Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  I break out into a laugh, and the faintest smile zips across her lips. I take a few steps toward her. I reach my hand up and tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. I bend down and lay the most gentle kiss on the nape of her neck. She closes her eyes and drops her head back.

  “Care to test your theory?” I whisper, and her eyes open again. She tugs on my towel and lets it fall to the floor. I pull her shirt up over her head and help her shimmy out of her pants, all the while our lips barely leaving each other.

  She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls us tighter into each other. But then she pulls away.

  “Ahh,” she says, stepping back and bringing her hands to her face. “Why is this so hard for me?”

  She begins pacing again, and I feel like an idiot standing here in my birthday suit. She pauses and looks me up and down again.

  “I mean, it doesn’t help that you look like that,” she says, and I roll my eyes and smile. “But I shouldn’t want to keep doing this. Aside from the fact that we now work together, you’re literally the one person in the world that my parents despise. You’re the one person I shouldn’t want to do this with.”

  I step closer to her, ignoring the comment about her parents. If it came to that, we could get to them later.

  “But you want to keep doing it, don’t you?” I ask her, the corner of my mouth tugging up into a smile. I lean down and lay a soft, gentle kiss on her lips, letting my tongue trace her bottom lip just once.

  She squeezes her eyes shut.

  “Sort of,” she says. As I’m about to wrap my arms around her, she presses her hands against my chest. “But this has to be completely quiet. No one—and I mean no one—can know about this. I can’t lose this job. And I can’t do this to my parents. Oh, God, my parents,” she says, swirling around and sitting down on the couch. The same couch I fucked her on last night.

  Suddenly, this feels a bit heavy for me to be naked. I bend down and tie my towel back around my waist.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you,” I tell her, kneeling down in front of her. “I’m not a kiss-and-tell sort of guy.” I offer her a smile, and she returns the favor. “Look, this can be as casual as you want.”

  I need to put the ball in her court. One, because I’m not going to push myself on her. And two, because I don’t really think I know what to do with the ball if it is in my court right now. I like her body, and I love sleeping with her. But I actually like her personality, too. And I’m not sure what to do with that.

  “Extremely casual,” she says. “Just sex. But not like, boring, missionary sex. Sex like we’ve had. Hot sex.”

  I can’t keep a straight face. I bust out laughing.

  “Hot sex,” I say. “Deal.” She nods and leans back, and I follow her lead. We’re silent for a minute, and then she stands up to her feet. She picks up her clothes and starts dressing, and I feel my insides sink. I guess it’s weird to have sex the same night you make a deal about having sex.

  “Not tonight,” she says, making her way to the door. “I need to prove to myself that I can walk away from you at any time, even when you...ugh, even when you look like that,” she says, holding a hand out to me again. I laugh and nod.

  “I understand,” I say, following her to the door. “See you in New York.”

  She turns to me and smiles.

  “See ya,” she says. I shut the door and sigh, leaning up against it. I’m about to push off toward the bathroom when there’s another knock on my door.

  I open it, and she’s there again.

  “Still want to get that food?” she asks. I smile and wave her inside.

  “Yeah, I do,” I say. “But I really need to shower first.” She nods and sits on the foot of my bed. As I’m walking toward the bathroom, I tug my towel loose and watch as her eyes find me immediately. “You’re welcome to join.”

  13

  Maryn

  I’m sitting here on the foot of his bed while I hear him moving the shower curtain back. It’s up to me; it’s my decision. But the window is closing soon. I sigh and begin stripping. Hot shower sex it is.

  I tiptoe into the bathroom, hoping to take him a bit by surprise. I move the curtain back, and he turns to me slightly. The sight of his eyes scanning me up and down makes my whole body tingle.

  He turns to face me, the beads of water dripping down his brown skin making me melt. His green eyes are bright and sparkling, and I feel myself getting lost in them. I swallow and take a step closer to him as he wraps his arms around me. He leans down to kiss me then pulls me under the water, letting my hair get wet. He spins me around so that my back is to him and begins washing it. Then, his hands slide around to my front, and he grazes my nipples as his fingers trail down. He kisses the side of my neck and tugs on my ear with his teeth, letting his hands slide down to my center. I let out a long moan as he lets his fingers start their work on me, two entering me while his thumb strokes my outside in rhythm. I feel my knees grow weak as I reach my hands out to brace myself against the shower wall. He leans forward and spins me around, pulling me into his warm, wet body.

  “I got you, baby,” he whispers, “just let go.”

  It’s like my legs are taking orders from him. They spread themselves apart, giving him even more direct access. He works his fingers in and out so quickly that I’m not even sure of what’s going on. I drop my head back, letting the water run down my chest. He sucks the droplets off my breasts as he fingers me, my whole body going wild in his arms.

  “That’s it, Maryn,” he groans. “Let it go. Come for me.”

  And I do. I let out a whimper, my whole body limp. He waits for a beat then sets me down, steadying me. He turns around, finishes washing his own body, and turns the water off. He gets out and hands me a towel, and I’m standing there with my mouth open, completely in awe of him. He smiles as he bends over to kiss my cheek.

