Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  “I have an idea, Mags,” Lucas said, sometime later. It wasn’t until he nudged me in the arm that I realized he was talking to me.

  I shook my head. “What’s that?”

  Lucas stood up. “We got a used guitar for the inn—some of the guests like to play it in the common room. I’ll go get it, and you can play for us, like you used to.”

  I stiffened. “No, no,” I said as casually as I could, shaking my head. “I’m out of practice. Not really in the playing mood tonight.”

  “Come on, Mags. Let’s hear that famous songbird voice of yours. Let’s see if eight years in the big city was worth it.”

  It was hard not to hear the bitterness in his voice, and by the way everyone else around the fire fell quiet, they heard it too.

  I stared at Lucas for a moment, and he stared at me, his round face suddenly looking heavy, cast with shadow. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but didn’t blink.

  But I wasn’t going to move on this. “Not tonight,” I said. I turned to the fire and gave a weak smile to the silent crowd. “Sorry.”

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” Lindsay muttered to John. “Isn’t that what they all like to do? ‘Sports and entertainment’?”

  John shook his head, though he couldn’t mask an embarrassed smile. “Jesus Christ, Lindsay.”

  I stiffened. “What did you say?”

  Lindsay shrugged and took another long drink from her beer. “Um, pretty sure it was a rapper that said that.” She nudged John again. “My brother loves old-school Jay-Z. I am always hearing that shit.”

  “Lindsay, you need to stop talking now,” Katie broke in. “Plus, Maggie’s not even black, are you, Mags?”

  I sighed. I didn’t have the patience to do this all over again, reinvent the wheel of my unknown ethnicity, lost even to me. I didn’t need to listen to the hush that would come over the group when everyone remembered what a slut my mother was. The knowing looks that would land on me, as if they could see some slutty genetic instincts emerging on command.

  “I’m pretty tired,” I finally said, standing up. “I think I’m going to go home. Have a good night, everyone.”

  “Good riddance,” Lindsay muttered, but I was already striding back to my car.

  “Maggie. Maggie, wait!”

  I didn’t. It’s not like I hadn’t heard a thousand comments like Lindsay’s over the years, whether in Spokane or New York. But I had forgotten what this was like—how, if I wasn’t willing to be someone’s token, I was easily dismissed at gatherings like these, previously only protected by the power of dating Lucas Forster. I didn’t belong here. I never had, even if it was also the only home I had to come back to.

  Lucas grabbed my arm and forced me to turn around to face him. “Maggie, I said stop.”

  I pulled my arm away. “I just need to go home, Lucas. This was a bad idea.”

  “Come on, don’t let one bitchy comment drive you away,” Lucas said. “Lindsay’s just jealous because she knows you’re special.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t feel special. I felt broken and awkward and out of place. “I just want to go.”

  “Come here.” Lucas pulled me into his big body, and despite the scent of cheap beer wafting off him, the solid warmth of him didn’t feel awful. I softened slightly.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he murmured as he looked down.

  And for a second, I looked back. I saw Lucas, who was mostly kind, supportive, even if he didn’t always get it. And for a second, I was comforted by that.

  Then he leaned down and pressed a sloppy kiss on my mouth.

  “Lucas!”

  I turned my head away, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he pressed me into the side of my car, his hands running down my sides as he breathed heavily into my neck.

  “Fuck, Maggie,” he groaned. “I missed you. You feel so good.”

  “Stop! What are you doing?” I shouted.

  “What?” Lucas spat, his upper lip curling as he slurred slightly. “You wanna tell me you don’t feel the connection between us? It’s still here, Mags, you know it is.”

  “No, I d-do n-not!!” I sputtered, the stutter returning just enough to make me spout like a tea kettle. “Just yesterday, I was spitting mad at you for calling me a slut!”

