Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  Will glanced at me curiously. “You write songs?”

  I straightened up. “Um, yeah. Well, I used to. Did. I—I don’t know.”

  Will watched me for a second before turning his eyes back to the road. I didn’t say anything else, content to look out the window, and he didn’t press me. We listened to the next few songs on the album as he drove across the border.

  “Okay, I gotta ask,” I said, turning to Will. “How can a guy like you afford a house like yours?”

  Will spun the wheel with ease, turning the old truck along the twisting road. He gave me another one of his shy half smiles. “I used to work in…advertising, like I said. In New York and LA, mostly. I made enough that I could buy my place here and kind of disappear for a while. I wanted to keep things very simple, but…I couldn’t really help myself with the house.” His mouth twisted fondly, like he was remembering an errant child. “It’s my baby.”

  “Why don’t you ever have anyone over? It seems to be such a waste, just you living there.”

  Will sighed. “My life used to be very…complicated. I bought the house in a moment of weakness. I should get rid of it, but…I just haven’t been able to do it yet.” His mouth quirked at me. “Do you blame me?”

  I grinned as one side of his mouth perked up a little wider. “Not at all. The house is amazing. Don’t ever sell it.”

  “I’m glad I can impress you somehow, Lil.”

  “I’m more impressed that you’re actually telling me something about yourself.”

  He rolled his eyes, but the half smile reappeared. “I don’t know. You do something to me. You make me say things I shouldn’t. Do things I shouldn’t.”

  He steered the car onto Trent Avenue, the long highway that ran alongside the mountain foothills from Washington to Idaho. Besides farms and a railroad track running parallel, there wasn’t much on it except for Curly’s, the log cabin-shaped bar that straddled the border almost perfectly. We found a parking spot in the big gravel lot that was crowded with several pickups, much like his. Will turned off the engine, but didn’t move, still holding both hands on the wheel and squeezing his eyes shut. I moved to get out, but before I could, Will grabbed my hand.

  I jerked at the sudden contact—not because it felt bad, but because I wasn’t prepared for the spark that came out of it. The memory of our kiss came flooding back. My lips ached for his—the way he had devoured me. Will had kissed me like a starving man, and I had been just as hungry. I wanted more. Even with the cold shoulder, the weirdness, the distance that always returned, I wanted more. But did he?

  Will shuddered too, but kept my fingers firmly in his grasp.

  “Will?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “Lil, I…” His face screwed up tightly, and his breathing was audible, almost forced. His thumbs brushed over my knuckles, but his fingers weaved through mine even tighter than before.

  “Oh, wow.” I covered our intertwined fingers with my other hand, patting the top of his broad palm. His fear—or whatever he would call it—was palpable, shivering through his body like he was touching a live wire. “Will, you don’t have to go in. I can get a ride home from someone else, easy.”

  “Someone else meaning Lucas?”

  I shrugged. Several people in there would probably drive me home if I asked, but Lucas made the most sense, since he lived less than a quarter mile from my house.

  Will scowled. He was jealous, and I would have been lying if I said a part of me didn’t like it. In the back of my mind, another voice said he didn’t have the right. He had kissed me and run off in the night like a bandit, like touching me physically hurt. Then he had returned, day after day, treating me like a stranger, like it hadn’t happened. And I, in my stubbornness, had returned the silence with my own. This wasn’t the start of a normal relationship. Whatever it was, it was dysfunctional.

  But now here we were. Maybe I should continue to let him run, or even run myself. But instead, I felt inextricably drawn to this strange, curt, fearful man. His sadness seemed to understand my own. We were creatures alone by our own choices. A part of me wondered if we couldn’t be alone together.

  Will stared at our hands for a moment, chewing on his lip.

  “Will you do me a favor?” he asked.

  I cocked my head. “What’s that?”

  He exhaled. “If I need to leave quickly, can you be ready to go? No questions?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t planning on staying that long anyway. If you get freaked out, we’ll jet, okay?”

