Chapter 5
MACKENZIE
The lake shimmered in the gold of late afternoon, the sun hanging low, turning every ripple into liquid light. I exhaled slowly, the knot I’d carried for a year loosening in my chest. For the first time in months, I felt still, exactly where I was supposed to be.
I spread my towel across the dry grass at the bank, and Max came up beside me, his shadow falling over mine. It usually would’ve scared me to see a shadow looming like that, but a quick poke to my ribs made me yelp. And he laughed, low and easy. The type of laugh that made my heart swell.
“He’s so hot,” one of the girls murmured behind me.
My stomach turned.
“He’s fucking fiiine.”
“What do you think he’s like in bed? Like, he can’t possibly be a virgin, right? He’s so tall, he’s got to be huge. Like he’d probably rip me apart.”
Their voices were grit in my ears. I didn’t need to look to know all eyes were on him, tracking the casual power of movements, drinking in the broad-shouldered, sun-browned version of him.
A strange possessiveness fell over me. I wanted to throw a towel over him and protect him from their greedy eyes. But he was a grown man now and could take care of himself.
He dropped his towel beside mine, oblivious to their commentary, and leaned back on his palms, legs stretched out. I mirrored him, tilting my face toward the sun. I could hear the crunch of his fingers toying with the grass in between us, and without realizing it, my hand landed over his.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, starting to pull away.
But his fingers closed over mine, and he threaded our hands together.
“Keep it,” he murmured. “You’re not bothering me.”
He was holding onto my hand so tight that it felt intimate. A little too intimate.
My pulse spiked so hard I felt it in my throat. I prayed my cheeks didn’t betray me, even as his thumb traced lazy, unhurried circles over my skin like he wasn’t thinking about it all. But knowing Max, he absolutely was.
When I glanced at him, the lake light caught in his eyes, and I felt it again. That low, slow ache that had been building between us for seven summers.
Christmas
7 Months Earlier
I was curled under three blankets in my room, fairy lights dripping gold across the ceiling, when my mom’s voice floated up the stairs.
“Mackenzie! Max is on the phone!”
I was out of bed before she finished the sentence, bare feet hitting cold hardwood. I snatched the landline off my desk.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Trouble.” His voice was so warm. He sounded like a late-night drive during summer. I could hear the curve of his smile through the line. “You sound tired.”
“I am. Ag—uh, my uncle’s been trying to make me eat gluten-free stuffing all day.” I almost slipped and said Agent West, but caught myself. Fear gripped my throat, and an unsettling paranoia crashed through my body.
“Need me to kill him?” His laugh was low.
I didn’t say anything back, but a weird, crippling feeling tugged at my heart. He sensed my hesitancy and said, “I’m kidding. It feels like forever since we talked. I don’t know how to joke with you anymore.”
It had been three days. For us, that was an eternity.
“Did you flip the table?” he asked. “When he told you to eat it? We all know you have anger issues.”
“Almost.” I grinned into the receiver. “And I don’t have anger issues. I’m just persuasive. What about you? How’s Christmas?”
He was in Oklahoma with his sister and her four kids.
“It’s good. They’re wearing me out, though. I don’t know how she manages to survive this every day. They keep asking if I’m married yet. When I tell them I’m eighteen, they look at me like I’m defective and ask, ‘So? You ugly?’”
I laughed, but my stomach twisted. Did he have a girlfriend? We never went there.
There was a pause, then, almost like he’d read my mind, he said, “I don’t have one, by the way.”
My heart did a stupid, slow flip.
“Well… maybe you should get one. So that they’ll stop asking.”
I wanted to bite the words back immediately.
“I don’t know, too much work. Promise.” His tone was half-sarcastic, half-hopeful. “You and me, always? You’re easy.”
I wanted to say, ‘Yes, forever.’ But I was with Jackson, and Max didn’t know.
“I’m down,” I said, lightly. “Bonnie and Clyde style.”
He was quiet for a few beats, and then—
“What is that thing that people do where they say if they’re not married by 40, they’ll marry their best friend?”
“I don’t know. But is that what you want? A friendship pact?”
A hesitation came across the line, and then he said, “I’ll take it.”
On his end, I heard the quiet creak of a mattress, the shift of his weight. Then silence, long enough for me to listen to his breathing.
“I think about it sometimes.” His voice was so soft I almost thought I’d imagined it.
My throat went tight. “Think about what?”
“You. Me. What it’d be like if…” He trailed off, with a faint laugh like he was shaking his head. “Never mind. Dumb.”
“Max.”
He didn’t answer.
