Page 1 of Breaking All The Rules
CHAPTER ONE
Beatrice Archer needed sugar.
She didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, or what season of Supernatural she was up to, but she knew she needed sugar.
Now. In the worst kind of way.
Bea didn’t care in what form it was delivered—soda, cookies, cake, candy. Hell, she’d eat it granulated straight from the packet. When it came to getting sugar right now, she wasn’t fussy. And if there’d been a single grain of it left in her apartment, anywhere, she’d have sniffed it out.
But there was none to be found.
Which meant she’d have to venture outside, because there was no such thing as Uber Eats in this little rural pocket of far, far eastern Colorado that she was temporarily calling home. Nope, in Credence, population 2,134, there wasn’t even a taxi service. No way could she do something as fancy as pick up her phone, tap on an app, and have sugar delivered to her in whatever form she wanted.
Doughnuts. Ice cream. Waffles…
Bea’s salivary glands and her stomach both made themselves known simultaneously. God, she’d kill for some waffles right now. With maple syrup and sprinkles. And sliced banana. Because she should probably eat some kind of fruit already.
Right, so…she needed to get her ass out of bed and go outside. Finally. After two weeks holed away in her new apartment—if one could call a cramped studio over a coffee shop with a Murphy bed and a shower the size of a test tube an apartment—it was time to explore. At least to Annie’s and back, anyway. She’d noticed the diner on the way in, and if the sign on top boasting of the best pies in the county was anywhere near accurate, then the route between her apartment and the diner could become well-worn.
But would it be open? Diners usually opened early, right?
What time is it, anyway?
Bea peered at the blinds on the opposite wall, which covered the small window just above the sink that overlooked the main street of Credence. She’d pulled the blinds down the second she’d moved in, and there they’d stayed, keeping everything inside nice and secluded and dark except for the bleed of sunshine around the edges.
If the sun was up, then Annie’s was open. Now, where the hell was her phone?
She set aside her laptop and searched, lifting up pillows and looking under her duvet. All she found were a scrunched-up paper towel, an empty soda can, an almost-empty-except-for-a-few-burned-ones-on-the-bottom bag of microwave popcorn, and a couple of gossip magazines.
Damn. She really needed to clean some of this up.
Glancing over the side of the bed, she spied her phone on the floor next to an empty bottle of wine and an empty Cheetos packet. When she snatched it up, the screen came to life—nine thirty a.m. And only 3 percent battery left. Great. The charger was only two inches from where the phone had been all night. When had she ever forgotten to charge her phone?
Bea swung her legs out of bed and slid her feet into a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. Why was it still so tits-freezingly cold in Eastern Colorado at the end of March? It was practically bikini weather in Southern California. She swayed a little as she stood, probably from how infrequently she’d actually been upright recently.
Maybe from the can of beer she’d consumed when she’d woken earlier.
Stretching, she groaned a little at the niggles in her neck and back. All this lying around on a mattress with several springs missing was screwing with her lumbar spine. Then she headed for the kitchen, stepping around the coffee table situated in front of the two-seater couch pushed up against the wall, and dodged multiple articles of clothing strewn about as she made her way to the sink.
She squinted against the light as she got closer, then located the bottle of Tylenol next to the sink full of dirty dishes, cracked the lid open, and shook two into her hand. Grabbing the closest drinking implement—an empty wineglass that must have had some red it in at one point, given the residue in the bottom and the purple ring on the laminate—she shoved it under the faucet, filled it, and swallowed the pills down with the resultant pink water.
Bea glanced at the sink as she tried to find a place for it, then shoved it back down on the purple ring when she realized there was nowhere to put it. Adding a glass might upset the delicate balance to the tower of dirty dishes. She really needed to do something about that tower. Because she was pretty sure she’d used the last clean fork last night.
Well, she’d put that on her cleaning to-do list. Or maybe she’d just buy more forks.
But first—sugar.
Turning away from the window, she headed back in the direction of the bed, dodging the clothing again. She needed to do some laundry after she’d taken care of the sugar craving, because she only bought fourteen pairs of underwear. And no, she didn’t know that because she was one of those people who kept mental inventories of their underwear, but because she’d bought two packs of day-of-the-week underwear specifically for hiding away.
She’d left all that pretty, frilly, sexy—aka scratchy, prickly, constrictive—crap behind in her LA apartment, with all her stilettos and pencil skirts that men went gaga for, because she wanted to be comfy for once in her damn life and not subject her butt to more flossing than her teeth.
Bea hadn’t been a total heathen—she had purchased the underwear from Peter Alexander—but for once, she had been prepared to sacrifice exquisite luxury fabrics for soft cotton comfort, even if it did mean walking around with the day of the week stamped across her ass. The added bonus was actually knowing which day of the week it was, given she no longer lived by a strict daily routine.
Not that she’d been particularly diligent about wearing them in order.
Looking over her shoulder now, she pulled on the band of her sweats to discover Tuesday emblazoned across her ass. But it could be Thursday for all she knew. Hell…it felt like Wednesday. It probably should be Friday, though, if she’d been here for—
Bea’s stomach growled loudly.
