Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  “I thought you loved me? I’ll give you what you deserve, Ned.” I reached for him and he backed away until he was pressed against a perfectly trimmed hedge.

  “You have no money,” he said. “You have no name. You have nothing.” Shock usurped his breath.

  While he looked at me like I was an alien, I bit back my smile.

  I never thought hearing those words would feel so damn freeing. I thought all my life I wanted to be the best of them, but now it was like I’d just grown wings.

  I tilted my head. “So you don’t love me?”

  “I never want to see your face again. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  I acted sad, watching Ned run out of my life, into the paparazzi.

  There was still one person who would know who I was, but he’d made it clear he didn’t want me anymore. After my mom’s ominous statement and the blood on the carpet, I was even more confused about his intentions. Still, I was determined to find him. I’d put it all on the line, one more time.

  THEO

  I found Ned running out of Crowne Hall. This time I wasn’t letting him get away. I wasn’t going to put my faith in anyone else. This time when I saved the princess, it’s going to stick.

  Even if I have to give up everything in return.

  35

  ABIGAIL

  I spent all day looking for Theo, magazines in my hand, practicing in my head what I would say. That was the thing with Theo, he always showed up. I had no idea where he was or how to find him.

  Discouraged and dejected, I went to the pier where we’d first met.

  That was when I found him.

  I felt like an idiot for not checking there first. When I saw him, the magazines fell out of my hand, and everything I prepared vanished.

  Ned was a bloody heap at his feet, the sand beneath them dark burgundy, like the wine stain on my sheets the first night we’d made love. The moonlight created a shocking outline. His shirt whipped in the dark night wind, exposing the cut muscles of his lower back. He was a god dispensing justice.

  “Don’t do it,” I yelled, still too far away.

  Theo froze, his fist in the air.

  I took a tentative step forward. “You’ll go to jail.”

  Ned was barely conscious.

  Theo glanced at me, then at my finger. My ring finger. He looked like he was going to rip apart Ned all over again. I should’ve explained everything then, but months—no years—of half-truths spurred me on.

  “Does the idea of me marrying someone else bother you?”

  “Yes,” he gritted.

  “Why?”

  “You promised,” was all Theo said.

  “I promised not to love. I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry.”

  Theo placed his black sneaker to Ned’s cheek and ground, watching me with restrained interest. In his eyes a war blazed.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, hoping to win the war. “Follow me around the rest of my life?”

  “Maybe.” He looked away, back to the bug groaning beneath his sneaker. My heart dropped.

  “So you’ll be at my heels while I’m married to an asshole, making sure he treats me right?”

  He ground the rubbery sole into Ned’s cheek. “If I have to.”

  I glanced at the harsh action, then back at Theo. “Why don’t you stand by my side?”

  Theo froze.

  I took that small victory, edging closer to him. The wind picked up; above us the sky was dark, no stars visible beneath a blanket of black clouds. The ocean crashed and sprayed.

  “You treat me right,” I said softly. “You know what I want. Why can’t it be you?”

  I was pleading with him, and he turned his head slightly, enough for me to see the surprise wash over his features.

  “I know it was you,” I continued. “I know you were the one who applied to college for me. When I got the acceptance letter, I knew only you would do something like that.”

  “You got in?” A small smile broke through the storm on his features. “That’s fucking amazing, Abs.”

  “I don’t want to go alone. I don’t want to be the only one following my dreams. Don’t throw everything away. Come with me. Be the boy who wanted to change things.”

  And just like that, whatever glimmer I’d seen vanished into stone, his jaw iron, his eyes black. He moved his foot to Edward’s throat and pushed.

  I closed the distance and brought his hands into mine. They were bloody and broken open. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Theo. Ned isn’t going to bother me. Neither will my mom.”

  “I will always worry about you.” His words were gravelly, and his chest warbled with the word always, like it hurt coming out.

  My fingers lingered, a frown forming. “What are you planning to do to him?”

  “Whatever it takes.” The way his eyes darkened and cracked, I knew he meant it.

  Whatever it took, no matter the cost for Theo.

  Hadn’t that always been the case, though?

  My thumb grazed his split lip. “It’s over. I did something today. He doesn’t want me anymore.”

  His brow furrowed, unconvinced. “Even if that were true, it doesn’t make what he did to you okay. You expect me to forget? To let him go?”

  I didn’t take my eyes off Theo, but whatever he did caused Ned to groan in pain louder than he had before. Theo touched my cheek, so, so tenderly. I closed my eyes, leaning into his calloused, wet-with-blood touch.

  “If I had known what would happen, I would have ended the problem that night. I shouldn’t have left you alone, sweet girl. I’m sorry.”

  He dropped his hand from my cheek. The loss of contact was like a Band-Aid tearing.

  “He’s not worth it,” I pleaded. “He’s not worth you losing everything.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re worth it, Abigail. I would throw my life away for you over and over again.”

  As if that was the last thing worth saying, he turned back to Ned, determination on his face.

  “But would you keep it?” I asked. It came out as a squeak, and I cleared my throat. His body language had changed, tight and coiled.