  “Let’s go get that food,” he says.

  Note to self: take more showers with Wyatt.

  I feel a little weird as we get dressed. I didn’t even touch him, let alone get him off, and here I am, still shaky and recovering from the near-death experience that was that orgasm.

  “Are you...are you sure?” I ask him. He looks at me for a minute, perplexed. He’s not sure what I’m asking him, but then he gets it. He smiles, his white teeth bright in the dim room.

  “If you think I don’t get anything out of doing that to you, you’re wrong.” He smiles then pulls a t-shirt on over his head. I say a quick goodbye to his abs as they disappear and then comb my hair out with my fingers and throw it into a braid.

  We walk down the street casually as he leads me to a small little Italian place on the corner a few blocks down.

  “How do you know about this place?” I ask him as we get seated. It’s late now, seeing as we went our separate ways, reconnected in the shower, and still had to walk here. There are only a few people left in the restaurant, so we get seated right away at a little booth in the back of the restaurant.

  “I’ve come here a few times before, whenever I’ve been out to Chicago,” he says.

  “Does Caldell have a lot of clients out this way?” I ask, taking a sip of the water in front of me. He shrugs.

  “Just a few. One of our contracts is up for renewal this year with a mid-size tech company out here called Bawning. Play your cards right and you might find yourself out here again in a few months—with me,” he says with a wink and a smile. I roll my eyes but can’t fight my lips from curling up.

  “Oh, lucky me,” I say, perusing the menu while acting like the thought of being near him isn’t totally making my stomach flip.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “When you picture your life a few years from now, what do you see?”

  I give him a look as I lay my menu down.

  “Wow, that’s deep for two coworkers on a business trip,” I say with a nervous laugh. He smiles, but he doesn’t laugh. He leans forward a bit in his chair.

&nb
sp; “I know this is casual, but based on our track record for hotel rooms, I don’t think anything between us is ‘just coworkers.’”

  My stomach flips again, and I shift in my seat uncomfortably. I know he’s right, but I can’t admit it.

  “Uh, well, I want to have some of my own accounts,” I say. “I want to know the ins and outs of the company.” I narrow my eyes on his and give him half a smile. “I guess I want your job.”

  He smiles and sits back in his seat, taking a sip of his water.

  “Then go after it,” he says.

  I get pasta, and he gets pizza, and we both pick at each other’s plates as we talk, not even noticing we’re doing it. It surprises me how easily we can just sit together. Always at the back of my mind, there’s that voice—I’m pretty sure it’s my father’s—telling me to stay away from him. Reminding me of the pain he caused.

  But it’s hard to hear it over my own laughter when he talks about his first day on the job at Caldell and how he tripped over the stage steps at his graduation from Melladon. But then it happens. He brings up Willa by accident.

  “I remember as I was walking over to my parents that day,” he says, taking another bite of pizza, “my mom saying something like, ‘You’re the only kid we have left. Can you please not break your neck?’” He chuckles, but when he realizes the line we’ve now crossed, he stops.

  I wipe my lips with my napkin and set it down on the table, taking a long, drawn-out sip. He clears his throat and looks down at his hands on the table. He pays the bill a short while later with his company credit card, and we walk back to the hotel in complete silence. We get in the elevator; I press 18 and 28.

  “Sorry,” he mutters just before the doors open. My eyes flick up to him. I swallow.

  “You shouldn’t be sorry about bringing her up,” I say. “I’ll see you back in New York.”

  As I get to my room that night and pack up my things, this overwhelming sadness hits me. Like something got ruined, some spark got drenched before it became a fully lit flame. But that’s just the thing. It can’t be a flame. Because he did have a sister, and now he doesn’t. And because of that, in a whirlwind of things that happened that I still can’t fully understand, my family almost lost everything. Like a reminder from the freaking heavens, my phone lights up. I smile a sad smile before I hit the answer button.

  “Hey, Dad,” I say.

  14

  March 2015 - Maryn

  I’ve been avoiding social media like the plague ever since Dad was put on leave. I can’t stand the speculation; I can’t stand the chatter. The weird thing is, it’s all coming from people who don’t really know him. They are spreading horrible rumors; some are even looking him up on the state case search, as if a freakin’ traffic ticket could somehow be a sign that someone was a kidnapper—or worse. Some are spreading such outlandish shit it’s all I can do not to look up where they live and scream at them. But it won’t help. According to Dad’s lawyer, it can only hurt us right now. It’s best to keep our heads down and stay quiet.

  But the chatter. It’s so, so loud.

  But everything in our house is quiet.

  Dad’s in front of the television a lot, or in his study. He doesn’t have much to do, so he’s been doing yardwork a lot now that it’s a little bit warmer. It’s been two long months since he’s been placed on administrative leave with little to no update on when it might come to an end. Luckily, he still gets paid, but teaching is so much more to my dad than a paycheck.

  The school board contacts him every few weeks, and our nerves go up on end each time. He gets in his car and drives down to their central office with his lawyer and answers any and all questions as best he can. But the fact is, he doesn’t know anything. And they don’t, either. They don’t have a real reason to keep him on leave, but because there is no answer for Willa’s disappearance yet, he’s the only solid answer they have to the public’s questions.

