Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  And most of all, she understood. Not just that Will had been a dick (and he had). But also that it had been far too familiar. I had left New York to get away from that kind of behavior. The hot and cold thing was Theo’s special brand of cruelty, the kind that always had me second-guessing my best intentions. If I was hurt by something he did, it was because ultimately, I had brought it on myself. And if he said or did something awful, it was because I had done something first to earn it.

  It was the kind of sociopathic mood swings that escalated into shifts that were legitimately violent—the final one ending with me being treated in the hospital with stitches for a split lip, an ice pack over a black eye, and a rape kit for everything else. It had taken nearly a year of court appearances for my lawyer, an advocate from the YWCA, to help me put my ex behind bars, but in the end, I had been able to leave with a drained savings account and my dignity intact. A year of therapy with a women’s advocacy group had certainly helped me to understand that what had happened to me wasn’t my fault, not to mention helped me stay strong enough to endure a year-long trial at the same time. At least mostly.

  But if I was going to repeat the process, I had no one to blame but myself.

  “Seriously. Moody. Reclusive. Total asshole. You don’t need him. Sure you don’t want to join me for a glass of red?” Calliope teased through the phone, though she knew my response.

  I sighed while I blew on my toes. “Don’t think so, Cal. Hey, here’s something weird for you. The letter—it was sent from Benny Amaya.”

  “The manager?”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Weird, right?”

  “What the hell would Benny Amaya be doing sending death notices to a dude in the middle of nowhere?”

  “That’s my question. Anything you can find out? I was pretty blown away, and it’s just now occurring to me how crazy that is.”

  “Well, he did say he was from Connecticut, right? Maybe they were childhood friends or something like that. I don’t know, but I’ll ask around. Or…you could ask yourself if you’re ready to come home now.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Cal, I just got here.”

  “Boooo. You’ve been there for almost three weeks. Isn’t your mom’s house fixed yet?”

  I looked around the bare-bones interior of the shack. It was only one room, containing a double-sized bed, a small closet, a pullout loveseat, and a non-functioning sink. It was probably the most livable place on the property besides the main house, which was pathetic.

  “Not even close,” I said as I straightened my legs and admired the new red color on my toes. “I’ve got at least a few more months. Maybe more. And then I need to find a job, because that’s when I won’t be able to help with groceries anymore.”

  “Lady, you have a job. I can get you booked into clubs up and down the Eastern Seaboard like that. You know this. Come back.”

  “Callie, I had to come home. And not just for me!”

  She sighed. “Worth a shot. Then you probably won’t care then that Theo’s out.”

  My bones froze. As in turned to ice inside my body. A chill rushed over me, and I almost dropped the nail polish as I was screwing the cap back on.

  “Wh-what?” I asked.

  “Maggie, relax. You knew he was only going to do two months tops—that’s what the lawyer said. Slap on the wrist since you wouldn’t settle. No one was ever going to keep Max del Conte’s kid locked up for long.”

  In my lap, my hands shook. Out. He was out. I knew what she said was true, but I had been depending on having at least the summer to worry about what the world would feel like again with Theo free. After being locked up because of me.

  It made sense now. The texts weren’t from his friends at all. They were from him.

  “Breathe, girl,” Calliope’s voice crooned. Like a good best friend, she knew exactly what I was feeling. “Just breathe. You’re on the other side of the country. He’s not coming anywhere near you.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “I know.” I sat up again, ignoring the way the blood felt like it was rushing from my face. “I know. But you know there’s not a chance in hell I’m coming back to New York now, right?”

  Calliope sighed. “I know. But a girl has to try. You fought him once, babe. Chances are, he’ll just want to put it all behind him and move on. It shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your dreams.”

  “Maybe.”

  I got up and walked around the room, closing and locking all of the windows that had been left open to help it cool down. The shack heated up like a sauna during the day, so the circulating air was key to a good night’s sleep. But tonight, I was happy to sweat in my dreams. I’d rather have locked windows and melt a little than be comfortable and open to attack. I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight anyway.

  When I was finished, I turned off the light, curling up on top of my bed with the phone in my hand while Calliope complained about one of her clients. She would talk until I told her to stop, knowing that I needed the extra company in order to fall asleep. No one haunted my dreams like Theo’s angry face, and I had a feeling he’d be making an appearance tonight.

  “Hey, Cal?” I said sleepily as I watched the moon rise over the lake.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Thanks for being here. I love you.”

  “Love you too, babe. Anytime.”

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The noise, insistent and strong, permeated my dream of running up the West Side Highway. All the cars had been cleared off, and it was just me, sprinting up the eight-lane thoroughfare.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The noise came faster, waking me from my dream. I stared up at the rafters, listening for the sound again. But all I heard was the soothing ripples of the lake on the shore and the light call of a breeze in the pines.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I sat up, my heart choking in my throat, and jerked toward the door. It was a knocking, not a tapping. And it was very, very real.

  “W-who’s there?” I called out. Dammit. Mama’s gun was in the house, stowed in the safe in her closet. I knew better than to sleep out here alone, especially when my psychopathic ex was on the loose again. I knew better…didn’t I?

