Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  I couldn’t lose another.

  I’d said nothing to him on the way back, but I wasn’t a fool. That didn’t give me any bit of power. He’d stolen it the moment I’d urged him to go further.

  Outside the Swan Swell after-party was in effect in the gardens, the trill of laughter and music floated in through one of my windows.

  My dress had been made months before and once again required aid to put on, but Story still wasn’t anywhere to be found. I refused to let Theo help me get dressed again. I’d learned my lesson. So, I tugged on a black, plunging-neck dress with a lace bodice that hugged me much too well for this kind of party. It had a sheer black-lace stomach and a flowing black velvet skirt, with two high slits up my legs.

  The Swan Swell dress code was a strict white.

  What-the-fuck-ever. I guess I was going to officially embrace my role as the black swan.

  I had my leg propped on my chaise, clasping the strap on my ankle, when I saw it. My dress had fallen away, the slit showing the oval bruise on my thigh. Light, but it would darken.

  Just say it.

  I couldn’t breathe, heat crawled up my neck, consuming my oxygen. I should hate him. I should. I shouldn’t wonder what it would feel like to have his marks elsewhere visible, for everyone to see.

  He’d treated me like dirt.

  Stepped on me with his fucking shoe.

  And I… liked it?

  I wish I could say there’s nothing left in our relationship, but that would be a lie. Theo and I are inverse, a dark, twisted version of love. We’re still connected, but not through sweet words, through torment and ache. Theo is still inside me. He’s still in my heart.

  Now he’s just determined to break it.

  I touched the bruise just as Theo’s bored voice drifted in: “Hurry up, Reject.”

  Theo was looking at his phone when I came to the door, but he looked up at the sound. He all but froze.

  “What?” His silence made me uneasy, almost as much as the foreign look in his eyes. I fought the urge to fist the velvet skirt of my dress.

  Apathy returned, and he shoved his phone in the inner pocket of his suit.

  Theo was divine in a tux. I’d never had a problem with our guards matching our clothing to blend in, but then I’d never had Theo as a guard. I thought casual Theo was gorgeous, but it was nothing to him in a tux.

  I still wasn’t used to seeing Theo so dressed up. He’d come to parties with me in the past, but like everything else with us, I’d had to sneak him in.

  It was perfectly tailored to his tall, lean build, and his bedhead brown hair made him look casually elegant.

  “Trying to catch flies?” he asked wryly.

  I blinked and closed my mouth. I hadn’t realized I’d been staring, but Theo watched me with a smirk. I rolled my eyes, shoving past him and making sure to elbow him hard, not speaking the entire way to the garden.

  When we reached the garden, he stood beside me, just a little behind, like the good bodyguard he pretended he was.

  In the garden, women were dressed in flowing white dresses with feathery white fans, and swans floated in the fountains—PETA loved this party. There was an empty seat at the table where Grandpa would have been seated, I noted with an ache.

  The ocean was dark. Twinkling lights floated like fireflies. Swans glowed in the backlit fountain and feathered their wings, drops of water flying as diamonds before disappearing into the night.

  By the maze, hidden somewhat but the tall hedges, I spotted servants setting up fireworks. If there’s one thing a Crowne loves, it’s fireworks. We do them all summer long, culminating in a huge show at our Fourth party.

  “I thought you would’ve pulled an Abby by now,” Theo said quietly. No one would’ve known he was talking to me. “You know, started a scene, thrown a few priceless vases.”

  I looked at him out of the side of my eyes, then back at the party.

  He took a drink, then paused, looking at his water. “Did you put salt in my drink?”

  A small smile curved my lips.

  I had.

  “Your revenge is very Home Alone.”

  It wasn’t my revenge, of course, but I couldn’t resist the urge when he’d left his glass unattended. There’d been a time when he’d done the same to me. I’d told him I’d get him back.

  That was a month before Gemma… I never got the chance.

  Anguish strangled my heart.