  Will nodded, still keeping his eyes fixed on our fingers, where his thumb continued to stroke over my hand. His touch was so unlike his personality. Light. Tender.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said at last, more to himself than to me. When he looked up, his eyes were full of determination. “Just…don’t let go, okay?”

  I nodded solemnly. His penetrating gaze didn’t waver. I wondered if he understood that every time he looked at me like this, he pinned me into place. That with every dark glance, every wide-eyed stare, Will was seeping into the depths of who I was. Places I wasn’t sure I could even reach on my own.

  “Okay,” I promised. “I won’t let go.”

  14

  Curly’s was full of people, most of them clustered around the bar and a few meandering around the dance floor while the band, a Tim McGraw knock-off, started their set. It was the usual crowd gathered from the neighboring lakes and Post Falls, the nearest proper town. The bar itself was nothing special—an old log cabin that had a permanent stage set up at one end and a long bar on the other, with worn vinyl booths rolling down the sides toward the stage while waitresses zigzagged between them.

  I spotted Lucas and his group almost immediately crowded around a booth near the stage. A few people were familiar from the other night at the inn: Lucas’s younger sister, Katie, and her boyfriend, as well as Lindsay, the blonde girl, who was already staring daggers at me. There were some I recognized from high school, along with other faces from the past.

  Lucas found me and raised his hand, his eyes bright and warm until he caught sight of who was behind me.

  “Looks like Ranger Rick spotted us,” Will grumbled, and I chuckled in spite of myself. Between his buttoned-up polo and curved baseball hat, Lucas did kind of look like a Boy Scout.

  “Be nice,” I chided, but the joke faded when I looked over my shoulder. Will’s face was tight as he glanced around the room, with two lines clear across his forehead. He had tied his hair up walking in, and as he examined the bar, he reached up automatically to tug it back down.

  “Oh, please don’t,” I said without thinking.

  He froze mid-pull, and his eyes unerringly found mine.

  “I just…” I swallowed. Shit. “I like seeing your face, Will.”

  His eyes didn’t waver, and for a second, the cacophony of the room faded slightly, almost as if we were the only ones in it. I swallowed again.

  Finally, Will blinked, re-fixed the knot, and dropped his hand. “You win, Lily pad,” he mumbled with a slight quirk of his mouth and immediately grabbed my hand. “Don’t let go, remember?”

  I kept my promise as I guided Will toward the booth, past a sea of flannel, cowboy boots, and a lot of whisker-faded jeans.

  “Hey, guys.” I greeted everyone with a weak wave. “We, um, made it. This is Will—he’s a neighbor on Newman.”

  We listened as everyone announced their names—the girls openly perused Will, clearly noticing the way his shirt clung to his tall, lean form, and the way his legs filled out his jeans in just the right way. The guys were a bit cagier, checking out the stranger invading their turf. Will certainly cut an imposing form, with shoulders that filled out your average doorframe and a face with an immovable scowl.

  Lucas’s eyes latched onto our joined hands, but I didn’t move. Instead, I tipped my chin up as Will squeezed my hand even tighter, though he remained firmly behind me.

  “Hey,” he said to everyone with a weak wave. “Nice to meet you.”<
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  “Sit down,” Lucas said, gesturing at a few open seats at the end of the table. “Lindsay got us a pitcher.”

  “Do you want some?” Lindsay’s kind tone was clearly pointed at Will, not me.

  I sat down on the end of the booth while Will took a seat next to me.

  “I waitress here sometimes,” Lindsay added proudly, as if waiting tables at Curly’s was a prize position. And to be honest, in some ways it was. She probably made good tips and got to listen to decent music. The way some of the guys at the table were eying the other waitresses circulating the room, it was clear that they had a bit of a reputation.

  I shook my head at her offer just as Will nodded his assent.

  “Do you mind?” he asked as he accepted a glass from Lindsay.

  “Boooo,” Lindsay jeered from her spot next to Lucas. She latched onto his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Are you one of those teetotalers who glares at anyone who drinks? You’re no fun.”

