BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (69 page)

Chapter
28

Shawn

On my way home from school, I was fuming.
I couldn’t believe that Dalilah would sink so low.

“What a bitch,” I muttered as I thought
about what I could do. I didn’t know what was going on, exactly, but I knew
that the more time I sat here and did nothing, the more she felt as though she
was in control. I had to fix this.

However, after learning what happened and
who it was that had told the school, I found that I wasn’t angry for myself. I
didn’t care one way or the other what people said about me. Hell, my friends
were proud of me.

Therefore, I certainly wasn’t going to
lose much from this. If I had to deal with a few whispers for a little while
until the next big social tragedy rocked the halls of the school then so be it.

However, the person I was concerned about
was Valerie.

I felt awful for what I had done to her. I
didn’t particularly care that I had spilled the secret to my father and his
wife. I also couldn’t care less whether either one of them ever wanted to see
me again; but Valerie, she didn’t deserve this.

With the whole situation mounting in my
mind, I slammed the steering wheel and screamed, “I told her to leave Valerie
alone!”

I grasped the wheel tightly, squeezing it.
. I narrowed my eyes and glowered at the road ahead of me, increasing my speed
and envisioning Dalilah in front of me.

At this time, in this state of mind, if
she really was in front of me, it scared me slightly about how sure I was that
I would have been able to hit her and actually feel relief.

I had never loved her. I lusted her for
sure and I still found her extremely beautiful, but she was a lotus flower that
poisoned everything in her path and I was no longer going to stand for her
spell of seduction or her wrath. Somehow, I was going to fix this.

I had no idea what I was going to do, but
I knew that I needed to figure something out, or I would go insane.

I sped around corners and blew through
stop signs, but I had no idea where I was going. I was trying my best not to go
to Dalilah’s house, because I was fairly certain, inside the only rational part
of me that I deemed to be left, that if I showed up there, I would probably end
up in jail within the hour.

She had already threatened to call the
police and lie about me. I had no doubt that she was capable of it, but if I
gave her a reason to fear me, I would probably be incarcerated for murder
before the day was done.

Therefore, I tried my best to resist the
urge to go there. After all, she had already done her damage. There was nothing
left that she could do to fix it. That was the funny thing about rumors. Once
they were said and believed, even the person who started them could not take
back what they did.

However, I had a feeling that the rumor
was only the beginning for Dalilah and that scared me more than anything.
Knowing her, this was her warning shot. I hated to see what her main event
would end up being.

Still, I knew that I couldn’t go there and
so, after driving around, erratically and aimlessly for a long while, I
realized that I recognized the street that I was on.

After careful consideration though, I knew
that I didn’t really want to be here either. I didn’t want to show up there at
all, much less feeling as crazy as I did right now.

Even still, I kept driving and as I
rounded the corner, I saw something strange in the driveway of the house where
I grew up.

Curious and for the moment, forgetting my
anger slightly, I leaned forward and squinted my eyes, but I couldn’t quite
figure out what was going on.

I sped up and continued down the road until
I could make out Valerie’s car filled with black bags. She was just sitting in
the driveway though, with the motor running, as though she was about to leave.

Is
she moving out?
I thought as I parked the car in front of
the house and suddenly, I was overcome with fear.
If she moved, I might not know where she went. I could lose her
forever!

With that, I jumped out of the car and ran
up to her.

I put my hands on the side of the car,
sure that she would not move it away like she did before without running over
my feet. That probably wasn’t the best plan, because like Dalilah was for me, I
was pretty certain that if Valerie was going to run over anyone today, I would
be her first choice.

“What is going on?” I asked her.

When she stared at me, she had tears
streaming down her face. “Go away!” she screamed. “This is your fault!”

I narrowed my eyes with concern as I stuck
my head into her car. “What is my fault? What happened?”

“Go away!” She glowered at me with hateful
eyes.

“No!” I exclaimed, slamming my hand down
on her door. “Tell me what happened. I need to know! I need to fix this!”

“What does it look like, genius?” Mom
kicked me out!”

“What?” I felt my heart sink deep and
defeated in my chest. I never thought, even for a second that I would have to
worry about what my father and my step-mom would do to Valerie. I knew that
they might be mad at her, but I never expected that they would do something so
cold; especially considering that they didn’t even kick me out when I was
having my plethora of problems with them.

I left on my own.

“Are you serious?” I asked, trying to find
some way that I could make everything disappear for her. I wanted her to have a
good life and she was right, this was all my fault. She might have wanted it,
just as much as I did, but she was the one who was suffering the most, while I
was had caused the problem by telling literally the worst people on the planet
for me to have told. I felt awful.

As an answer, she shoved a letter at me
and my eyes skimmed over it, but I didn’t need to read it. The important
attributes that I found was that while it mentioned my father, it was from
Valerie’s mother, just like she had said. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I
breathed impatiently.

“Like I said, this is all your fault. But
I have to be out of here by the time they get home, so I have to go…” With that
she snatched the letter back from me and made a motion like she was going to
drive away, no matter what.

I panicked and grasped her car harder.
“Wait! Please! I don’t know what to do, but please…I want to fix this.”

“You can’t fix this…” she spat harshly.

