by Lily Paradis
* * * *
Volition
a novel
Copyright © 2015 by Lily Paradis
In Association with Empire Books
Published by Lily Paradis and Elia Sayre
[email protected]
www.lilyparadis.com
Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations
Editing by Katie Molloy of Indra Editing
Proofreading by Jovana Shirley of Unforeseen Editing
Print and eBook Design by JT Formatting
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
License Notes
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Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Epilogue
Volition Playlist
Other books by Lily Paradis
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For anyone who can’t let go of their Jesse.
“My will is mine... I shall not make it soft for you.”
—Aeschylus, Agamemnon
DEAR READER,
I hate love triangles. I swore I would never write one. You might hate them too. But I wrote this book for myself. It was far more cathartic for me to write than it’ll ever be for you to read. That's why I'm not changing anything to make it more appealing, or understandable to the masses, because that wouldn't do justice to Tate or myself. If you want to understand this book, you’ll have to work for it. You’ll have to think. You’ll have to let go of what you want. I'm not going to trim it up neatly and put it into a genre box so it can be ripped apart when it doesn't exactly fit.
I’m not going to give you a bubbly, insanely likeable main character. Traditionally, when male narrators are unlikeable, they’re considered edgy, romantic, and endlessly alluring. When a female narrator is the same way, she’s just deemed a bitch. We all have our quirks, and it just so happens that Tate McKenna is stranger than most. It was difficult to make her relatable even through her actions, and I hope I succeeded even in a small way. If you don’t like her at all, I don’t blame you.
I thought long and hard about not publishing this book at all, because this book is my horcrux. It is a piece of my soul in ink and paper.
What happens in this book isn’t exactly a “love triangle” to me, but it may seem that way to you. That’s the funny thing about perception. I will never be able to experience the words the way you will, and you’ll never see them the way I do.
Regardless, I hope you see something of yourself in them. It’s not meant to be just a story. It’s meant to make you reflect. I wish I could write something universal, but that’s just not possible. I hope that even if you don’t like it, you still feel it. Even a tiny, shred of a feeling would do.
I like to do everything deliberately. If you’re asking a question, that’s valid. I want you to ask it. If there’s a reason it’s not answered, it’s meant to make you think. Everything in this book is done intentionally so that the events unfold in the right way. If anything feels wrong to you, it means it is so right for this book, and that's how I want it to feel.
If you’ve never heard of the iceberg theory, I encourage you to look it up. Essentially, there’s always more below the surface than what you see. I love finding meaning in the smallest things. I wrote Volition this way.
There will be people who get it and what that means in Volition. They’re going to get it, and it’s going to be like a hammer to the chest. If you’re one of those, I want you to email me, and I want to hear about your self-reflection. I want to hear about your Jesse.
If just one person this and feels the catharsis I felt while writing about anything in their life, maybe not even a Jesse or a Hayden, then that’s why this book exists, and that’s why I chose to share it with you.
Now
MY NAME IS Tate McKenna, and I am a coward. I like to think that I’m being brave by picking up my life and moving across the country, but the glass of scotch in my hand says otherwise.
I haven’t eaten yet today, except for the peanuts that the flight attendant handed me when she delivered my drink. Her eyes were filled with pity, but her electric-blue eye shadow made me think that this should be the other way around. She had eyeliner haphazardly smeared all over her lower lid, and I wasn’t sure she w
as aware of it.
I laugh to myself because I remember the days when my grandmother would accuse me of looking like a panda when I ran out of the house to drive around with Colin. My own eyeliner would melt in the summer heat, but I didn’t care. I wanted my eyes to be as dark as my soul.
I nurse my drink and swallow one of the ice cubes. I can’t help but wince.
“Everyone knows you don’t put ice in scotch,” a deep voice echoes my exact thoughts.
I don’t look up immediately because I’m not entirely sure that it’s real. My conscience may now be voiced by a man.
“Everyone, except for her.”
I look up now to see where the voice is coming from.
There’s a man sitting across the aisle from me, and I don’t know how I didn’t notice him before. I’m drunk though.
No, maybe not drunk. Tipsy, at least.
His face is half obscured by a fully unfolded newspaper. This must be why I didn’t see him—that, or a multitude of other reasons, including my drink and the life I’d left back in Charleston.
He doesn’t move the newspaper, so I can only see his green eyes and dark hair. It’s styled up and back, which makes him look sharp and sophisticated—almost European. Below the newspaper, I can see that he’s wearing black suit pants with beautiful shoes. I’m sure they’re Italian leather.
I almost don’t want him to put the paper down. I like this mystery of a man and what he represents. I haven’t seen the lips that spoke to me, but I could close my eyes and listen to the melodic sound forever.
I tip my drink back and finish it.
His graceful hands fold the paper down to reveal the rest of his face. As he does it, I notice he’s not wearing a wedding ring. I glance down at my own left hand. I’m not either.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but his classically handsome face does not disappoint.
I put my own visage in my hands and sigh.
He’s gay.
He has to be.
My best friend Catherine warned me that all the good men in New York are either taken or gay. This man isn’t officially taken, so I’m sure he’s the latter.
The seat next to me is empty, except for the glass of scotch I just finished. I let it plop down on the leather, and now, the last few drops are spilling out.
I try to forget this man. I’m going to a city where all the men are taken or gay on purpose because I don’t want to think about them at all.
That’s made impossible when he crosses the aisle and slides into the seat next to me. I want to warn him that he’s just gotten scotch all over his designer pants, but I don’t. There’s suddenly an apple-sized lump in my throat.
I don’t acknowledge him, and he doesn’t say anything. I look out my window and see the sun glinting off the Empire State Building. I take a deep breath and sit back against my seat once I can no longer see it.
