Vintage Volume One Read Online Free PDF

voice shattered the silence.
    “Yeah.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You just need some quiet time?”
    “Yeah. Is it quiet out there?”
    “The band’s gone. So are all of the loud bitches with the huge tits.”
    “Thank God,” I said, unlocking the stall door and letting myself out. My eyes met hers, and I couldn’t help but think how lucky she was.
    She was gorgeous with her big brown doe eyes and straight nose and black hair cut into a blunt bob. Her hair was a different color every other week, but what made her lucky was the fact that she could just be anonymous. She didn’t have to ever worry that someone only wanted to befriend her because of who her dad was.
    She looked past me into the stall with the lid down over the seat. “You’ve just been sitting in here?”
    “I skipped my usual breaks today. I deserved it,” I said, faking like I was checking myself out in the mirror when in fact I didn’t give two shits what I looked like. I just didn’t want to look at Virginia’s prying eyes.
    “The store is a disaster. We’ve got a lot of clean up ahead of us.”
    “Better get started, then,” I muttered, pushing my way out the door.
    It was half past eleven when I started to feel the nerves tingling up my spine. Parker had told me that he would return around midnight.
    I wanted to see him again.
    Really.
    But I couldn’t do it—not to myself, and certainly not to Parker.
    I took the coward’s way out. Or maybe I was being a hero.
    It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I wasn’t going to face him again.
    “Tim, I have a raging headache. Is it okay if I go home?” I asked. “I’ll come in thirty minutes early in the morning to restock shirts.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Rox. Go home. Feel better.”
    “Thanks,” I whispered, rubbing my temple with my fingertip to make my fake headache appear real.
    I bolted out, got into the black Porche Cayenne my dad had insisted on buying me for my twenty-first birthday, and sped off toward home.
    I watched my rearview mirror, noticing a car behind me following closer than I liked. I signaled at my exit, and the car followed me. I drove through town toward home, and that car was immediately behind me the entire way.
    Nerves bundled in my abdomen. They always did when I watched someone behind me get off at the same exit as me and follow me for any length of time. Eventually the people I thought were following me usually turned off at another street, but this one didn’t.
    I made a series of random turns, hoping to lose them. I wasn’t dumb enough to drive home when someone was following me at nearly midnight.
    My heart raced as the car continued to tail me.
    I pulled my phone out of my purse to call someone for help.
    Maybe I was just being ridiculous. But maybe I wasn’t. Maybe my safety was at stake.
    It was too dark to see who it was or to determine what type of car it was. I kept driving, trying to figure out who I should call.
    Normally I would call my dad, but he was on his honeymoon in between tour dates. My mother was in another country.
    I’d lost every friend I ever had.
    I had no one.
    I could call Tim. Surely he’d still be at the store. Surely he’d help me.
    I could drive back to Vintage to see if this person continued to follow me.
    “Hilton” screamed in red letters at me up ahead. I made a sharp and sudden turn into the driveway leading up to the entrance, checking my mirror. The car who’d been tailing me continued going straight. I pulled into the entryway of the hotel, an area someone had once told me was called a porte cochere, and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I tried to steady the rampant beating of my heart.
    The exhale of my breathing exercise was cut short by a loud knock at my passenger side window. I jumped in my seat and then I lowered the window. “Good evening, ma’am. Checking in?”
    “N—no,” I stuttered.
    “Can I help you?”
    “I’m sorry. I’m in the wrong place and just needed