  “Maggie?”

  It took me a solid five seconds to register the voice as someone who wasn’t the person who haunted my dreams. It was a voice that, up until a few hours ago, I had still thrilled to hear, even when he was being a grouch. Someone who had only ever made me feel safe. Until he didn’t.

  “Will?” I asked. “Is—is that you?”

  “Yeah,” he said through the door. “Maggie, please. Can we talk?”

  Perhaps against my better judgment, I slid off the bed and padded to the door. I opened it to find Will leaning against the frame, dripping wet in nothing but his underwear. The moon was high, shining bright through the trees, casting every muscle he had in full relief.

  I gaped. “Did you swim here? At…” I checked my watch. “Three in the morning?”

  It was hard not to be distracted by the rivulets of water running down his gleaming skin. But somehow I managed not to stare. After all, I was too angry.

  “Where’s your buoy?” I demanded. “Do you know how dangerous it is to swim openly in the dark?”

  Will glanced over his shoulder to the empty lake. “There’s no one out there.”

  “Except the bass fishermen,” I said, gesturing outward to the water, where a few lights flashed at the far end. “They troll the edges, you know, late at night and early mornings when the fish are biting.”

  Suddenly, the fact of what he had done made me livid. I had been cast as an idiot. The daughter of a drunk. A slut. A klutz. And yet here he was, throwing caution to the wind like it meant nothing.

  “What were you thinking?” I demanded. “You could have been turned to hamburger by someone’s propeller. You think drunk people on the lake don’t ever take their boats for joy rides? Trust me, I grew up here—I’v
e been on enough of them. Fuck, and you call me reckless?!”

  “Maggie.”

  I stopped my rant at the sound of his deep voice. He had that way—a quiet authority that always seemed to be able to cut through my chaos. And right now I hated him for it.

  “What?” I gritted out.

  The hand at the doorway gripped hard enough to turn his knuckles white, casting a long line of tension up his arm and through his torso. But his gaze remained straight, looking through me with honesty and intention.

  “It was the quickest way to you,” he said quietly, meaningfully. “I didn’t care about anything else, Lil. I just needed to see you. I needed to apologize for what I did.”

  My mouth dropped. Whatever I thought he was going to say, it wasn’t that.

  “Can I come in?” Will asked.

  He shivered as a breeze floated off the water. It was then that it occurred to me how uncomfortable he must be. The shack was still horrifically warm, but outside the temperature was hovering around fifty degrees. Will was in next to nothing, his wet hair lying in thick, dripping ropes over his shoulders, skin pebbled with the chill.

  But the shack suddenly felt suffocating. And I wasn’t interested in being trapped with a wet monster in a hundred and fifty square feet.

  I grabbed a beach towel hanging behind the door and tossed it to him.

  “Take this,” I said as I slipped on some shoes and pulled a hoodie off the coat rack. I stepped outside and shut the door. “Follow me.”

  The moonlight was our only guide as I led Will around the shack, past the fire pit where he’d heard me play the guitar, up a steep, rocky hill, and back down a pile of boulders. I knew this route by heart. I’d been making this midnight trek since I was a kid, needing to escape my mother’s chaos. I could hear Will struggling to find his footing on the dark, pine-needle-covered rocks, but he didn’t complain—just followed me doggedly over the terrain until we wove through a few pine trees to reach a large, flat rock about the dimensions of a king-size mattress that stuck out over the lake.

  “I called this ‘Moon Rock’ when I was little,” I told him as I climbed out onto the stone. “It’s a good place to think. And talk.”

  Will glanced nervously around at the dark water sloshing on both sides of us. “It seems very…exposed.”

  I plopped down on the granite. “You want to talk? This is where I’m comfortable. Take it or leave it, Baker.”

  His mouth twitched. “Fine. You win.”

  We sat there together for a while, looking up at the stars. The night was clear enough that the Milky Way was smeared across the sky’s canvas, a whirling array of stars and blurred light that made me dizzy if I looked at it for too long. But I didn’t close my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lil,” Will said quietly. “So fucking sorry about tonight. For all of it.”

  I didn’t respond, just doggedly kept stargazing.

  “There’s nothing to excuse my behavior. I was a complete jackass. I shouted at you when I should have been thanking you. I fucked you when we should have been making love.”

  “Actually,” I put in. “I thought the sex was pretty good. Unexpected, but good. I’ve never been opposed to a good, old-fashioned fucking under the right conditions.”

  Will glanced at me sideways, his mouth quirked to the side. “Good to know.” His big shoulders relaxed, but just slightly. “Still…I didn’t want it to be like that. Not our first time. Maybe not any time. I was using you to release all the rage and pain I was feeling. It’s abusive, is what it is. And then I told you—fuck—I made it sound like you didn’t matter, when the truth is…the truth is that these days, you’re the only thing that matters.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and I stared at my hands, folded in my lap. What was I supposed to say to that? The words were exactly right, but he was…

  “Wrong.” Will was saying. “It was so crazy wrong I don’t expect you to forgive me for it, but I needed you to know that I’m sorry. I was sorry the second I closed the door. I…” He drifted off, worrying the edges of the towel in his hands while he stared out at the lake. “It was killing me.”

