefore compelled me to peer up into his eyes again which I honestly didn't and probably would never mind.
"Princess you're not allowed to change a thing you fuckin' hear me? Especially not for this place, because I'm tellin' you, it's a hole."
I blinked,
"The market we passed earlier looked pretty."
"Yeah?"
"Uh huh."
"Then I'll take you there. I mean, I figure we need to do somethin' tomorrow unless you wanna hang here an' make small talk with my mom, or maybe park up on the streets and wait for addicts to yell through the windows an' try to pick a fight?"
I snorted,
"Oh haha, I'm so happy we can laugh about it."
He planted a kiss on my nose,
"I mean it baby, tomorrow is all yours, so if you want to spend it lookin' around the market, then that's what we're doin' for as long as you want."
In response to the gesture I hummed at him happily and then rose up onto the point of my toes, because sometimes being pressed against his pectorals was nice and everything but simply still not totally close enough and in those moments I needed to be physically face to face with him and able to feel his breath on my skin and have his lips ghost over mine when he said something and kisses –
Mostly I just needed his kiss.
I pecked him sweetly and then returned for a second one, that I made sure went further and longer than the last and in response his hands slid first to my hip bones and then round onto the curve of my spine where they crossed and rested against me sweetly and the warmth of which was only broken when my stomach kicked up a fuss and for some unholy reason chose that precise moment to remind me that neither one of us had eaten properly since last night.
Not good.
"Hey you, shush,"
I hissed at my mid-section crossly but regardless of my warning it began rumbling when I breathed until my empty intestines sounded so darn unhappy that I couldn't help but giggle.
It felt super good to laugh.
"Christ – ,"
Rolling his eyes at his ridiculous fiancée who was laughing at the sound of her stomach eating itself, Dean unhitched his hands then tangled them round my fingers before standing from his slouch and beginning to pull me along, towing us back towards the front door and the world beyond it with its killers and muggers and gun-toting louts and everything else.
I slammed on the breaks,
"Uh, Dean?"
"Come on Princess, I'm takin' my girl to get somethin' to eat, before that way too skinny frame of hers wastes away to nothin' an' all I'm towin' behind me is a trouble makin' bag of bones."
"But what about – what about – ,"
I wasn't sure how to put across my fear of being stabbed the moment we stepped out of the door, because it sounded insane or paranoid at best perhaps and yet was totally the image running wildly through my brain, like Cincinnati by night was full of crazy ghoulish monsters who roamed the blackened streets looking for people to attack and who were possibly lurking in every last shadow, hoping to add a burly wrestler to their tab, not to mention scare to death his hopeless fiancée who belonged in the watery rolling hills to the north.
Dean smirked a little,
"Come on baby, I'll look out for you an' I promise to only get a little bit stabbed, maybe not at all if the two of us are lucky and the Southside Knife Crew choose to stay in tonight."
I blinked,
"That – that's a gang you totally made up right?"
Dean pushed me ahead of him over the threshold,
"Let's find out."
Fortunately rather than take me back to the neighborhoods where the pair of us had spent the day looking for his mom, Dean instead headed out of the city before slinging us in a circle around the perimeter of the town with a pitstop on the way to pick up some fast food and which then burnt a hole into my lap through the bag as I blinked through the windshield and tried to fathom where we might end up or what the purpose of our sudden road trip was. Eventually however he turned us back towards the city in the direction of the old bridge I had noticed before, but then pulled off to take us right along the riverbank to which I let out a corresponding note of pleasure,
"Ooooh."
Dean snorted,
"Nice huh? I mean, it's not exactly a big lake an' mountains like you're used to, but in terms of fancy lookin' views an' whatever, I figure this is the probably the best the place has got."
He wasn't kidding on that point either because the location we had stopped at was an undeniably breath-taking one, positioned on the shoreline overlooking the city which was still lit up in spite of it being the middle of the night. In front of us the big skyscrapers from earlier had turned into softly blinking beacons of light and the streetlamps on the riverbank opposite shone warmly and so too did the bulbs hung on the bridge suspension coils. Put together they conspired to paint the most fantastically blurred canvas of inky blues and yellows in the wide waters in between, ebbing gently like frosted glass or mirrors but effortlessly soothing in the relative peace and quiet of the dark.
