Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
EMILY
Every second I spend at the bar, my thoughts shift between my mother and Baylor. Back and forth and back and forth. I can’t stop thinking about him and the fact that we’re over. I know we are.
There’s just no way we can be anything other than a dirty little secret, and that time has already run its course. I’d hoped that we could have had a little longer… like a year or five, but I guess that’s not possible.
The night feels like it’s dragging by, which isn’t normal because we’ve been busy as hell. But when I can hardly concentrate long enough to remember what brand of beer someone ordered and get it to them, I know I’m more than preoccupied.
I let out a sigh of relief when the bartender yells out last call. I drag my feet as I go through the closing-down motions. I don’t want to be here, but I also don’t want to go home. Because being home will just remind me of him.
Baylor said he’d be there tonight, but I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago, if I ever did.
I wanted more with him, though; even secretly hoped that something more could possibly come of it all, but I knew it wouldn’t.
Secretly hoping is like a fairy tale—it’s never going to happen, not to a girl like me.
“You good?” the bartender calls out as I gather my purse and head for the door.
No.
I am one-hundred-percent not good.
I probably never will be, but it doesn’t matter because it can never be changed. I am who I am. My past is what my past is, and Baylor is who he is. My past decisions and ambitions screwed up what could have been my future.
Regret isn’t something I thought I could ever feel. But I feel it… deeply. I feel it down to my bones. Mainly because I am so far gone for this man, Baylor Cooper, that I’ll never forget him, not ever, not in a million lifetimes.
Giving the bartender a wave, I walk out to the parking lot, slip into my car, start my engine, and head home. I drive on autopilot. I have no idea if I followed the traffic rules or not. All I can think about is how incredibly sad it makes me that I won’t be able to feel Baylor anymore.
His skin, his fingers, mouth, tongue, all of it. I won’t be able to look deep into his eyes either. And I’ll miss his smile when he’s lying naked next to me. The little tug on the corner of his lips when he’s satisfied and his hair is all mussed up from my fingers.
Most of all, I’m going to miss how incredibly kind he’s always been to me. Even when he ignored me for a year, he wasn’t mean about it. He’d shutter his emotions behind his eyes, give me absolutely nothing, but he never called me names or sneered at me.
I didn’t realize he was protecting himself. I had no idea that he wanted me as badly as I wanted him. I’m not sure what I would have done had I known. Probably attempt to seduce him or something, embarrass myself even more than I already have, I’m sure.
Walking up the staircase to my place, I stop when I see the woman standing in front of the door. My breath hitches when I hear a man’s voice, a man’s voice that I recognize very well. So well that it sends a thrill of desire and excitement down my spine.
“It’s time for you to leave and never come back,” Baylor’s deep voice growls.
My mother’s spine straightens. She pops a hip out and takes a step forward. She is preparing for battle. This woman does love a good fight. I start to open my mouth to tell her to leave, or at least break this up, when she speaks.
“Who the fuck do you think you are? This is my daughter’s apartment. Get the hell out of my way.”
I take a step forward, then pause when Baylor replies, “I’m not going to call you a bitch, even though that’s exactly what you are. All I’m going to say is that I’m the one standing here in your daughter’s apartment, and I’m the one with a key. Not you.”
“You’re an asshole,” my mother snaps.
“Yeah, I am. But I’m the asshole in the apartment, not you. Do yourself a favor and leave.”
She leans forward slightly, her ass sticking out, and I’ve never been more tempted to lift my foot and kick her there—hard.
“You want to take on that train-wreck whore; be my guest. I’ll be back in a couple weeks when you’ve discovered that she’s not anything you want to stick your dick into any longer.”
Scrambling down the hallway, I hug the wall and try to stay in the shadows so she doesn’t see me. Her words ring in my head. That’s how she really sees me. But it’s not just her. That’s how everyone sees me.
A train wreck of a whore.
Someone he won’t want to stick his dick into any longer, and that’s about the long and short of it, all but the whore part. I am definitely not that, even if the rest of the world sees me that way.
And the world does. I know it does. It didn't use to bother me at all, but right now, it does.
It bothers me a lot because I did that to myself. I made myself seem that way, and I thought it didn’t matter, that it would only help me, not hurt me, but I was wrong. So damn wrong. And now I’m going to suffer the consequences.