  “That’s not even clever…” He pulled out an ice cube, shaking off stray water. “I did it first, Abby.”

  My eyes popped, but before I could even think about the fact he remembered our pranks, ice was pressed against my lower back, dripping a cold trail. I tilted my head to see. His hand had disappeared inside the open back of my dress, and his hand must be holding the ice cube.

  I shifted, the spot where he pressed burning cold.

  Theo arched a brow. “Something wrong?”

  I refused to capitulate, instead focusing on the empty chair where my grandfather would have sat.

  Grandpa was the one person who paid attention to my Christmas list, the only one who checked in on me after another tabloid fiasco. I thought he was my constant. In the end, though, Theo only proved what I already knew, love is conditional. Some people were obvious about their strings, but everyone has them. If you love someone, it’s only a matter of time until they take it away.

  As if she knew I was thinking about parental neglect, my mom appeared. Dressed to the nines as always in a bespoke, flowing white dress that may as well have been haute couture.

  She eyed my outfit. “What are you wearing?”

  I swallowed, the ice dripping down my ass, sliding deeper. “A dress.”

  Her frown deepened. “Sarcasm isn’t clever or cute, Abigail.”

  “But it…” Melted ice inched closer and closer. “Is…” Farther down between my lips. “Efficient.”

  Theo laughed, so low only I heard him. He glided the melting cube down my dress, hand slipping inside my panties, along my ass, until he had the ice pressed cold to my lips.

  “And where is your fan?” my mom asked.

  “Uh…” I couldn’t focus, looking around, wondering if people could see what was happening. Theo stared forward, at my back like the good bodyguard he was pretending to be, meanwhile he was spreading me wide with a freezing-cold ice cube.

  I focused on not making a scene.

  If I moved, Theo would win. If I moved, Mom would know.

  “My what?” I breathed as the cube spread me wider, frigid cold. His fingers hadn’t touched me, but I was too aware we were separated only by slowly melting water. Theo Hound, who’d once made dirty promises and now promised to ruin me, was millimeters away from my most private of places.

  “Your fan.” My mother’s perfectly plucked brows caved in disappointment.

  Theo started to press the cube inside me.

  I jumped forward, breaking contact. I could breathe again. I waved my black-feathered fan in Mom’s face, forcing her to step back, needing a distraction myself.

  Theo Hound’s fingers had almost been inside me.

  “Honestly!” she said, fixing unseen flyaways in her updo. “Have you spoken with your grandfather?”

  “My… my grandfather?”

  It was a perfectly innocent question. Everyone knew Dad and I had the swan tradition, and with him gone, Grandpa had continued it. But I couldn’t answer the question.

  After everything with Theo, I’d forgotten about earlier. My grandpa. The rose. For over a year I’d been relentlessly harassed. First it was social media. After blocking him, it was emails. I could only block so many of those. Then it was letters. Then it was strange coincidences. A single gilded rose waiting on the hood of my car. Another rose waiting for me at my favorite boutique.

  People like me can’t go to the police because “a Crowne doesn’t call 911, they call their lawyer.” The first time I heard that was on my fifth birthday—or, rather, remember hearing it.
<
br />   This was the closest I’d been to the person who left the rose; usually it’d been there for hours. An icky feeling lurked in my gut. What had he planned? What if Theo hadn’t been there?

  My gaze collided with Theo just as he dropped the nearly melted ice cube in his mouth.

  His tongue swirled around the ice, and heat seized my stomach. Theo was tasting me. I didn’t give him permission to learn that secret part of me, but like every other torment, he’d taken it anyway.

  Now he forced me to wonder what his lips would feel like, his tongue doing to me what they did to the cube. He fucking knew it, too, as a wicked grin curved his beautiful lips.

  “Abigail.” My mother’s cold, irritated voice drew me back. “Did you hear a word I said?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Sorry.”

  She clicked her tongue, eyes narrowing.

  “Your fiancé’s mother has joined us tonight.” She gestured to a plump woman wearing a flowing, feathery white dress, her light-brown hair piled high with more feathers.

