Vote Then Read: Volume I

by Carly Phillips

  He wasn’t the doctor or the nurse. He had no qualifications, aside from just hearing what they said, to make such a bold claim. But hearing the reassurance from his lips made all the difference. Like because he said it, it would be true.

  I sagged against him, my hand on my stomach and his hand over mine, and it felt like coming home. Warm. Safe. Loved.

  “I loved you before, Tay. Before the baby. I love you because you saved me - not from my wrongs but from myself. I would have spent the rest of my life living to make up for the past instead of making peace with it, instead of living to make more from the future. I love you because you remind me of the best in me when it’s easier to focus on the worst.”

  “I love you, Ash,” I whispered, wanting to say more but too exhausted to form the words.

  I wanted to know so many things. About the shop. About Larry. But for now, knowing this contentment was enough to let my heart finally rest.

  29

  Ash

  “Don’t even think about it,” I growled, jogging around the truck to finish opening the door for her.

  “Ash, I’m fine,” Tay insisted. “I’m pretty sure getting out of a car is considered a relatively mild normal activity.”

  I grunted, not giving a shit. We’d just left the hospital. She had to be out of her mind if she thought I was going to take any chances.

  I stood in front of the door, blocking her descent.

  “Ash, what—” She broke off with a small squeal as I wedge my arm underneath her knees and around her back. “You can’t carry me! I’m pregnant!”

  I laughed. “I hadn’t noticed,” I teased as I shoved the door shut and walked us to the house.

  Even pregnant, she weighed only about a pixie and a half.

  “I hope you know you can’t carry me everywhere for the remainder of the pregnancy,” she stated as I reached for the doorknob.

  I met her gaze with an easy smirk. “Is that a dare?”

  Her response was cut off when the door opened and a resounding ‘Welcome Home’ echoed through the room.

  It wasn’t anything huge, but Eve, Eli, and the Madison brothers had wanted to be here when she got back.

  I never would’ve asked - not with Larry’s death leaving the community in the kind of utter devastation one finds in Category 5 hurricane-ravaged lands - but it seemed like everyone, including us, clung to any happiness that crossed our paths in the wake of the tragedy; it was the only way we’d ever get through it.

  Taylor’s wide eyes and round mouth as she looked at me did things to my body that I really shouldn’t have been thinking about at that moment. So, with a tight jaw, I shoved away my desire to worship her and promptly placed her on the couch, dropping a kiss on her head just as Eve swarmed in to gush over her friend with Mick not too far behind.

  I walked away to the tune of baby names being discussed.

  Brushing by Miles, who stayed back from the crowd, I thanked him for stopping by. I couldn’t help but notice how he made no move to get closer though his attention never wavered to me or even to Eli; it remained trained on the two women. For a second, I thought his intense focus was on Taylor and my blood heated, but then I realized it wasn’t Taylor he was looking at; it was Eve.

  With a soft laugh to myself, I shook my head and headed for Eli.

  We hadn’t had a chance to talk since Larry’s house - which wasn’t exactly talking. And the past two days at the hospital, Tay had been my only focus, though Larry wasn’t far from my mind.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked, almost immediately regretting the question.

  Eli looked alright on the outside; he looked like the outside was all he had left.

  Hollow eyes ducked from mine as he nodded to the door.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I made sure Taylor was still securely sitting on the couch before stepping back outside with him. I needed to know about Larry and what was going on, but I didn’t want Taylor to hear it, too. Not now.

  He cleared his throat. “They’re ruling it a suicide.”

  I nodded. “And Dex is sure...”

  “Yeah.”

  There wasn’t much doubt left in my mind that Larry had killed himself, but with what just happened at Roasters, I wasn’t willing to put it past Blackman to fucking frame Larry for his own death.

  “He’d stopped taking his medication,” my friend went on, staring out toward the cliff as though he was confessing to me, rather than telling me the details I needed to know.

  “Medication for what?” I’d heard him that night when he’d come to the house. But I couldn’t think - couldn’t process anything except that Larry was gone.

  “Mood stabilizers for depression. Doc Shelly put him on them after Laurel left. And he was doing this shit for years. On and off again.”

  “Why? Why stop taking your fucking medication?” I said roughly, my heart still raw - still bleeding from the loss.

  “Because he was raised in a different time. A time when you didn’t talk about things like depression, let alone take something for it.” He paused and then continued in a rough, hoarse impression of Larry. “‘I went to war, boy. I don’t need no damn medication to help me.’”

  Yeah, that sounded like Larry.

  A tear slipped from my eye. Fucking stubborn old man.

  “Instead, you just manned up and did what you had to do… because they didn’t know that the thoughts could kill you,” Eli finished heavily.

  “Then why take them in the first place?”

  “Because they made him feel better,” he said with a sharp edge of irony. “They made him feel better to the point where he’d decide he never needed them in the first place since he felt fine.”

  I still didn’t understand. You have medication, you take it.

  Sometimes, it’s not our place to understand, just to be understanding.

  I stared out toward the horizon next to him, letting the cool salt air carry the reality down into the most vulnerable part of my soul.

