Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  That thought didn’t reassure me.

  “What do you want?”

  She pursed her lips. “Break up with her.”

  ABIGAIL

  I woke to the sound of my mother’s voice, drifting into my bedroom like a dream.

  Abigail…

  Next came Theo’s voice.

  Guards… Harlington…

  I blinked, rubbing my eyes, adjusting to the soft light of my bedroom. I waited, ears perked, but only heard the sound of a door shutting, and silence.

  “Theo?” I called out after a moment.

  He came, still dressed in the suit he’d worn earlier today, though it was wrinkled now. Had he ever gone to bed?

  “Did I hear my mom?” I asked, sitting up. “What were you talking about?”

  His face was cold. It had been cold. It was worse than before; at least then he’d given me anger and contempt. Now there was nothing.

  I rubbed my arm, trying to brush away goose bumps.

  “She was reaming me for attacking her precious guest.”

  He slammed the door.

  24

  ABIGAIL

  The air was weird and toxic. For lunch, we all sat outside beneath a canopied table amidst the green gardens and sprawling lawn. It was reminiscent of a medieval tournament, minus the knights. At least the arranged marriages had remained.

  I was next to Edward, and Theo? He was all the way down… next to Gemma.

  Oddly enough, I had four new guards at my back, but I would trade every one for Theo.

  “You look beautiful,” Edward said to my left.

  “You look constipated,” I said without looking at him.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Theo. Gemma’s guard had come down with the flu. At least, that was what they said.

  It shouldn’t bother me, but I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg. It shook the table. After last night and this morning, my insides were filled with fire ants.

  It was just like before. I’d pushed and pushed and pushed, and in the end, scared him away.

  Scared him off to Gemma.

  He was with her. I was with Edward. This was not how it was supposed to be. Why couldn’t I just tell him the truth?

  Edward grabbed my hand and clenched so hard my bones felt like they were breaking.

  I gasped, forced to look at him. “Ow!”

  “Are your eyes caught in a glue trap?”

  A tight smile wrinkled his cheeks, but there was nothing warm about it.

  I tried to wrangle my hand free. “Let go.”

  He tightened his grip and I swear my bones caved in. I think a normal individual would feel a life-preservation instinct looking into the face of their stalker. Would at least weigh the pros and cons of their next move.

  I bit my lower lip.

  Bad idea face…

  I knocked over his wineglass and plate of braised turkey, spilling them onto his lap.

  He released me at once, jumping up.

  I’d accomplished what I wanted, so I definitely should act like it was an accident and return to my food.

  I grabbed my wineglass and, with shoulders back, stood up and threw it in his face. Pink liquid splashed and blinded him. He sputtered and scoffed, wiping it with both hands before blinking at me like I’d just killed his dog.

  “Now you look a little bit more handsome,” I said, folding the arm with the empty glass over the other. “But not by much.”

  The table grew quiet. My mother and grandpa, his parents, and my siblings were no doubt watching this unfold. No one had seen what Edward had done, and, honestly, they wouldn’t care. So what if he’d grabbed me a little harshly? It was much worse to make a scene.

  All this would be blamed on Abigail Crowne, fire starter.

  Edward raised a hand like he was going to slap me, and on instinct, I closed my eyes. When nothing happened, I opened them.

  My heart sank.

  One of my new guards had stepped between us. It was just like every other guard I’d had before Theo. It didn’t matter if I was about to be hit, you can’t make a scene.

  A part of me thought Theo might have saved me… I looked over to where he stood behind Gemma. He hadn’t even so much as spared me a glance.

  I couldn’t fucking take this. I couldn’t watch him choose Gemma. Screw third course or dessert or the fact that this was supposed to be for my engagement.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” Edward snapped at my back.

  “Darling?” my mother’s voice trilled over my shoulder.

  One word, but her tone spoke so much more.

  Don’t make a scene.

  Edward had a dirty secret. He stalked and terrorized me, but all the wealthy had dirty secrets, some dirtier than others. No one gave a shit so long as they didn’t air it.

  “Literally anywhere but here,” I said coolly.

  My foot hadn’t even landed on the first step when I was yanked back by my hair. I grabbed my scalp so I wouldn’t fall and have my hair ripped out.

  Conversation stopped, the clinking of forks silenced.

  “Edward…” his mother’s voice warned with the tone of scolding a child who’d taken a toy that didn’t belong to him.

  “She’s mine. She’s fucking mine. I saw her first.” Another hard yank and I hissed, unable to hold it in.

  I couldn’t see anyone. My vision blurred on Edward’s shiny black shoes… and then he let go.

  I shot up, hands going to my head, scalp burning where he’d grabbed me. Two of my guards were at his back, holding him by his shoulders with a gentle yet firm touch. The other two stepped between us. How my mother would be proud, I thought venomously. They really knew how to keep up appearances.

  Edward pushed wet hair out of his face, locked on me. The more he did it, the more unhinged he looked.

  “Well…” my mom finally said, tapping fingers along her chin. “No need for coffee. I feel quite awake.”