  And then he turned to face me, and his eyes reflected the light shining off the lake. They were wide, open, and fierce.

  “The thing is, Lil,” he said. “You mean everything to me. No matter what happens, what we are or aren’t, you are so much more to me than a…you know. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m breathing again, for the first time in years. You make me feel like the world is possible again. Like life is possible.” He pushed both hands over his face, like he was trying to wipe away the tension cut into his features. “For a moment, I just couldn’t handle it. But the second you were gone, it was like I’d cut off the air I needed to breathe. That’s what you are to me, already. A necessity, like air, water, food. And like an idiot, I cut off my own supply. I suffocated myself with my own damn pillow.”

  He looked at me again, eyes shot with fear. His skin still glimmered, slightly damp, almost sparkling in the night.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Lily pad,” he said softly. “And I lost you tonight, didn’t I?”

  We held each other’s gazes for a long time. Minutes, maybe, while the water ebbed and flowed around us. But eventually, I spoke. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.

  Was it wrong for me to say this? Would it be my fault if it happened again? Was I doomed to bring this kind of behavior onto myself, again and again?

  I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I cared.

  “No,” I said softly. “No, you didn’t lose me.”

  Immediately, it was like a weight had been lifted from both of us. We sagged into each other, and Will’s head dropped to my shoulder. He inhaled deeply, like a drowning man in need of a breath.

  “Thank God,” he murmured. “Thank fucking God.”

  “But, Will?” I asked.

  He sat back up.

  “Never again,” I said as clearly as I could. “I’m not kidding. You ever treat me like that again, I’m gone. I don’t care how much we n-need each other.” I stumbled over the word, astounded by its truth. I didn’t have to be weak. It didn’t have to be my fault. He’d said what he needed to say. And now I was too. “I won’t be with someone who treats me like nothing. Ever again.”

  His eyes narrowed at its implication of the word again. I hadn’t told him much about Theo, but Will didn’t miss a beat.

  “Never again,” he vowed, keeping his gaze pinned to mine. “On my life, Lil. I promise.”

  “One more thing,” I said as we turned back to the lake.

  “Anything,” he murmured.

  “I want to know why you were so angry,” I said. “I…I deserve the truth, Will. All of it. No more hiding.”

  His shoulders tensed slightly, but eventually he nodded.

  “Can I…do you mind if I hold you while I say it?” he asked.

  I paused.

  “Please,” he said. “It’s…easier to talk when you’re close.”

  I sighed. But I couldn’t deny it. As mad as I still was, a dam had broken between us over the last few days. My body yearned for him even if my rational mind was telling me to stop.

  My body won.

  “Okay,” I said. “But no funny business, Baker. I’m still mad at you.”

  Will chuckled as he helped me settle back between his long legs. He pulled my back against his front, keeping the towel between us so that the wet of his boxers wouldn’t seep through my pajamas.

  I relaxed against him, enjoying the feel of his strong arms wrapped around my front, creating a sort of harness with his limbs. It was funny—when Theo held me like this, I always felt trapped. He would do it when we watched movies or something like that, and wouldn’t let go for hours at a time. His touch was forceful, like he was holding me back from something. Will, on the other hand, kept his arms in a loose lock, more like he was warding the world away rather than keeping me from it. I didn’t feel caged with him. I
only felt secure.

  “I saw you play once,” he said quietly. “In New York.”

  I jerked. “What?” Every time he divulged something, the man continued to shock me.

  “It was why I ran off that night when you played by the fire. You…fuck. I recognized your song, Maggie. I heard it when you opened for Gillian Keller.”

  I blinked. “You were at that show?”

  That was the show that had opened up my career. I went from being a waitress and playing coffee shops to going on a small tour with one of alt-country’s biggest names. I had come home to consistent bookings up and down the East Coast for over a year. The experience had allowed me to record an EP. Helped me gain access to better clubs, even do a few more small tours. It had made the entire showcase possible, even after my life had come crashing down.

  Will nodded. “I lived in the city for a while. Benny was my—my coworker. But that life, the business, all of it…it wasn’t good for me. I used to do a lot of stupid shit, and eventually it caught up with me. And my family.”

  He shifted slightly, then pulled me closer. I inhaled, enjoying the warmth of him, even in the chill of the night, and the clean smell of his body.

  “You were amazing,” he whispered. “Like a siren. You played that same song, and the entire crowd was transfixed. And I remember thinking…how badly I wanted to meet you in person. I actually tried to get backstage, but some bad stuff went down.”

  I nodded. It was a good night for me, but the concert itself had been a mess.

  “It was such a weird night,” I said. “I was insanely nervous. I honestly don’t know if I would have been able to go on, but actually…oh my God, I almost forgot about this.”

  “Forgot about what?”

  I frowned. “It’s hard to remember, actually. But there was this weird guy who snuck into my dressing room before I went in. He was hiding out from some people. An addict, he said. He was kind of nuts. Hid behind the screen, but wouldn’t let me see him at all.” I turned around with a smile. “Kind of like you, actually.”