  “Be on your best behavior, and do make an effort to introduce yourself. Eleanora will want to know who exactly she’s getting as a daughter.”

  For a moment I’d allowed myself to forget I was engaged to a man I didn’t know.

  I swallowed. “Of course.”

  With a deep exhale through her nostrils, my mother walked away.

  Mom wasn’t gone a minute before Theo’s hot breath was on my ear. “I always wondered what you tasted like.”

  He slowly moved back into position, staring straight ahead, a cocksure tease to his lips.

  “My imagination was better,” he said like it was an afterthought.

  My heart bottomed out, still locked on his lips.

  Theo had kissed me. It could hardly be called a kiss, bruising and punishing, but that’s what it was. Five years since I’d felt his lips, and now they were used to torture me.

  I was a lot of things—hated, reviled—but I was never pathetic.

  Theo made me pathetic.

  I couldn’t get the thoughts of his calloused hands on my thighs out of my head. I could still feel the way they dug into my skin, so torturously close to where I really wanted them. His wet lips on my ear, biting me just right. I was agonizing over it. I wanted to hate his touch. I wanted to revile him.

  He was still torturing me. Still teasing me. Still using his lips to break me.

  I wouldn’t let him take my heart, no matter what my traitorous body felt. I would put an iron lock on it and throw away the key. Even if it meant I couldn’t love anyone else.

  Love is ephemeral, anyway.

  Across the room, I spotted my sister and her fiancé, Horace.

  Time for a taste of his own medicine.

  Time for him to learn a girl who lost everything is dangerous.

  She has nothing left to lose.

  “So you’re planning something,” Theo said.

  “Am not.”

  I hadn’t been thinking of my plan five minutes when Theo spoke. Was I really so obvious? The thing about Gemma’s beaus is they’ve always been so very… distractible. I planned to do what I always did when my heart hurt, when I was burned by Gemma’s spotlight—show how much damage you can do in the dark.

  This time it had the added benefit of maybe hurting Theo.

  I grabbed the nearest champagne off a server, looking from Horace and my sister to the beach. They were setting up the fireworks.

  “You have your bad idea face,” Theo said simply.

  “I don’t have a bad idea face. I don’t have bad ideas.”

  Theo didn’t say a word, but his expression said everything. He rolled his lips, eyebrows raised, nodding like okay, sure. I folded my arms, glaring.

  “You’re doing that thing with your lip,” he said. “You did it the day you brought me home. You did it the night we broke into the school and freed the frogs from the science lab. You did it yesterday before you lunged at me like a sex-starved lunatic.” He leaned closer, breath heating my neck. “You’re doing it now.”

  I unlatched my teeth from my bottom lip, not realizing I was biting it.

  “You know me so well, Theo Hound,” I said with bitter sarcasm.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Oh yeah? Then what’s my favorite color?”

  He scoffed. “Trick question, Abs. You love them all.”

  I turned from him, the air between us suddenly stifling.

  I hated these parties.

  When we were kids, Theo and I used to steal a bottle of liquor off the bartender and go up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, making up backstories that would shock all the pretentious people who showed.

  She definitely wears off-the-rack.

  He secretly votes Democrat.

  We’d laugh, sharing one bottle, getting so drunk Theo would have to carry me to my room on his back. A sharp ache slammed into my gut at the memory, and I took another drink of champagne, trying to drown the hurt.

  “Am I going to have to carry you to your room?” He eyed me, then leaned close until his lips grazed my ear again. “She looks like she secretly enjoys la délicatesse Big Mac.”

  I followed his eye to a particularly extravagant woman.

  I took a big gulp of champagne, but my hand shivered and I dropped my glass. The golden liquid spilled into the grass and sand. Theo’s eyes narrowed, reading into what happened. I tried to cut it off at the quick. “What? I’m clumsy.”

  I turned away, waving down a server to come and clean up the mess.

  He laughed. “You danced for twelve years, but okay.”