  Gray, Gemma, and Horace were all uncharacteristically silent, with looks that might even be misconstrued as concern. I didn’t want to be pitied, especially by my fucking siblings. Theo was finally looking at me, but his face was a mask.

  Tears bobbed up my throat.

  Humiliated at being used as a rag doll.

  Humiliated because Theo had done nothing.

  So I ran, sprinted until I was buoyed by silence, hidden in one of the many hallways of the castle. I leaned against a stone wall warmed by an opposite window, catching my breath.

  My guards followed me from the garden, taking staggered posts along the hallway. I hated them, hated their very existence. They had gotten Edward off me. They’d done their job, but their presence meant Theo hadn’t.

  Had I ruined everything? Did he hate me so much? Or did he… did he maybe love her after all?

  My scalp burned, but my eyes were absolutely on fire. I swiped tears.

  “Abigail.”

  I snapped my head up at the voice. Light from cathedral windows bathed Theo in diamonds of chiaroscuro. White-gold sunshine warmed his lips, and shadows sculpted his cheekbones.

  Feet of hallway separated us. His brows were drawn, his jaw clenched, and there was a war in his eyes I wondered if I’d started. Did he think I didn’t love him, that everything was a lie?

  “Hi,” I managed.

  Without a word he came to me and grasped my neck, pulling me to his chest.

  He exhaled a soft sigh of exasperation, stroking my hair.

  His shirt was soft too, and he smelled divine. It was so faint, so Theo. You only get to know the scent if you were paying attention, if you were close; fresh and clean, but spicy, and something else, something inscrutable. Something dark, a scent that made me curl my toes. He was home; he was safety. A scent I wanted to bury my nose in forever.

  His palm landed on my scalp, stroking the aching place Edward had ripped.

  He pulled back after a minute, but it felt like only a second. I searched his eyes. Even though he was staring right back, he was so far
away. My lips parted to say something… I don’t know, anything.

  I opened my mouth and came up with nothing.

  He took my hand, the one Edward had bruised, in both of his, tracing lines along the redness, brows drawn. Our breathing warmed the air like a summertime breeze, but desperation strangled it like storm clouds. He gripped me like it was for the last time.

  “Ask me.” It came out on a croak, and I swallowed, searching for courage. “Ask me, truth or promise?”

  His ministrations froze, face hardening, then he dropped me, turning and walking back the way he’d come.

  “You’re going back to her? You’re my guard.”

  “You have four guards; she has none.” He didn’t stop to talk, walking farther and farther away.

  “Ask me,” I yelled after him.

  Desperation burned up my throat, acidic, panic heartburn. My hands went to the top of my head as I took deep breaths, trying to wrangle my heartbeat.

  I practiced in my head over and over again. I didn’t want to go back. Not to any previous iteration of us. Not the deserter, the enemy, the tormentor, or even the best friend. I wanted us as we almost became last night.

  Now, as he kept walking, all I could feel was my beating heart. I eyed the four stone-statues guarding me, my potential audience.

  If I told Theo I love him, I could lose him.

  But if I don’t, I definitely will.

  “I never had a friend before you,” I yelled to his back, voice trembling.

  Maybe this is how I spill my guts to Theo, to his back.

  It kind of makes sense.

  “You were my only friend, but you were so much more. You were my best friend. You were my…” I fiddled with his friendship bracelet. “You know the areas of my soul I was too afraid to walk inside. You read the parts of me I thought I erased. You see my darkness, and you fill it with light.”

  Theo kept walking, getting closer and closer to the shadows of the stone hallway.

  “You’re my soul mate, Theo!”

  Theo paused, then picked up his pace. He was almost out of my sight.

  This was it, the moment when I’d have to jump off the cliff.

  “I promise I’ll never leave you,” I yelled. “I promise I loved you. Even when you left, when I thought you loved my sister, even when you were cruel.”

  He stopped walking.

  “I-I promise I love you,” I said. “I promise I can’t stop and will never stop.”

  He turned around, peering down the hallway at me with an inscrutable look on his face.

  “You promise you love me?” he finally asked.

  “Yes,” I said quickly, hope filling my chest. “Yes, I love you.”

  He tilted his head, sharp chin catching sunlight. “What if I betray you?”

  “Um…” I trailed off, at first thinking I’d misunderstood him.

  Theo took long strides, closing the distance he’d just made.

  “What if I betray you, Abigail?”

  I fiddled with the pastel beads on my wrist, terrified, nearly snapping it. I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know how to respond.

  “You won’t.”

  “What if I did?”

  I swallowed, picking at the beads, when his hand shot out, stopping me.

  Anchoring me.

  “Stop talking like this.”

  “You’d take away your love, wouldn’t you? Because love isn’t a promise, Abigail. It can’t be broken or kept. Real love just is. It exists without consent. It consumes. You’re just like everyone else. Love is something to forget. Love is something to break.”

  He wasn’t yelling, but that was scarier. His anger was a razor-sharp blade slicing my veins.

  So. Fucking. Angry.

  And something else, too. Something like sorrow.