“Tell me,” I pressed. “You can tell me anything.”
If he told me he wanted me, I’d probably dump Jackson. But the feeling of Jackson’s hands around my throat from days earlier snapped me back to reality.
“You’re such a fucking whore, Mackenzie,” he had hissed after secretly listening to mine and Max’s conversation. “Such a fucking whore for him. Can you be a whore for me?”
There was a darkness inside Jackson, one I couldn’t escape. Even if Max knew, he wouldn’t be able to save me. No one could.
A long breath came over the line, like he was surrendering something. “I just… wonder what it would be like if we weren’t always saying goodbye.”
And there it was. The unnamed thing between us. That ache. That gravity.
“Me too,” I whispered. “All the time.”
His exhale was almost a groan. Then, because he was Max, because we couldn’t stay in it too long, he said, “So… did the gluten-free stuffing taste more like paper or dirt?”
The memory faded like the sun slipping behind the horizon, but the ache it left deepened in my chest. Max’s hand was still wrapped around mine like it was meant to be there, like I was meant to be there, next to him.
We never talked about that night, about that phone call, but it lived between us anyway.
A soft breeze danced across the lake, pulling strands of my hair across my face. Max reached over and tucked them behind my ear, fingers lingering, brushing against my skin just a little too long.
“You, okay?” His voice was gentle, as if we were still miles apart, talking on the phone instead of sitting right beside each other.
“Yeah,” I murmured, looking away. “I missed this place.”
“Me too.”
“You know what would make it better?”
He smiled knowingly.
The iPod Nano had been our thing. Same scratched silver case, same twenty tracks we’d worn out every summer. We had played mostly Incubus, shared between one set of headphones.
“Tell me you brought it,” I said, watching the spark in his eyes.
“Safe in our room. Not sure it has much life left,” he nudged me with his shoulder. “You have a phone now. Could have a million songs. We should create a Spotify playlist together.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same. Just us and the little Nano that could…”
“And Brandon Boyd,” he added.
I laughed. “Always, Brandon. You can’t compete.”
“I’ve been trying for years,” he muttered. “Told you I could fix the Nano, though. It will be a pretty easy fix.”
I knew he could do it. He was so skilled with technology, it wasn’t even funny. Kind of creepy. He was way too smart.
But before I could answer, I looked up into the dark eyes of Jackson. He dropped his towel beside mine and sat, gaze fixed on Max’s hand still holding mine. His expression was unreadable, but his jaw was tight.
I slid my hand away. Max sat up beside me, but his knee brushed mine and stayed there. We always seemed to find each other, even subconsciously.
I turned from Jackson’s stare, then felt something crawl up my back. A jolt of pure panic ripped through me.
A spider.
“Oh my God!” I shrieked. “There’s something on me!”
Max was on his feet instantly. “Stop moving.”
I felt the tickle on my spine.
“It’s in my clothes! It’s in there!”
He caught my shoulders, trying to still me. “Hold still, I’ll…”
But I was already clawing at the back of my swimsuit cover-up.
“Take this off,” he ordered, voice sharp.
I froze. His hands brushed my hair aside, his body close enough that I felt the heat of him at my back. “Off, Trouble.”
“I can’t! What if it falls and crawls into my ear?!”
He laughed once, trying not to, then yanked the cover-up over my head in one quick motion. His hands were immediately on my bare back, warm and sure, sliding under the strap of my bikini top.
“Found it. It’s tiny. But fast as hell.”
My skin buzzed under his palms. Jackson’s stare burned into me, but Max didn’t notice. He chased the spider with his fingers, and suddenly his hand froze. We both looked down at the same time. I heard him inhale.
His hand was underneath the cup of my bikini top. He hadn’t realized where his hands had been going, but here they were.
Our eyes met. His throat bobbed. His jaw flexed.
“Yup,” he said, voice just a shade too high. “Saving your life. Totally normal. Nothing weird is happening here.”
But he wasn’t breathing, and he definitely wasn’t moving his hands away. I let out a raspy exhale, and he flicked the spider to the ground, scooped up my cover-up, and handed it over without meeting my gaze.
“I’m not looking,” he muttered quickly, shielding his eyes with his hand. But when he cracked two fingers open just enough to peek and flash me a crooked grin, my stomach somersaulted.
He was actively checking me out. And despite the heat of embarrassment on my cheeks, I really liked him looking at me that way.
“Thanks,” I said softly, embarrassed. So fucking embarrassed.
“No prob.” His voice was heavy with restraint.
The ghost of Max’s hands was still on me, warm, trembling, lingering beneath my skin.