  I’d only known Larry for a handful of months. Months - days even - are more than enough to see the goodness in a person, but the darkness they battle is harder to uncover. Everyone hides their shadows, embarrassed of the monsters that hide inside us all.

  It was hard to accept that the man who’d helped me find mine, bring them out into the light, give them a name, and overcome them, would be the same man who lost the battle to his own.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t… You’re fucking sure?”

  “It’s my fault,” he replied, and I flinched at the vehemence in his tone.

  My eyes jerked to Eli. His temple pulsed with the way blood pumped to the muscles clenched along his face.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I had a feeling he wasn’t taking them with how he’s been acting lately. He was angry and upset and I yelled at him, Ash. He was talking about selling Roasters… giving up everything… after the robbery and I couldn’t take it. I yelled at him to take the damn meds so that he wouldn’t be a giant pain in the ass, so that we could move forward with fixing this, so that he could be what we needed him to be,” he said hollowly and if murder could be convicted on confessions alone, it was clear Eli would’ve taken full responsibility for this in a heartbeat. “I was too frustrated. Too angry that he’d so easily want to give up everything when I should have known it was the depression talking, when I should have been more patient.”

  “Eli, this isn’t your fault,” I said with a confidence that I had no business having.

  Was it anyone’s fault? Was it even Larry’s fault? I had no fucking clue.

  All I knew was that someone who’d meant a lot, who’d done a lot, was gone and we were all figuring out how to cope with it.

  “Guess we’ll never know,” he replied.

  I almost wished Taylor were hearing this because she’d know the right thing to say. She’d know how to make it okay. I shuddered with the sudden violent urge to hold her and tell her how much I loved her.
>
  “He didn’t do this to punish you, Eli,” I told him, repeating the words he’d spoken to me the other day. “He loved you. He didn’t do this to punish anyone.”

  Eli didn’t respond. He stood as still as a petrified tree for so long, I wondered if he was growing roots made of remorse into the ground at his feet.

  Ever so slowly, he turned to me, his eyes sharp with sorrow. “Do you believe that?”

  I drew a long breath. I didn’t know how to explain the actions of a hurting man, especially when I couldn’t claim to understand them myself.

  But I could tell him what I chose to believe.

  “When we talked the other day, I said when Larry died, all it did was remind me - literally - of the man I was and the mistakes I’d made.” I swallowed over the thick bittersweet ball of love and grief lodged in my throat. “I was wrong.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “When he died, those memories didn’t come back to punish me for who I was, they came to show the man I was meant to be - the man Larry wanted me to be.” I bit off a curse and wiped a tear away. “A good man. A good husband.” I looked over my shoulder, knowing that day was going to come as soon as I could make it happen. “And a good father,” I said the last with a thready voice.

  “I lost Larry that night, but he didn’t go without leaving me something to hold onto forever.”

  There were many things Larry gave that would stay with me forever, but Taylor and our baby girl? They were the most important of them all.

  Eli’s mouth thinned, a range of emotions flashing over his face. Grief and longing, but it was the hint of jealousy that surprised me.

  But just as quickly as it surprised me, it was gone again.

  “I’m happy for you,” he told me, a strained smile struggling on his face as he pulled me in for a hug. “Guess all we can do is focus on the good things, right?”

  I patted him on the back, uttering as I pulled back, “Start where you are…”

  “Use what you have,” he returned in kind.

  Do what you can went unsaid between us as we turned back to the house.

  “What do you need from me? Is there anything that I can do?” I asked with a firm tone, hoping at least focusing on the immediate future would help pull us all through something so hard to see past.

  “I’ve told everyone here… Josie. Eve’s siblings. Went up to Rock Beach the day after I saw you and broke the news to Jules and her parents.”

  “Did you find Larry’s other granddaughter, Laurel?”

  His head ducked. “Dex found her; she’s been working for Ralph Lauren in Frisco.” He sighed. “I just had to find someone else to tell her. Laurel… doesn’t know me. I think it would be better for her to find out from someone she knows, given her past - and not her aunt.”

  I nodded, remembering that Laurel’s parents - Larry’s son and daughter-in-law - had died in a tragic boating accident. And now this.

  “Let me rephrase, I found someone to tell her, I’m just waiting to hear back from the woman so I can let them run the announcements in the paper, though I doubt Laurel gets or wants any news having to do with Carmel Cove after what she’s been through.” He stopped at the door. “Funeral will be this weekend.”

  “You coming back in?”

  He shook his head. “I should get going. Still trying to sort out everything with his will and the funeral arrangements. Plus, I’m still trying to figure out the motive behind the break-in.”

  My jaw tightened. Though everything he said was one-hundred-percent true, I had a feeling he just couldn’t keep up the façade of being okay for any longer.

  “If you need anything - anything.” I gripped his shoulder. “My door is always open.”

  I watched him nod and head back to his truck, wishing there was something more I could do. But sometimes, offering to help bear the burden was all that could be done.

  Unlike Taylor, I hadn’t grown up going to church every Sunday. I believed in God, but I wasn’t religious. Even after starting at the AA meetings, I hadn’t made it to church on Sundays, but I had begun to pray.

