AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My gaze meets hers. Everyone in the room is watching the dog, but she’s watching me, lips plumped together in a slight frown, gaze hot. Laser-beam hot.
I say, “The tighter integration of business units will be incredible.”
Smuckers’s little legs pump happily.
“Is that a yes?” I ask him.
Her lips part in shock. Annoyance. Her throat turns a compelling shade of pink. I wonder idly if it ever goes red.
Still holding her gaze, I put my mouth to the side of his head. I give her my amused smile that seems to annoy her. “Who’s your daddy?”
“Uh!” Vicky arrows up and stalks over to me. “Not you!”
I feel her breath on my cheek as she takes him from my arms. She puts Smuckers back into his bed and clips him back up. Smuckers yips in protest.
Chapter Twelve
Vicky
What the hell!
I’m supposed to be the owner but somehow, Henry’s in control. Completely unbalancing me. Why did I think I was up to this?
I fold my arms tight over my chest like that’ll push down my confused emotions.
He’s a suit-and-tie guy, the epitome of rich, entitled suit-and-tie guys, a man who has already tried to screw me out of something. A dirty player who thinks he’s the king of the universe.
I tear my gaze from him, put my focus on Smuckers. “What’s that? Okay then.” I sigh. “While Smuckers appreciates your effort, Mr. Locke, you really just didn’t do it for him in the end. Smuckers votes no.”
“You’re voting no?” Mandy says, glaring at me, then she turns to Henry, expecting him to do something. I supposedly run this company, but everybody is always looking at Henry for everything.
“Smuckers votes no,” I say, needing to take some kind of control back. “Smuckers didn’t find the argument compelling. At all.”
Mandy stands. She’s mad. Everybody’s mad—their anger twirls my gut into a pretzel, but I stand there like I don’t care. They tried to push me around and I’m done being pushed around.
Never again.
“Can you articulate an actual reason?” Mandy asks in a barely controlled monotone. “Other than your being a jerk?”
“Let’s dial it back,” Henry says coolly. I don’t know whether he’s talking to me or her. Maybe both. He’s saying something about the software. A phased implementation, something.
I’m not hearing him past the rushing in my ears, the thickness in my throat.
The horrible girl, hated by all.
I’m back walking out of that police station, all the angry questions and cameras.
I’m in my bedroom, hated Vonda O’Neil, venturing onto Twitter and Facebook, wanting desperately to find somebody out there defending me, saying they believe me.
It would’ve meant so much.
The picture they’d always post of me that summer became iconic. It was one my mom took of me just before we’d gone out to dinner at Applebee’s the summer before. I was fifteen, standing against the hickory tree by the rusty fence, grinning like I’d never stop. I’d gotten straight A’s and that was our deal—straight A’s gets an Applebee’s dinner.
That was a good summer. It was just my mom and my sister and me, mostly—no skeevy boyfriends.
Mom was in a program at the time, and she had some kind of prescription that leveled her out. And I felt like, if I just kept being the best daughter ever, things would work out.
Staring out at the camera that night, I could’ve never imagined all of America would’ve ended up staring back at me, hating me just a year later.