  “Would you keep your life?” I asked, voice louder. “Would you love yourself the way I do? Can you promise that?” I swallowed, taking a breath. “I’ll try… If you do.”

  He threw me a look over his shoulder, eyes furious. He was a noir, black and white, moonlight and shadow, a nightmare and a dream. I wondered when his muscles had gotten so sharp, his veins so defined, or if he appeared so because in this moment he was deadly.

  His eyes softened.

  Then they calcified to rock.

  “This is it for us, Abigail. This has always been us.” He gestured at Ned’s prone body on the soft sand. “You’re the princess. I’m the dog. Just let me do my fucking job.”

  He turned away, and I knew he was officially done humoring me.

  Panic crawled up my lungs.

  Ned didn’t get to take this from me. Not Theo. Not after everything I’d sacrificed.

  So I did the only thing I could think of—I lunged at Theo, grasping his arm, pinning him with the move he’d taught me.

  36

  THEO

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” She pressed my right arm to my back. “Pinning you to the ground.”

  I exhaled, took a breath, and stood up, shaking Abigail off. She was easier to get off my back than an ant—too easy. Abigail flew backward and I grasped her wrist, catching her before she fell.

  Her eyelashes fluttered, eyes wide.

  So pretty, too fucking beautiful. I was distracted, distracted by her big, surprised eyes. By the muted red of her lips in the dark night.

  Fuck, I’d missed her.

  It wasn’t lost on me she’d used a move I taught her, and that made me want to crush my lips to hers, pin her myself and slam my dick in her until she submitted. I was distracted by the Abigail of it all.


  Too distracted, because in the blink of a second I’d lost myself, Ned stood up and ran away.

  She grasped my wrist with two hands. “Let him go, Theo.”

  Ned ran awkwardly down the beach, slipping on small dunes of sand. I ground my jaw, split between wanting to catch him and keep touching her.

  “I’ve let him go too many times,” I said.

  Her eyes were shining. “You’ve let me go too many times.”

  The wind blew, whipping her sable-brown curls around her cheeks the same way it had the night she’d picked me off this beach. And with that distraction, I watched Ned Harlington run the fuck away.

  “He’ll hurt you,” I said.

  “He doesn’t want me anymore.”

  “How can you be so fucking sure, Abigail?”

  “I’m… I’m not,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure.” The engagement ring on her finger sparkled in the moonlight. It looked more like Abigail than it did Ned.

  I looked down the beach. I could still get him.

  She grasped my face, palms cupping my cheek, drawing my attention back to her.

  “I love you, Theo. Even if you don’t want me, even if you can’t give me your love, even if you never will. I love you.”

  “I can’t give you what you need.” My voice was hoarse, raspy. I hadn’t intended that, but the pain in my chest scraped at my throat.

  She was a fucking princess. Her blood was blue, but fuck all of that—she was Abigail. Abigail who loved blind, Abigail who gave her whole heart to mend yours. She deserved to be kept and cared for by someone worth something.

  “You’re the only one who can give me what I need. It’s only ever been you. You’re it for me. I feel it in my bones. You’re in my blood. You’re in me. Why can’t you see it?”

  I ground my jaw until it felt my teeth would become dust.

  Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “Ned was going to give me the world. Should I go back to him?”

  She took a step back, but I grasped her wrist, stopping her from leaving, keeping her palms pressed to my face.

  “I’m scared. I’m scared you’ll leave me, but I’m jumping anyway, hoping you’ll catch me this time. Catch me.”

  A split second followed her declaration, marked by the waves crashing into the sand, and then our lips collided—crashed, slammed. It was violent like the surf, the thunder roaring above us, the lightning flashing our world white.

  Then she ripped her lips off mine. I went right back in, but she turned away, breath louder than the wind.

  Our foreheads were still pressed together, her eyes on the sand.

  “Loving me at a distance is selfish and cowardly,” she whispered. “I won’t let us do it anymore.”

  Her eyes found mine. “You either love me in public, proud, where everyone can see, or not at all. I don’t want your burgers, I don’t want your presents, I don’t want secret acts of love, and I don’t want your protection. I want you.”

  “Selfish? Cowardly?” I growled.

  True, the voice in my heart whispered back.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said, finding my eyes. “Come find me. Come keep me. Please.”

  She took a step back, breaking our connection. Then with one more searing moment of eye contact, she left, just as the rain started to slam into the ocean.

  I woke with a hangover—an Abigail Crowne hangover. I should be used to them by now—I’d received enough of them in my life. It’s a throbbing ache that starts in your chest.

  She’d called me on all my shit and offered me my greatest dream.

  Why couldn’t I just fucking take it?

  I groaned into my pillow just as there was a knock on the door—the newspaper. Whether I wanted it or not, the motel delivered the Crowne Point Tribune every goddamn morning.

  I answered the door in my boxer briefs and nothing else. My hair was a mess and fell over my eyes, and the sun felt too hot. At my feet, in black and white print, Abigail’s face stared back under the headline ABIGAIL CROWNE ELOPES.