  I tried to move away, but his grip on my wrist was steel, and he pulled me closer. His pale green eyes were shadowed under his dark brow, churning with some dark emotion.

  “You won’t,” I said again, uncertain if I was telling him or myself. I searched his eyes back and forth, trying to find what happened. Where this went wrong. He searched back.

  We were lost to each other.

  “You make promises now because everything smells like fucking roses, but when the fire starts, all you’re going to smell is smoke. It will choke you. You won’t remember your promise.”

  He let me go. This time, I let him leave.

  Back in my wing, I lay in bed for maybe an hour before my phone buzzed with a new email. I didn’t quite register the shock at first. I stared at the information in the message: a response from the private investigator I’d hired.

  Theo’s mother. He’d found Theo’s mother.

  Just like I thought, the diary was unique enough he was able to trace it to the shop where it was made and find the owner. He was still trying to find where she lived, but he had a picture.

  She looked a little like him. She had the same pale green eyes, and the same silky chocolate hair. Her name was Elizabeth, and she looked kind of familiar… and I wondered if I’d seen her in town.

  With the weird distance between me and Theo, I didn’t know what to do with this information,

  Hours passed, and it was soon dinner time. Flanked by my new four bodyguards, I spotted Theo about to enter the hall.

  “Theo?” I called out.

  He barely turned his head, how he acknowledged me now, and yet another reminder of the bulwark separating us.

  But it was his mother… his mother.

  He held his arm out for my sister to pass, and a knife speared my heart.

  “Um… never mind.”

  25

  ABIGAIL

  The flight home from Switzerland was stifling. There’s a wedge between me and Theo now, and I can’t remove it. He was back on my guard, but so were the four new ones. He never strayed past the line of bodyguard. I never pushed him to.

  Now we were home, the engagement party is tonight, and the only silver lining was Ned and all the Harlingtons weren’t staying with us. I lay in bed well past the hour I woke, face planted into my pillow, breathing in silky fibers.

  I would tell the world I was marrying Ned tonight.

  I’d found Theo’s mother.

  Theo still wasn’t talking to me…

  My bed shook and jostled beneath me, followed by, “Get up.”

  I lifted my head, but Theo was already nearly out of my room.

  Two women came in after him, carrying various weapons of beauty. They tittered back and forth as they pulled and curled and pinned my hair. They applied layer upon layer of makeup, until the girl in the mirror was shielded under makeup and hairspray.

  I watched Theo’s back in the mirror, wishing he would look at me. I just wanted to fix it. I expected anger. I hoped for anger, but he acts like I don’t exist.

  I’d found his mother. How the fuck do I tell him I’d found his mother when he won’t look at me for more than two seconds?

  “You’re going to be the most beautiful girl there,” one of them said as they finished packing up their supplies.

  I wondered if they’d met my sister—oh, they probably said that to everyone.

  They commented on how stunning my dress was, then left. It was hanging up against a tall, arched window. The golden lattices on the window shone through the white fabric, making it look a little mystical.

  I still didn’t have Story back, which meant I was once again dressing myself. My dress was a thin, shimmering gauzy material matching the flowing fabric of skirt that fell off my shoulders. It flowed like air and fell like water. I finished off the look with my handmade translucent sea glass earrings with rose gold adornments. They were small and added enough pop without overpowering.

  I touched my lobes, wondering if they would keep me intact.

  All I needed to do was tie silky white laces at the back of my dress.

  Laces.

  I glanced out my open door, where half of Theo’s body was usually vi
sible standing guard. All day his hands had been behind his back, the soft material of his shirt clinging to broad shoulders and defined muscles, but now he was curiously absent.

  I found him by the fold-out, holding his mother’s diary, but he was just staring at it. It wasn’t even open. I felt like I’d just walked in on something too intimate and immediately stepped back—but ran into the wall.

  He turned his head at the noise, quickly shoving the book away.

  Silence stretched.

  Finally, I said what I’d come out for in the first place.

  “I need your help.”

  I could see the objection forming on his face, so I tried to stop it: “Please.”

  He came inside my room and waited for me to put on my dress. His wary eyes transmuted when they saw me. I felt naked. How could he do that with just a look? I rubbed my arm.

  His stare traveled to the plunging neck, where the built-in corset was encased in white lace. My long hair had been pulled up, and he looked like he wanted to rip it out and tangle it and get it messy.

  “Is that held up by magic?” he asked roughly.

  “That… and sophisticated sewing.” I swallowed and turned around, exposing my naked back with its undone laces. “Lace me up?”

  He walked to me, fingers finding my laces. I tried not to jump at his touch, but I couldn’t control the goose bumps.

  It was too quiet. His touch was too gentle.

  “Are you writing something naughty back there?” I teased, but my voice shook.

  “Maybe.” I swear I heard a smile in his voice. It gave me hope, like the first bloom after a cold, desolate winter.

  He finished.

  An awkward silence weeded around us, then he nodded his head like he was going to leave and go stand guard.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped.

  We were already so close to shattering. There were cracks between us; water and debris were seeping through. I didn’t want to ruin this.