  “It’s just your typical case of scapegoating,” Dad’s lawyer, Eduardo, tells him over the speakerphone while he and Mom are in the study. Tucker and I are spying from the hall. “They have nothing on you, but they have nothing to give to the public. We’re going to wait to see if this blows over. If it doesn’t, we will file a suit for wrongful termination.”

  “Termination?” Mom asks. I feel my chest growing tighter.

  “There’s no way it will get to that point,” Eduardo says. “Don’t worry. They’ve got nothing.”

  We hear Mom and Dad hang up and make their way to the door, so we scramble back to our rooms, pretending like our world isn’t going up in flames.

  Mom doesn’t work. Dad’s job is literally our lifeline. But Eduardo says we will be okay. I know he’s right. He has to be.

  School fucking sucks, if I’m being honest.

  My friends still talk to me, but my invites to their outings have become a little more scarce. People who don’t know me, and never have, often give me looks or get totally silent as I walk by, as if I’m going to suddenly blurt out that my family and I know Willa’s whereabouts or something. My teachers say nothing, which is almost worse than them saying everything. Some of them have been teaching with my dad for twenty years. But suddenly, it’s like he disappeared into thin air. They all carry on with their lives like Willa and my dad didn’t exist. The letter he got about his leave mentioned in multiple instances that this wasn’t for “disciplinary purposes,” but that it was more for his own protection during the investigation.

  But it sure seems disciplinary. And it sure seems like everyone already thinks he’s guilty.

  My dad. My sweet, history nerd of a dad who doesn’t even raise his voice at his own kids. Like he could be capable of something like this.

  Whatever this is. There hasn’t been an update on Willa in a few weeks. I know they found her headband in the woods not so long ago, but that’s the last we’ve heard. They called Dad down to the police station when they found it, and as always, he cooperated without a word. His lawyer told him he didn’t have to; they don’t have any evidence to tie him to it except an eyewitness account that he was there and surveillance footage of his car pulling into the parking lot. But Dad keeps reminding us that someone’s child is still missing. And he wants to be as helpful as he can be, even if he truly has no clues to offer. After the reports about the headband hit the news, everything lit up again, and we are quickly on the downward slope of the rollercoaster.

  “I hope they tested that thing for DNA against that teacher. The brother saw him at the store that night. It’s fishy to me,” one woman on the news had said before I turned the TV off and chucked the remote across the room. Mom squeezed my hand that night as she walked by.

  “It’s just a bunch of talk, baby,” she had said in a soft, defeated tone.

  Sometimes, late at night when everything is quiet, I think about Willa. I wonder what actually happened, how her family sleeps at night, if they even do at all. I think about her brother, too. I saw him during a quick press conference he gave. I saw him when I told him off on his own porch. He graduated before I got to high school, so I didn’t know him, but I’ve grown to hate him. He’s the one who placed Dad there. He’s the one who said his name and caused all this chaos for us.

  But I wonder what it feels like. I think about Tucker. How quiet the house would be, how lifeless everything would feel. I wonder if she’s still alive. If whoever has her is taking care of her, or if she’s even alive anymore. And it makes me sick.

  But there are so many people who are thinking about her right now. And I know it sounds selfish, but we’re hurting, too. To watch someone as brave and bold in my life as my father be torn down, it’s enough to make anyone drop to their knees. And the worst part is, I can’t fix a damn thing for him.

  15

  Wyatt

  We’ve been back in New York for a week now, and I’m disappointed in how few encounters I’ve had with Maryn. We had a debriefing meeting with Nate and Rex, but it mostly consisted of Rex talk
ing about the presentation and clapping me on the back. She left in a hurry, and that’s about the extent of our interaction.

  It’s so odd, knowing that we were naked together multiple times just days ago, and right now, we’re barely acknowledging each other. I literally can’t go a moment without thinking about her. The way she laughed at dinner, what she looks like when she’s coming undone in my arms, what it feels like when she looks at me. I’m not ready for this—whatever it is—to be done. We need to get over this family hurdle and keep moving.

  I’m working late, and most of the sensor lights in the office are slowly starting to click off. Except for one. And it’s hers. I stroll out of my office for a casual cup of coffee at six in the evening when I see her typing feverishly away at her desk.

  “Boss workin’ you too hard?” I ask. She doesn’t even look up at me; she just smiles for a millisecond and keeps working. “How was your week?”

  She finishes typing her thought and then pauses, slowly turning to me.

  “Stressful. I have a lot to catch up on from being away last week,” she says. Then she turns back to her computer.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I ask her. She pauses again and looks around, making sure that we are definitely the only ones here. She sighs. She’s wearing glasses today, and the whole sexy librarian thing is fucking hot.

  She leans back in her seat and looks up at me.

  “Wyatt,” she says. I shake my head and smile.

  “Don’t,” I say. Her eyebrows shoot up.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t make this a big thing. Our families, all that stuff…it was a long time ago,” I say. “This is supposed to be casual, remember?”