  I spun on him. “Stop that!”

  He arched a brow, waiting for me to elaborate.

  “Stop acting like you remember things about me.”

  Stop acting like you care, like we meant something more.

  Theo watched me, his eyes narrowed, taking a torturously slow sip of water.

  “I remember everything about you, Abigail. I’ve tried to forget you. It’s impossible. You are…” He looked away, bitter fury and contempt swirling in his eyes. “You are stuck.” He clipped the last word, like he wanted to spit it out of his mouth the same way he wanted to spit me out.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever get back my breath.

  Before I could respond, we were interrupted.

  “Hey, freeloader.” Grayson walked up to us, eyes on Theo. In a black suit, the sleeves folded to the forearm, tie undone and wrinkled as only Gray could get away with. “Gemma needs you.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Something about a fan stuck in a tree. You’re the tallest one here.”

  I waited for Theo to tell him he was needed here, with me, but he shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, heading toward my sister by the fountain.

  I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  “You still in love with that loser?” Gray asked. To our left and right, girls watched him from beneath fans. Some demure, others obvious.

  I glared at my brother. “I was never in love with him—and he’s not a loser.” I don’t know why I added the last bit, and I hoped Gray didn’t notice it.

  But Gray, despite his devil-may-care demeanor, rarely missed a thing.

  We had a twisted relationship, the same way I had with everyone in my family, but it was nothing compared to mine and Gemma’s. Mom pitted us all against one another, but Gemma and I were in direct competition. There could only be one winner, which meant there was always one loser.

  “He’s a freeloading gold digger.”

  “He’s the only one in this family who actually works.”

  Gray looked at me like I was an idiot. “Exactly.”

  “You never liked him—” I broke off.

  Someone stood out among the fanning groupies. She was someone you would normally overlook, but I’d been looking for her. Because of her, Theo had been able to sabotage my dress, and because of her I’d been scolded by Mother—again. Story.

  My jaw drop
ped, eyes narrowing. Why the hell was she out here?

  Gray stepped in my line of sight, blocking her and distracting me. “He’s not good enough.” For a moment, I thought Gray was giving me a rare compliment, then he added, “You’re barely good enough to stain a shirt—”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “But you’re a Crowne, so we have to pretend.”

  Gray downed the rest of his amber drink, slammed it on a server’s tray so hard she stumbled, and left. I looked for Story in his absence, but she’d disappeared again.

  I focused back on Gemma. The fountain glowed on her skin; she was luminous. Her white dress caught the breeze. My mother laughed at something she said. Everyone watched her, transfixed. Horace, Horace’s bodyguard, men lingering on the side, the women.

  Theo.

  It didn’t look like he was trying too hard to get anything out of a fucking tree.

  She was pure, perfect. She’d had a fiancé since we were teenagers, but it wasn’t like my engagement to a man I’ve never met. It wasn’t rushed, forced, and ugly. They were everything you thought when you imagined elite marriages. Aristocratic. Beautiful. Destined.

  At least… that’s what it looked like from the outside and isn’t that all that mattered?

  Maybe I was what they called me. Imperfect. Dirty. Vile.

  Maybe I could get some of it on them.

  I watched, waiting until Horace left the group. I intercepted him before he reached the buffet.

  “Abigail?”

  I touched his shoulder. “Has anyone shown you the maze?”

  8

  ABIGAIL

  I didn’t like the way he kissed.

  I didn’t like his hands on my hips.

  I didn’t like any of it.

  I thought it would make me feel whole, better, special. Instead I was emptier than before we’d started. He didn’t bother asking if he could put his hands between my thighs. I didn’t bother telling him to stop.

  I don’t know how long we were like that, him kissing and me waiting for something to change. All I know is when I saw him, when Theo found me, a part of me came alive.

  I started moaning. Real porn star stuff. I grabbed Horace’s hair, pulling him to my neck. It was greasy with too much product. I jerked his head to the side so I could lock eyes with Theo.