  “I didn’t call you a slut, Maggie,” Lucas protested. “I said your dress maybe suggested something like it. Honestly, I was just jealous. I didn’t like the idea of other guys seeing your pretty legs in something like that. Something like this skirt too, if you want to be real.” He looked me over again, and this time, the suggestion in his eyes was clear as they drifted over my bare legs. His mouth quirked with a smile that wasn’t nearly as shy as it used to be. “Chicken legs.”

  But now I didn’t find the silly nickname the slightest bit funny. Nothing about this was funny, especially not when Lucas leaned in again with the clear intent to kiss me, whether I wanted it or not. Like somehow I was asking for it.

  “Lucas,” I said, pressing against his chest.

  He didn’t move.

  “Lucas!”

  He stopped.

  “Let me make this very, very clear,” I said, pushing him back again. This time, he moved. “I am not interested in anything like that. Not with you. Not with anyone. If that means you don’t want to help Mama and me out on the property, I get it. We’ll figure out something else. But you and I cannot be anything more than friends. Do you understand?”

  Lucas didn’t answer for what seemed like an hour. Finally, he pulled his baseball hat off his head and put it on backwards before exhaling, long and heavy.

  “You really have changed,” he said, somewhat regretfully. “Yeah, I get it. And you don’t have to worry about the work. I’ll be there on Monday, bright and early. I don’t break my promises.”

  Leaving me to wonder exactly what he meant by that, he turned and loped back to the fire. I got into my car and started to drive, taking a left out of their driveway instead of a right, which would’ve been the shorter way back to my place. I didn’t feel like going back to the empty house just yet, knowing I would brood on the dock or in front of the television, waiting to see if Mama would show up or not. Instead I just drove, a little faster than I should have, asking all the questions out loud that I had wanted to say in the parking lot.

  “Promises?” I cried into the darkness. “What promises? Did you really think that just because we were high school sweethearts, I fucking owed you something? Did you think that I was supposed to promise you my entire fucking life just because we said words like love when we were fucking children?”

  The questions went on, shouted out the window to be lost in the speeding trees. They were questions I couldn’t answer, and yet the answers echoed back to me, known, if not spoken. Because this was a place where people had always thought they owned each other in their small lives. Lucas had been good to me once, but had always thought that he owned me too, in his small, kind way. In that way, he was no better than Theo. So that in the end, he could take what he wanted, and most of the time I’d feel like I had to give it to him. Both he and Lucas had wanted me for a life already set up for them. It hadn’t mattered that I didn’t want those lives myself. And neither man had ever forgiven me for it.

  “Will anyone here,” I wondered aloud for the thousandth time in my life, “ever just see me for what I am? What I want to be?”

  Just as the question flew past my lips, my car jolted heavily, and the loud flap of deflated rubber jogging on the pavement sounded. There was a screech as I pulled the car to a stop on the side of the dark, deserted road.

  “Shit!” I screeched. Some idiot had probably dropped a nail off their truck, and on this dark, unlit road, I had a flat.

  With my phone’s flashlight turned on, I crawled out of the car and got down to look at the damage. It was bad. Not only was the front driver’s side tire totally shredded, but the entire wheel seemed bent off kilter. I guessed that even if I could replace the tire, it wouldn’t be dri
vable. Ten miles from my house, and no ride in sight.

  I picked myself up off the ground and glared at the car. And then, I absolutely lost it.

  “FUUUUUUUUUUCK!” I screamed, suddenly letting loose at the car with my feet, kicking wildly at the tires and hubcaps. I picked up sticks, pine cones, needles, anything within easy grabbing distance and threw them at my car. “Stupid hunk of junk! What the fuck!”

  Just as I was picking up a rock to hurl at the hood, no longer caring what kind of dents would come of my assault, the flash of headlights coming down the street broke through my tirade. I froze, suddenly very aware that I was a brown-skinned woman alone at night on the side of a rural road in a county with a less than stellar reputation with people of color. I’d never had anything that terrible happen to me when I was younger besides a few pullovers and some name calling at school, but I’d heard stories of cops harassing black kids in Spokane Valley. And in this day and age, with tensions as high as they were everywhere, I couldn’t help but be a little scared.

