Free Barbie World (Baby Doll Series) by Heidi Acosta Page B

alone like I should. It has been so long since we spoke and then, when she finally starts to come around, she clams back up, refusing to let anyone in. Well, I am done with that shit.
    I jerk the car off the road and slam it into park. Another action that would piss Katie off, I can hear her complaining now in my head. ” Dylan my car. Dylan she is a whore. Dylan… ” Dust rolls by the window and I shake the nagging voice from my head, focusing on what I really want.
    “What are you trying to say? That what we had didn’t mean anything? That what we had wasn’t—”
    She cuts me off, filling in what she thinks I need to hear. “What do you want me to say? That what we had was beyond words? That you made me feel things that I never felt before? That you scared the shit out of me, but at the same time, made me happier than anything or anyone has ever made me feel? That I didn’t know what happiness felt like until I met you?” I can see the walls beginning to crack around her and I know that I am almost in. I am almost back to that guarded place I want to be in so bad, but she quickly rebuilds those walls and shuts me out. “Because I can’t, Dylan. I can’t say that. I can’t risk everything again and I will not. If you were my true friend, you would not ask that of me.” She opens the car door, grabbing her sandals, and climbs out.
    Forget that. She is not getting off that easy. I am out of the car, running after her to where she is walking away from me. I am not going to just let her walk out like that. No. I am here. She can’t walk away from me. “Where are you going? You’re just going to run away from this?” I shout, throwing my hands in the air. I am desperate to have her back.
    “I am going anywhere you are not,” she throws at me. She looks frazzled, on the brink of breaking down. “When I am around you, you make me lose my head. I don’t have sense when it comes to you. I feel like I am going crazy. So yeah, I am just going to run away,” she shouts at me.
    “Barbie, I need you,” I say in a pathetic and desperate attempt to keep her. I cannot let her walk out again, not when I am so close to her. Maybe it is sick and really messed up, but I need her. Like I said, it is an addiction and I have to feed the angry beast growing inside of me. “Barbie. Will you just stop walking?!” I shout, but she keeps walking, so I race to catch up to her.
    “Dylan, last night I was drunk and fucked up from the memories. You caught me at a moment of weakness.” A moment of weakness, maybe on the surface, but deep down, there was more. Besides, she was sober when she was with me; I saw it in her eyes. Maybe I took advantage of the situation, but I felt her desire to be with me as badly as I needed to be with her.
    “That is bull and you know it. That was not a moment of weakness. You wanted to be with me as badly as I wanted to be with you. That is the truth and that is what you’re running from. The truth. Because, hell, sometimes the truth is scary. It is scaring the hell out of me right now, but I am not running from it.” She doesn’t respond, she just turns and starts to walk way again and like a puppy I follow her.
    She holds her shoes in her hand as she walks down the dirt road. Her long, tan legs sticking out of her cut off jean shorts as the red dust snakes up her ankles with each step. I reach out, grabbing her bare arm and I am almost knocked to my ass at the sparks that emit off her skin. I can feel them coursing through my very own veins. We are one. She stops, feeling it, too.
    “I can’t lose you again.” I turn her so she is facing me.
    For a moment, I can see the beauty of the world around us in her eyes. The deep, rich, red earth that lines the pot hole covered road. Green moss covered trees heavy with the summer heat that umbrella the road. The wind creasing the branches and my own skin, it tugs at her hair that is illuminated by the sun that peaks through the blanketed world we