"It's soooo pretty."
"Come on," Dean pushed his door wide then grabbed up a sleeping bag he had thrown in the back, having nabbed it from the house as he had pushed me across the threshold but which at no point had I asked what we needed it for,
"Huh?"
"Bring the food."
I clambered out after him trying not to let our late dinner slip to the floor and then rounded the front of the rental frowning mildly to find him unzipping and then laying the sleeping bag out, throwing the thing over the hood of the sedan car and then vaulting up onto it and patting the space to his side, whereupon I may have grinned like an idiot and even squealed a little because frankly his plan was both romantic and it rocked. Excitedly I planted a foot on the arch of the front wheel but then couldn't get further because my hands were full up and so Dean leaned across and took the food bags from me before holding out his fingers which I latched onto at once.
Eep –
I landed on the hood on my ass a little clumsily and my fiancé did the rest by pulled me across, propelling me in over the paintwork easily by hooking his thumb through the loops of my belt and then not stopping until I was huddled beneath his shoulder with my head tucked into his neck and my hair in his face. I hummed at him contentedly,
"This is like that scene in Coyote Ugly when she thinks he's into drugs but he actually likes comic books and then he takes her to a fish market in the morning."
"Uh, what?"
I snorted at him fondly,
"I'm guessing you've never seen that movie then? You know, I think you'd actually probably kinda like it because it has lots of woman stripping and being all sexy on bar tops."
"I've seen plenty 'a movies like that baby."
"Dean – ,"
"Watched the real thing as well a couple of times."
"Ugh."
I slapped him mildly to show my displeasure but there wasn't any malice or frustration to the move, because even though it seemed unlikely that he was genuinely kidding, I also knew that he was trying to make me laugh and forget about the swirling levels of horror that had pretty much made up the rest of my day and it worked too because I snorted in amusement and then snuggled in deeper,
"You know what would make this view even better?"
"What's that Princess?"
"Some hot greasy fries."
Dean chuckled brightly but followed it up with the sounds of rustling as he fished our much needed food from its bags and then proceeded to trap a fry between his teeth with the end held out to me. I leaned up and nibbled in, laughing as I did and then ending on a kiss that was salty and gritty from the seasoning of the fries but which was still pretty perfect because when was smooching with him not ever anything less than the best thing in the world?
"Here," He passed across my burger in the interim and then the two of us sat back gazing out across the point and letting the summer breeze rustle through our hair gently as we ate in a quiet that was hopelessly content, or mostly at least –
"Dean?"
"I'm not fuckin' swappin' here, you wanted a chicken burger and that's what you've got so if you think I'm givin' you my double bacon cheese tower then you are gonna be pretty disappointed."
I bit my lip,
"Um, that's not what I was going to ask you."
"I told you to get a soda instead of milkshake too, but if you really wanna swap that then I guess that's not the worst thing."
I ignored him resolutely,
"What do I do about your mom? Because I know you're probably going to say to ignore her, but what happens tomorrow morning when I see her again? I mean, am I supposed to be happy or say nothing to her or do I apologize? I – I honestly don't have the first idea of what to do."
Dropping his burger into his lap, he wound an arm around and then pillowed me briefly in towards his chest, before pressing a greasy little kiss to my brow line that I hurriedly wiped off again.
"You don't have to do shit."
"But I – ,"
"Princess, I mean it. Her being a bitch has nothin' to do with you, so you just keep on bein' perfect baby 'kay an' I'll make sure she plays nicer next time. An' if she doesn't then she and I are gonna have a talk about it, because nobody – but nobody – upsets my best girl alright?"
I nodded then tried my best to think more positive, because after all in the morning it would be a brand new day and a second chance to convince my fiancé's unhappy mother that I was the girl her boy was made to be hitched to.
Easy right?
I only hoped it worked.
Next chapter there is a nice surprise for Lauren as she gets a real blast from the past and just to tease that more it is not a person! But naturally there is drama too AND more Mama Ambrose for your viewing pleasure!