  The car slowed as it approached, but it wasn’t until it was almost next to me that I recognized the orange pickup. The fear subsided, but my irritation rose.

  Of. Fucking. Course.

  Anger and frustration boiled up all over again as the truck pulled over. The window rolled down, and Will’s face, etched with sharp annoyance, appeared.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.

  I kicked my foot at the ground, refusing to look up. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Will just glared. “It looks like you just happened to break down in front of my property. Again. It’s two in the fucking morning, Maggie. Don’t you think this is a little desperate?”

  I flared. “Are you fucking kidding me? You think I deliberately ruined both the tire and axle of my car just to lure you out of your creepy Unabomber cabin at two in the morning? Do I look like I have a death wish? How self-absorbed do you have to be?”

  Will leaned out of the cab, examined the maimed tire, and had the decency to appear more contrite. He looked at me, and even through my fury, I had to work to ignore the way his gaze seared over my cheeks, my lips, my neck, even my cleavage. But unlike Lucas’s gaze, it didn’t feel dirty. This was something else completely.

  “What are you even doing out here at this time of night?” I asked, hating that my voice had grown small.

  “I went hiking for the day, and I’m just getting back into town. Were you driving drunk?” Will asked bluntly.

  I crossed my arms. “Who the hell are you, the police?”

  He frowned. “No. I’m just wondering if I need to put on some coffee while I see if I can get your shitty car working again.”

  I opened my mouth to launch another insult at him, but instead I just shook my head. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and it was either accept this asshole’s help or spend the night in the car.

  “I don’t drink. Water is fine. Or nothing at all.”

  At that, Will’s anger broke, and he looked genuinely surprised. “Really?”

  “My mother drinks enough for both of us.” I looked away. Tears were rising now, and I was losing the fight against them. Fuck. I just wanted to be…fuck. I really didn’t know. And that was the worst part of all of it.

  Will examined me for a few more seconds, then sighed. “Get in,” he said. “You can come inside while I take a look.”

  9

  Will pulled the truck down the long, winding driveway in front of his old wood cabin. In the dark, it looked even creepier than during the day, since unlike most houses, Will’s had no porch lights to give some aura of welcome. The whole thing was basically swathed in black. The woods were pretty much opaque at night, and you really couldn’t see anything except for the glimmer of moonlight on the lake down below. That, combined with the general decrepit state of the property, with its peeling, faded shingles and sagging roof, made me walk a little closer to Will than I might have otherwise.

  He was a shadow in front of me, somehow even taller and more solid in the dark. His hair was tied up on the top of his head, but in the darkness, all that was really visible were the long lines of his silhouette—the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his waist. And if I hadn’t been so close, I might not have been able to smell that clean, fresh scent of his. That wasn’t helping me clear my head at all.

  He unlocked the door and flipped a switch, which immediately flooded a large, comfortable room with light. We stepped inside, and as the screen door slammed shut behind me, I swallowed my surprise at what lay before me.

  First of all, it was big—bigger than you’d imagine a cabin that didn’t look like it was more than a thousand square feet. It made sense, of course. If this was a remodeled lodge, it was going to be spacious, but you certainly wouldn’t expect it from the outside.

  As I looked around, it seemed as if the house had been completely gutted. All of the walls had been removed so that, as I turned around in a circle, parts of a kitchen, living room, and study all flowed seamlessly into one another, more like a loft space than an enclosed cabin. In the front of the wide-open room was a large couch and loveseat set up around a rustic wood coffee table, all facing a picture window that looked through the trees to the lake. Bookshelves lined the opposite wall, framing a large desk in the middle. In between the living area and the kitchen was a dining set—a giant carved table surrounded by ten matching chairs.