  I gave a tight smile. “It’s just a personal preference. I don’t mind if other people drink.”

  Lucas nodded. He knew that was my line. Though most of the old friends here knew who my mom was—to be honest, most of the people in this bar probably knew who Ellie Sharp was—Lucas was the only one who really knew what her choices meant for me. How often she had allowed her daughter to fend for herself, sometimes against the people she brought home.

  Back then, Lucas wouldn’t have drunk at all, but now I watched him eagerly refill his glass. Will examined his beer for a second, looking back and forth between it and me before leaving it on the coaster.

  And for some reason, something inside me shifted at that decision.

  “Hey,” I whispered in his ear. “I really don’t mind if you want to have a beer or two. Honest. Especially if it will help you relax a little.”

  He turned, and suddenly I was very aware of our close proximity. Shoved together by the crowded conditions of the booth, I could see clearly the way the long sweep of his eyelashes brushed golden across his cheekbones when he blinked, examine the tiny row of stress lines in between his strong brows, smell that unique scent of his, tinged with soap and deodorant. The memory of his taste flooded back. Without thinking, I licked my lower lip. His green eyes, flecked with gold, darkened and dilated.

  “Relax,” Will said hoarsely. “Okay.”

  With substantial effort, I turned back to the group, who were all merrily chatting with one another except for Lucas, who was watching me and Will with a stony face. He caught my eye, then deliberately lifted one arm up and set it around Lindsay’s shoulders. She started at the surprise, but happily nuzzled into him. How do you like that? Lucas’s expression clearly seemed to say. I shrugged. I honestly couldn’t care less who he was involved with. I just didn’t like Microaggressive Barbie period, whether or not she was dating Lucas.

  “You know, you look kind of familiar,” Lindsay said to Will, who immediately froze, beer glass at his mouth. “Have you been to the bar before?”

  Will set his glass down at the table and stared fixedly at it. “Ah, no. I’m more of a homebody.”

  Lucas snorted. “More like a hermit,” he said, earning a glare from me. Will said nothing.

  “No, that’s not it,” Lindsay said. She tapped an acrylic nail on the tabletop. “It’s something else. Hey, Kel, don’t you think he looks familiar?”

  She nudged the girl next to her, pulling her out of a conversation with the other two guys. Kelly looked over Will with Lindsay. In my lap, Will’s hand squeezed mine so tightly I thought my circulation might cut off.

  “You guys,” I said. “Give the poor guy a rest. He just got here.”

  “See?” Lucas said. “He’s nobody.”

  “I’m nobody,” Will murmured and squeezed my fingers again when Lindsay and the girls started chatting about some celebrity gossip they had read that day.

  “No, you’re not,” I said, so low that only he could hear me. “Not to me.”

  His eyes met mine once more and softened. “Thanks, Lil,” he said softly, and again, there was that strange quirk of the mouth that seemed to be reserved only for me.

  “What’s Ellie up to tonight, Mags?” Lucas asked, pulling my attention back across the table after the waitress dropped off my water.

  I took a long drink. “Um, she’s at home tonight.”

  Lucas gave me a warm smile. “Quiet night in?” Understanding shone out of his open face—he knew what that would mean to me.

  I nodded. “As quiet as it ever is with her, you know.”

  “Wait a minute, Ellie? Do you mean Ellie Sharp?”

  I looked back at Lindsay, who had realization suddenly dawning over her vapid face. I should have known that eventually it would come to this. Mama was a regular at Curly’s, and since Lindsay worked here, she would probably know her, just like the rest of the staff who would call me at closing time to pick her up.

  “Oh my God!” Lindsay exclaimed. “That’s your mom? You poor thing! No wonder you had to come back to Spokane. She needs help, Maggie, she really does.”

  I just studied my water glass. Lindsay had clearly had a few too many—she had that glazed-eyed look I knew so well. There was no reason to respond.

  “What is she talking about?” Will asked quietly.

