Teased (The VIP Room, #1) (29 page)

Love Always,

Bobby

The words blurred together as small, wet spots
started to appear on the page. In a matter of just five minutes, my
world had officially fallen apart. The paper trembled in my hands
as my mind worked overtime and I began the process of turning my
heart to solid steel in my chest; cutting off my emotions. A trick
that had been in daily use every day of my life before Bobby Baker
had ever stepped foot in it. I couldn’t break down here in front of
Mrs. Baker. No one got to see Annabelle Smith cry. Nobody. No
matter how much it hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had
tried to break me, but it would damn well be the last.

I should have listened to my
instincts that had blared big, honking alarms the moment Bobby
Baker had sat at my table in the high school cafeteria and said
hello. Nobody as good and pure as Ace would ever want to settle for
a girl who lived off of clearance cans of tuna fish and dressed in
thrift store clothes. It was stupid to think anyone, other than
Teagan, who had placed herself in front of my father’s fists to
protect me, was okay to let close to my heart. She’d bought that
loyalty from me with bruises and blood. Looking back now, I
realized Bobby hadn’t bought my loyalty with his love. He’d bought
my body with false promises and kisses. Hadn’t I lived a valuable
lesson watching my mother take beatings from the man she
loved
?

Love was a joke.

A fairytale that mother’s told their daughters
while tucking them into bed at night just before the man they swore
was their Prince Charming knocked the living shit out of them
because supper was cold. It was a scam that conned stupid people
into letting their guard down so that some jerk could dig their way
inside the deepest part of them, place a ticking bomb next to their
soul, and then blow it to smithereens. I would never be stupid
enough to let my emotional walls down again. Quickly wiping the
lone tear from my face that had escaped despite my efforts, I stood
and faced Mrs. Baker. A slight movement in the corner of my eye
caught my attention. Looking over, I saw Mr. Baker was standing
behind the screen door with his head hung almost to his chest,
studying his boots in the uncomfortable silence.

“
Thank you for giving me the
letter, Mrs. Baker. I’ll just be on my way home now.”

Side stepping her outreached hand I rushed to
the truck and sped from the Bakers’ home, kicking up dirt in my
screeching tires’ wake. I willed myself to keep it together long
enough until I could go somewhere by myself to be alone. Somewhere,
where I could fall apart before figuring out what the hell I was
going to do next. It felt like the world had finally turned its
back on me. With my shitty luck in life, I should have expected
this sooner or later. Who would want to settle down with the town’s
trailer trash? Certainly not a respectable boy like Bobby
Baker.

I was well and truly on my own. Nowhere to go,
no one to care, and more questions than answers about what was
going to happen next. As the view in front of me became one blurry
piece of landscape that no longer seemed to make any sense, I
pulled the truck over on the side of the country road and parked.
Dropping my head to the steering wheel, my body imploded with pain
as I felt my heart shatter in my chest. What in the hell was I
going to do now?