  “Where do you sleep?” I wondered before I realized I had said it out loud. And just like that, I was imagining Will in a bed, his long, lean frame stretched out atop rumpled linens. Maybe they’d be white, setting off his tanned skin, draped just so across an otherwise unclothed, sculpted middle…

  And then, of course, I was blushing. Dammit.

  Will raised a brow and pointed to one corner where a set of stairs disappeared down to a lower floor. Wow. This house really was bigger than it looked from the outside.

  It was also a lot nicer. As I followed Will farther inside, I noticed that the furniture and decorating, while not particularly flashy, had the quiet elegance that you could only attain with real money. Fabrics that you knew didn’t have a thread of polyester in them. Furniture that was obviously solid wood—no particleboard crap for this guy. Whatever “advertising” Will had done before he came out here, he’d obviously cleaned up. This place was nice. Really nice.

  “Give me a second, and I’ll take a look at your car,” Will said as he moved into the kitchen. “I’m going to make some tea.”

  Was that an offer? Without waiting for my response, Will turned next to the center island and set a kettle to boil on the wide Viking stove. Not knowing what to do, I slid onto one of the bar stools at the island and watched him work.

  He was…competent. I wasn’t sure how else to say it. Even with tasks so minor, Will moved with the kind of surety a lot of people lacked. Especially men in the kitchen. Especially in this part of the world. All my life, I’d grown up around men and boys who could barely butter toast on their own. I honestly would have been shocked if Lucas or his father had the first idea about how to boil water or make something simple, like boxed pasta.

  Will was clearly self-sufficient. At first glance, I would have taken him for someone who at the very least spent his life outdoors, probably working with his hands, and with the smears of dirt and residue of dried sweat that stained his shirt, maybe even homeless. But in close proximity and in the comfort of his home, it was hard to ignore the natural, somewhat animal magnetism and confidence emanating from his body. Transfixed, I watched the lines of muscle moving under his thin t-shirt. He was built like a swimmer, with shoulders that managed to be broad, not bulky, over an otherwise lean torso, and legs that went for days. And yeah, it was hard not to notice the perfectly shaped ass that filled out his carpenter pants indecently well.

  Still, between the hair and the clothes, Will seemed to be working really hard to mask his natural looks. I couldn’t help wondering why.

  He turned arou
nd as the thought echoed again and again through my mind, and caught me staring directly at his ass. I flushed. The right side of his mouth quirked under his beard.

  “What’s on your mind, Lily pad?” he asked as he passed me a mug of tea. “Peppermint all right?”

  “Who are you hiding from?” I blurted out.

  Will’s green eyes darkened, and three rows of worry lines appeared over his brow. He took a sip of his tea, then set it on the counter.

  “I’m going to take a look at your car,” he said, ignoring my question. “Stay here.”

  Shit. I opened my mouth to apologize, but before I could, he’d already abandoned his mug on the counter and was gone. So much for making amends.

  I studied the big open room again while I waited, sipping my tea. It was really good tea, actually—maybe some of the best I’d ever had. And the rest of the room, as far as I could tell, had the same kind of quality. The sofa and loveseat had that look of soft, supple leather that probably cost a fortune. Every appliance in this kitchen was state of the art, immaculate stainless steel. The counters were a brilliant, polished granite, and the wood floors gleamed. This wasn’t just a cabin in the woods. It was a sanctuary.

  A sanctuary that was pretty much devoid of life, I also noticed. There wasn’t even a plant in here to keep alive, much less a cat or a gerbil or any sign of social connections. No birthday cards pinned to a bulletin board or stuck on the fridge. No family photos on the walls or shelves. There wasn’t even a trace of mail left anywhere—magazine subscriptions, bills, nothing. If you were to walk into this house, you would have absolutely no idea who lived here.

  The front door opened with a loud squeak and Will strode back in, retying his hair on top of his head. I liked it when he did that—not just because the man could rock a man bun way better than should be legal, but also because it allowed me to see at least some of his face. I wondered when the last time was that he’d shaved. If he’d ever shaved, by the looks of that beard.