  “Her mom is a fall-down drunk,” Lindsay said sloppily, oblivious to the irony of her statement when she was already slurring her words herself.

  “What?” Will said sharply, calling the attention of a few other people at the table.

  “Lindsay,” Lucas spoke up sharply, but she ignored him too.

  “Hey, if it walks like a duck, you know?” The girl had no filter. The table had gone quiet, and I shrank, unable to escape. “Kel, remember the other night when we had to call a taxi for that lady, the one with the crazy brown hair? The one who kept falling off her bar stool? That’s this girl’s mom!”

  Will pushed his beer away slightly and straightened beside me. Now I was the one squeezing his hand. I wanted to be literally anywhere else but here, reminded again of all the reasons why I had wanted to leave in the first place. But in the end, I had gone from being Ellie Sharp’s daughter to Theo del Conte’s girlfriend and back again, and neither had served me well.

  A part of me wondered if there would ever be a point in my life when I didn’t belong to someone else. When people would just see me as myself?

  “Seriously, though,” Lindsay was saying after she regaled the group with the latest embarrassing thing my mother had done. “How could you just leave her here? You must know she has a problem. What kind of daughter are you?”

  “Lindsay!” Lucas’s face was starting to turn red.

  But I was done. “I guess that makes me a bad daughter,” I said. “Just like calling you a bitch probably makes me a bad friend. Sorry, Lucas.”

  Lucas just shook his head while the rest of the group’s mouths dropped. I rubbed my head, bracing myself for the utter onslaught that was about to come at me and trying to think of a reason to leave. This was a bad idea. Coming back here at all was a bad idea.

  But before Lindsay could start her retort, there was a loud screech of the chair next to me. The booth silenced, all eyes on Will as he stood up tall and re-extended his hand to me.

  “Lil,” he called my nickname clearly, his green eyes bright in the dimly lit room. “Wanna dance?”

  It was the same hand that had been holding mine since we left his truck. Across the table, Lindsay’s jaw fell open, and Lucas frowned. But I barely noticed, captured instead by the strong, serious face of a man who had held me in his thrall since pretty much the moment I’d met him.

  I smiled, the first one that night that felt genuine and true.

  “I’d love to,” I said as I let him pull me out of the booth and onto the dance floor where a few couples were already starting to sway back and forth to the slow country songs the band issued.

  “Thanks,” I said as he slipped a big hand around my waist.
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  Will pulled me to his torso, moving naturally, if slowly, in time with the sweet, easy rhythm the boys were playing. “Don’t think about it,” he said. “It was the least I could do. You don’t need to listen to that shit.”

  I didn’t respond, just pressed my nose into the soft cotton sleeve of his shirt and inhaled. He smelled so good. Enough to make me forget that I wasn’t in any shape to be smelling a man to begin with. Enough to make me forget that most of what Lindsay had said wasn’t shit—it was true.

  “She does deserve better than me,” I said quietly.

  “Who? Lindsay?”

  I shook my head, keeping my face pressed into the cotton. “My mom. I—I should have told you about her. Everything, I mean. So you’d know what you were really getting involved in. I’m sorry.”

  Will’s finger slid under my chin and tipped my face up so that I was looking directly at him.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Lily pad,” he said. “Especially not to some sorry chick who has to shit all over someone else’s life to make herself feel good.”

  “But—”

  “Nothing.” Will’s hand fell away, but my chin stayed in place. His eyes dropped to my lips and back up. “You can’t cure an addict, Lil. They can only cure themselves. I learned that the hard way.”

  Before I could open my mouth to ask just what he meant by that, another voice jolted the conversation.

  “Can I cut in?”

  Will and I both turned to find Lucas standing next to us, eying me remorsefully.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Won’t your date be a little jealous there?”

  Will snorted.

  Lucas rolled his eyes. “Lindsay’s just a friend. And what she said was messed up. I’m here to make peace.” He glanced at Will with more than a hint of disdain. “You all right if I steal ‘your girl’ for a second?” He sneered as he said it, like the idea of me being with Will was a huge joke.