My eyes are shut, and I’m breathless because I’m so close to my fresh start. The Empire State Building is my shining obelisk of hope.
“What’s your name?”
I feel his voice more than I hear it, and I don’t want to answer him. I don’t want to let him in, but there’s something seductive about that voice that seeps into every pore in my body.
I slowly open my eyes and look at him.
“Tate,” I say against my will. My Southern accent creeps in, and I want to bite my tongue off. I need to work on eliminating it completely. “Tate McKenna. And you are?”
“Hayden,” he says. His smile thrills through and through.
Stop, I think. Stop. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be sucked under his spell. But I am.
He’s like a raging river, and I’m swirling in the rapids.
“Hayden Rockefeller.”
Then
I WAS IN second grade the first time I met Jesse Elliott.
My teacher had told us all to bring our favorite books to school that fateful Wednesday, and I’d brought Bridge to Terabithia. While other kids my age were still reading picture books, I felt snooty for bringing my chapter book.
My teacher, Miss Rhodes, asked me if I was sure I wanted to bring that particular tome to Reading Buddies.
I hugged it to my chest and nodded. I was unsure as to why her brow was knit together as she whispered to the student teacher about me.
I would later learn that my book wasn’t quite normal and didn’t consist of happy sunshine and rainbows like other books children should be reading. This one was about a girl who drowned.
I shrugged and walked single file down the hallway with the rest of my class. I was last in the line because I hated walking in the middle. I definitely didn’t want to be the line leader because everyone would make fun of how fast I walked. I had to walk at the end, so I could keep pace with everyone else.
I had to seem normal.
My grandmother had told me I was always in too much of a hurry. My grandfather would say I was just different. He was always more tolerant of me, but he never loved or nurtured me.
We walked through the library, so kids who had forgotten to bring books could pick one out. I stood in the middle of the large room and looked up. It was the atrium of the building with a glass ceiling, and light flooded every inch of it. It was like heaven itself telling me that this was where I belonged—in this place with all these books.
I was tempted to stay and not go to Reading Buddies, but when we’d had reading groups in the library last Wednesday, I refused to leave, and I’d been taken to the principal’s office. I didn’t want that again. It wasn’t that I was afraid of Mrs. Trumble. I was afraid of the disapproval on my grandmother’s face when she would get the call after school, explaining what I had done.
I was always letting her down.
“Why can’t you be more like your sister?” she would say, exasperated, as she poured herself a drink. Then, she would repeat it, “Why can’t you be more like Cece?”
Then Cece would give me a look like she wished she could help me, but our grandmother was a hurricane, and I was one little raindrop.
“Tate,” Miss Rhodes called, beckoning me, “it’s time to go.”
I was being dragged away from the only place I felt safe, but I hugged the book tighter to my chest and followed the rest of the class out the door.
Miss Rhodes led us to a first grade classroom and explained to us that we were going to start a new program where students from different grades would be reading buddies. Since we were older, we would choose the books and read to the younger students.
My heart sank into my stomach, and I bit my thumbnail nervously.
I would have to read to someone else? What if that person didn’t understand? What if my book bored them? What if they wanted to read Sesame Street or The Muppets instead? I shuddered when I thought about The Muppets.
All the students in my class seemed to have immediately walked over and paired off with someone in the other class.
How was I supposed to know that it was up to me to find a partner?
I pulled my long blonde hair around my face like a curtain. It was too long for my small body, but I wanted it that way. My hair was just like my mom’s, and I wouldn’t let it go. Maybe I could just sit in a corner and read by myself until the hour was up.
I saw an empty corner and looked around. Miss Rhodes wasn’t paying any attention because she was chatting with another teacher.
I beelined for the corner like it was the last cone in the ice cream truck on a hot summer day.
There was a little house in this corner, and I decided it would be in my best interest to crawl inside in case anyone saw me sitting alone and tried to pair me off with someone—or worse, made me a third.
I climbed inside and started reading, happy as a clam.
Before I could even open my book, I saw a brown head of hair popping through the door of the playhouse.
I threw my book down. “This is my spot,” I told the intruder.
It was a boy.
He di
dn’t say a word as he looked up at me. He just stared.
“Fine,” I said. “You can stay as long as you don’t talk.”
His mouth was slightly open now, but he still didn’t say a word.
I opened my book and fell into Terabithia.
I sort of felt bad that I was making him sit in silence, so I started reading aloud.
When the hour was up, we both crawled out of the house, and I went back to my classroom like it had never happened.
Now
ROCKEFELLER.
I roll the name around in my mouth and visualize the building that carries the name.
I eye the man in front of me and wonder if his parents are wizards for naming their son so perfectly.
Hayden.
A beautiful name for a beautiful man. Dangerous but classic at the same time.
I laugh faintly because everyone always thinks I have a boy’s name, but his could be both also.
I’m too drunk for this, and my head is spinning. It doesn’t help that he is an intoxicating person. Maybe he’s not. Maybe I’m just attracted to him, and the alcohol is making me stupid. Maybe I’m just plain stupid even without plane cocktails. After all, I’m running from my past for reasons that many might deem insignificant. Most people just live with their mistakes, but I can’t.
Not this one at least. Not him.
Hayden brushes my long hair off my neck, and I’m shocked at his audacity, but I don’t move away like I should. He touches me like he knows me. Does he know me? I think I’d remember him.
I love it when people play with my hair, but it’s a shame no one ever does. No one ever gets that close to me. I can’t remember the last time someone was this close to me.
Something in the pit of my stomach tells me I shouldn’t be letting him do this, but the other part tells me to run straight from my past and into the arms of Hayden Rockefeller.
I breathe in, and he fills my senses.
I really hope he’s not gay.
Then
IT WAS A Saturday night that ruined my life.
Cece was staying the night at a friend’s house, and I went out to dinner with my parents.