  In the hospital, I prayed for Taylor.

  Now, I prayed Eli, that somehow - some way - he’d be able to make peace with what happened.

  And, as I walked back inside, I prayed I’d never again doubt the man Larry knew I could be.

  30

  Taylor

  My fingers rubbed circles around the crest of my stomach as I stood on the lip of wood between the bedroom and living space. I was in one of Ash’s shirts which just happened to be the perfect size for a pregnant woman like me and a super soft pair of sweatpants he’d bought me to try and bribe me to stay in bed.

  I’d left the hospital two days ago and he still acted as though I’d been put on bed rest.

  I should’ve felt settled – being back home, knowing our baby girl was okay, but I wasn’t quite there; the cabin didn’t look quite the same. The weight of my confession had hung over me for so long, the rest of my worries and plans about the future seemed to fall by the wayside in comparison.

  The trip to the hospital made my future reality come barreling in like a SWAT team of worries through the windows of my mind.

  We had nothing for the baby.

  I knew a lot. I’d read too much not to have a Ph.D. in pregnancy by now. But when it came to physical things – like a crib – or, you know, a room for the baby, or… anything.

  “Tay?” Ash came through the door, worry immediately scarring his face as he scanned over me.

  He’d been out at the restaurant dealing with the last round of inspections. The stress of them had weighed on him, on top of my small trip to the hospital, and on top of Larry’s funeral this weekend. Because of the manner of his death, Larry had been cremated, and the service held off for a few days until Dex could track down Larry’s long-gone granddaughter, Laurel, and tell her what happened.

  The word on Ocean Avenue was that she was due to arrive in town tomorrow.

  But because of all of it, I’d waited to mention all the things that had plagued my mind and my sleep.

  Though I’d made substantial progress on filling up my Amazon cart with the essentials.

  “Are you alright? Are you having pain again?”

  He rushed over to me, pulling out his phone ready to call the hospital. I reached out and stopped him.

  “I’m fine—I mean, I feel fine,” I assured him, reaching up on my tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. “Did everything go okay?”

  His shoulders sagged, his forehead dropping to mine as a smile tugged at his lips.

  “Passed.”

  I let out a small cry of happy relief and wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him as tight as I could.

  “I’m so happy for you,” I murmured, relaxing in his embrace.

  “Me, too, Pixie. Me, too.” He took a deep breath against my neck. “Now, tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “It’s about as obvious as your stomach,” he quipped.

  I sighed. “I just… Coming back from the hospital… it hit me how not prepared I am. Me. Not prepared at all for this baby.”

  “We,” he corrected with emphasis.

  My heart swelled amid my anxiety. “Well, if you want to be in that boat with me,” I teased softly.

  “I want to be anywhere so long as it’s with you.” He dropped a kiss on my nose and continued, “Alright. So, tell me what you need.”

  “We still have two months before she’s here. That’s plenty of time to get a crib and diapers and all—”

  “No.”

  “No… it’s not?”

  “Not that.” He held his arm out. “Taylor, this place isn’t ready for a baby. There’s no room. Plus, the whole structure is just…” He trailed off in dismay. “No, it’s not right.”

  I didn’t completely disagree with him, but he made it seem much more drastic than it was.

  “I think it will be okay…”

&
nbsp; Ash’s hands fell away from me as he ambled through the room, examining… calculating.

  And then, before I could stop him, he brought his phone up to his face – but he wasn’t calling the hospital.

  “Hey, man. Got a minute?”

  “Ash…” I mumbled, unsure what for and too softly for him to hear me.

  “I know you got a lot on your plate right now with Roasters and Larry,” he began regretfully, and I realized he must be talking to Eli. “But I was just talking with Taylor about the baby… and we’ve got to do something with my place. It barely fits us.”

  There was a pause while he listened to Eli reply.

  “Really? Are you sure? That would be awesome.” My head turned. “We still have a few months, but I’d like to see what we can get done in that time.”

  I bit my lip, padding quietly into the kitchen to grab a cup of water.

  Ash nodded, his eyes meeting mine as he ended the call. “Thanks, Eli. I really appreciate it.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He came over and kissed my forehead. Always my protector… and my lover.

  “I did,” he told me. “And I always will.”

  My body flushed and I shifted uncomfortably as that heat pooled between my legs, making my panties damp and my core instantly ache.

  It had become clear that hormones didn’t stop for life… or death… or hospital visits. And Ash… he was more than attentive and caring, making sure that I really didn’t have to do anything over the past two days, but aside from that, he hadn’t done more than kiss me. And I really needed him to do more than kiss me.

  But it was more than the hormones… We’d lost Larry. And since the hospital… I lost count of how many times I’d prayed, thanking God that our little girl was okay, while knowing just how serious and life-threatening things could have been. Life could be so uncertain. But love… I’d never felt more sure of anything than I did of this.

  Unfortunately, the one thing that would have guaranteed that I remained in bed for extended periods of time was the only thing that Ash avoided like the plague.