“Well, then at least let me try to make it
better. Meet me at our spot…now.” When it looked like fuck you was going to be
the next thing that came tumbling out of her mouth, I allowed myself to show
the anguish and the desperation I was feeling as I added, “Please…I want to
help you.”

“I think you’ve done enough,” she answered
and moved as though she was going to leave again.

“Please!” I yelled, feeling myself grow
emotional. I didn’t want to be showing this unstable, crazy side to her, but
right now, I couldn’t help it. Learning what happened to her made me feel an
intense sense of pain. I wondered, probably selfishly, if my father and
stepmother had done this specifically to hurt me, since they knew they couldn’t
do anything else that would have near as much of an effect.

When she stared at me, almost as though
she was angered by my outburst, I swallowed hard. “Please…I can’t…I can’t let
you go without having a plan. I owe you that, at least.”

She thought about this for a moment and
stared deeply into my eyes before finally she shook her head. “Fine. I’ll be
there in ten minutes.”

I nodded, trying to find some assurance of
sincerity in her voice. Normally, she was a very honest person, but considering
what I had put her through, I wouldn’t blame her in the least if she had
decided to lie to me, just so she wouldn’t have to look at me any longer. I
wouldn’t blame her, but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, especially
since she had nowhere to go and it was all my fault.

Still, when she turned now, I had a
sneaking suspicion that she was going to leave this time without worrying if I
was in the way or not. I backed up quickly. “Thank you,” I said as I gave her
space, hoping that the genuineness that I felt would come across to her.

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes as she
pulled out of the driveway.

As she pulled away, I wondered exactly
what the chances were of her actually coming to meet me at the park. I figured,
as I made it back to my car that they were probably slim to none, but that
didn’t matter.

I had to try my best to be there for her.
I had to try.

After all, with the way things seemed to
be going, she and I were really the only people on the planet that the two of
us had left and in my mind, we had to make the best of it.

Chapter
29

Valerie

While I drove, heading in the general
vicinity of the spot that we had deemed
ours
a few lifetimes ago, I contemplated whether or not I really wanted to do this.

Ultimately, I knew that I really had no
idea.

Besides the fact that I had everything
that I owned packed in a car that I wasn’t completely sure I wasn’t stealing, I
also was not too thrilled with the idea of seeing Shawn’s stupid face ever
again.

This
is all his fault!
I angrily mashed the pedal down on the
floor and growled hatefully. I was scared. That was for certain. Everything was
happening so fast and even though I was happy, at least on some level that
Shawn was trying to be there for me, I was also very afraid that he would try
to hurt me like he had done before. I was still so raw from the last time he
had thrown me to the wolves that I didn’t want to be near him.

When he was leaning on my car, with his
head sticking in the window, it was all I could do not to punch him in the
face.

My whole life was turning upside-down
before my very eyes and all I could do was sit back and gape in astonishment. I
would have never thought that my mother, of all people, would stoop so low as
to kick me out of my own childhood home, without even having the decency to
explain what was going on in person. That just wasn’t like her.

However, I couldn’t think about it too
much, because every time I did, it made me feel even sicker than when I had
first realized what was going on. It was literally all that I could do to keep
myself from having to pull over and spew what little I had left in my stomach
onto the side of the road. I was nervous and scared. Everything I had ever
worked for, all of the trust that I had built up with my mother and even with
Paul was gone in a moment; not only that, but it was taken from me and I wanted
it back.

Yet, everything was just so out of my
control that all I really wanted to do was crawl into a hole and hibernate or
something until my mom missed me.

How
can her marriage be more important to her than her daughter?
I thought with a searing sense of hate burning deep into my core.
She had always told me that I was the most
important thing in her whole world and yet, she didn’t even have the decency to
talk to me about what happened; why it happened.

I was disgusted.

By the time I decided that I was going to
go to the park, I had come to the terrible conclusion that I really had nowhere
else to go.

When my car pulled into the parking lot
that melded with gravel before giving way to a green park, filled with
playground equipment and more recently, a path with exercise equipment, I had
realized that as much as I wanted to hate Shawn right now, there was no way I
could. There was no one else in the whole world that I could turn to right now.

My family had completely shut me out and
Zachary had cheated on me. I didn’t want to expose my problems to the same
girls who I was sure were snickering behind my back during school today and
therefore, that left only Shawn. The same jerk that had always been there for
me, aggravating me intensely for the entirety of our friendship.

When I looked up, I noticed that once
again, there he was, waiting for me, with a smile on his face; the only true
smile that was passed my way all day.

It was because of this, that even though I
was still angrier at him than I had ever been at anyone in my entire life, I
was still happy to see him. I smiled back, briefly, but meaningfully, before I
turned off the car and got out.

He did not rush up to me which I was happy
about, because I might have used that as an excuse to punch him in the face;
but rather, he allowed me the freedom to come to him.

I made my way toward him easily. I was
scared, but then again, I was pretty much scared of everything now. There was
nothing that did not plague me at the moment. I felt even more lost than I had
when I found out that my father had died.

I could still remember that day. Shawn was
there too. He was my beacon of light and right now, as I focused on him in front
of me, I decided that no matter what had happened between us or what was going
to happen to us, , that was exactly what he was to me again.