  My heart bottomed out. Had she fucking eloped with Ned? I tore the paper off the ground as an older woman walked by, staring at how little I wore.

  “Take a fucking picture,” I said, slamming the door.

  I gripped the paper. It wasn’t an announcement about her and Ned. They said she’d eloped with her bodyguard. Something about her falling in love with a bodyguard and calling off the engagement.

  I threw on jeans and T-shirt, heading to Main Street to see if any other publications had covered it. This had to be just another Abigail scandal. She wouldn’t really go through with something so nuclear.

  When I got to Main Street, Abigail was front-page news on multiple national and international magazines. Not only that, morning news was covering her. They all said the same thing.

  “My little reject…” I thumbed through the magazines. This was what she’d meant when she said she’d gotten out from under Ned.

  The Crownes didn’t have many enforced rules, but there was one: you marry who you’re told to marry. If they let you marry for love, then how would you stay in power? How would you stay a Crowne?

  I looked to the beach, to the black palatial house visible from anyplace in Crowne Point.

  I needed to find her.

  When I went to Crowne Hall, I decided to take a less bloody route. Many times I’d scaled Abigail’s wall so I could catch her when she snuck out. There was an easy-to-climb lattice on the shingled wall, and garden boxes to get your footing. Her window was high up and always open.

  The alarm went off when I opened the window, so at least Tansy wasn’t lying about that. She had gone through with that part of the deal.

  Her room, though? Fucking empty.

  I went to find Tansy. They couldn’t have really fucking kicked her out, right? Tansy was where she always was—in the damn sunroom.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Good question,” she hummed, not even surprised by my presence. She flipped a magazine, not looking up.

  “She’s your daughter.”

  “As far as I, and the rest of the family, are concerned, Abigail isn’t a Crowne. She took her things and left yesterday.”

  It took a minute for what Tansy was saying to sink in. Yesterday, when Abigail had found me, she’d been kicked out? She gave up everything?

  I was such an asshole.

  “You kicked her out?” I asked, to be sure.

  “She chose this. Abigail stood her ground for the first time in her life, over you.” Tansy lifted her head, pinning me. “Are you worth it, Theo?”

  That was an easy question to answer. “No.” I nearly laughed. Hell fucking no. That wasn’t the answer I was focusing on anymore.

  Tansy looked down at her magazine again, earmarking pages with five-layer cakes.

  “But Abigail thinks so,” I continued. “So I’ll spend the rest of my fucking life trying to be whatever she sees in me.”

  Tansy slightly raised her brow, flipping another page, earmarking another dessert. She didn’t acknowledge my presence further, and, either way, I was done talking to the Crownes.

  Abigail left her family, left her entire world behind for me. She was somewhere—alone, with nothing.

  I’d barely left the sunroom when I heard Gray’s apathetic voice drift over my shoulder. “This is the problem with feeding a dog. They keep coming back. They think they belong here.”

  When I turned, he was speaking to the girl, Story, apparently now a fixture at his side.

  Gemma was a few feet away, by the huge double doors, leaning against the stone walls, a cup of tea in her hands, watching my and Gray’s exchange with interest.

  “I thought you were smart, Gray,” I said. “Don’t you know yet? You can kick me out, you can send me away, but I’ll come back. I’ll always come back. I’ll always be here. As long as Abigail will have me—and even when she doesn’t want me—I’ll fucking be here.”

  Gray sighed. “What a fucking miracle
she doesn’t live here anymore, then.”

  Without another word, I kept walking.

  “You ruined her life,” Gemma said as I was about to leave.

  I stopped, and Gemma kicked off the wall. “She was a Crowne and now she’s nothing.”

  “I’d fucking do it again too,” I said. “My only regret is not doing it sooner.”

  She frowned, and just as I was about to push open the double doors and leave this place for good, Gray spoke.

  “You should’ve told us about Newton,” Gray said. “My mom might not care, but only I get to fuck with my sister.”

  “And only I get to rip out her hair,” Gemma added.

  I paused. I nearly had the doors open. I could see the cobblestone path that wound around the crystal fountain and down to the wrought iron fence.

  I turned around. Gray and Gemma stood side by side.

  I didn’t know what the fuck this was. Were they seriously acting like they cared about Abigail?

  “What are you planning on doing with him?” Gray asked. “Some blue-collar appeal to the police. It won’t work. He’ll have them paid off before you finish your sentence.”

  I pushed my cheek out with my tongue. “You want to help or something?”

  “Or something,” Gray said.

  “That weasel Newton is out. He’s the one getting excommunicated,” Gemma said. “Out of our lives. Out of our world. We’ll handle that part on our end.” Gemma glanced at Gray. “But when you blow up your life for Abby—as I’m sure you’re planning on doing—be sure to get Newt caught in the crossfire. Say Gray and Gemma Crowne were there. We’ll back you up.”

  “Just this once,” Gray added.

  Gemma rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

  “Or,” I said, taking a step to them. “You’ll use it as an opportunity to fuck her over.”

  “That would be hilarious,” Gray conceded. “But there is no fucking universe where I would side with Newt over a Crowne, not even for a joke.”