Chapter 7 #2
I didn’t look back at Jackson. I didn’t need to. I already knew he’d keep seeing it in his head. My hand on her, my mouth on her skin. And if I had it my way, that image was going to haunt him.
“Oh, yeah.”
About ten minutes later, the sun was gone, swallowed by the night. We drifted into the clearing where the water changed, and at first, I thought we’d gone too far out. Until the black surface beneath us began to glow.
A muted, electric blue clung to our paddles, trailing us in shimmering ribbons.
“It’s like we’re floating on stardust,” Mackenzie squealed.
She reached into the water and gasped when her fingertips sparked to life under the surface. The glow danced along her skin, clinging like it wanted her. Her laugh was quiet.
“God… I forgot how beautiful it is.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t looking at the water. I was looking at her. That fluttering feeling was back in my chest, and suddenly I felt like I might hyperventilate. I didn’t know how to control myself around her.
The blue painted her from below, making her seem untouchable.
Celestial. Her hair had fallen loose, curling over her shoulders in messy strands.
The way her curls fell reminded me of that one night last summer when we stayed up late to watch the stars over the lake.
She had held my hand that night. I had felt something for her even then, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it.
She twisted slightly, catching me staring, and when her eyes met mine, something in my chest wrenched tight.
“You’re staring again,” she said lightly, but her tone had softened. She was curious about my behavior.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Why?”
I set my paddle across my lap, letting us drift into the glow. “Do you want the boyfriend’s answer or Max’s answer?”
Her brows lifted. “Max.”
I exhaled slowly, watching the light swirl around her hand. “Because I like seeing you like this. Happy. It makes me… I don’t know. Feel things.”
She was still, her eyes locking on mine as if she was weighing something heavy. The air became charged like the moment before a lightning strike.
She shifted to face me fully, knees drawn up, just close enough that I could reach out and tuck the curl from her cheek. I imagined leaning in and closing the space between us until her breath mingled with mine.
For a second, I thought she’d let me. Her lips parted slightly, her gaze flickering to my mouth.
And then she pulled back.
The glow on her face dimmed as she retreated, her shoulders curling inward. She didn’t meet my eyes.
“We… we should head back,” she said quickly. Her voice was tight.
“You don’t want to swim?” My disappointment was sharper than I wanted to show.
She shook her head. “It’s late. I’m tired.”
Her voice was composed but not innocent. She was making a choice, playing a character.
I recognized the move. When things got real, she folded away. But this time she wasn’t fleeing so much as controlling the endpoint. She’d started this game with me; she could stop it whenever she wanted. She knew exactly what pulling back would do to me, and she was going to do it.
“Alright,” I said, picking up my paddle.
I caught the flicker in her eyes. It was a quick flash of satisfaction, like she’d wanted me to want more than she’d ever planned to give.
“Keep playing, and I’ll have you begging for me by the week’s end,” I snapped, and the satisfactory grin on her face told me everything I needed to know.
She was fucking teasing me on purpose.
The trip back to the cabins was quiet. We both stole glances at each other, pretending not to notice. When we reached the cabin, the place was silent, and most counselors were already asleep. We tiptoed to our shared room.
As soon as we were alone, the door closed, she busied herself with pajamas and washing her face. I just sat there, watching. Every slight movement was another reminder that she was so close, and yet I still didn’t have her. Not the way I wanted. Not yet.
She talked about how the water grew colder after the sun went down, about the glowing algae—probably with some Latin name she remembered from eighth grade—about the mosquito bite on her ankle.
She was talking about everything except for one thing that mattered. Us.
It was making me crazy.
I changed into sweats, towel-dried my hair, and let my gaze drift to her. She had asked to sleep in one of my shirts tonight.
My eyes skirted up her entire body.
My shirt’s hem barely brushed the tops of her thighs. Bare legs. Bare feet. Leaning against the bathroom door with a toothbrush in her mouth, her hair damp and messy. She probably thought she looked casual. That this was a normal conversation between best friends.
But damn, did she look fuckable. My dick was twitching in my pants, and I had to hold the towel in front of me so she didn’t notice.
I considered telling her to put on shorts. But why the hell would I give her the chance to cover herself up? She felt comfortable with me, and I didn’t want that to change.
“You, okay?” I asked, my voice low enough to make her look up.
She nodded quickly. “Yeah, just tired.”
She was such a liar.
I stepped closer.
“Mackenzie.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, startled. I hardly ever used her real name.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said, “but you don’t get to pretend I don’t notice what’s happening between us.”
Her throat worked. “What’s happening between us?”
“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “You panicked. I got too close. I get it.”
“I didn’t panic,” she shot back. Then, quieter, “Okay… yeah, I did.”
“I’m not mad,” I told her, because I wasn’t. Frustrated? Sure. Did I want to pin her against the wall until she said what she really wanted? Absolutely.
“I’m not here to pressure you,” I said, which was half-true. “I told you I’d let you lead, and I didn’t. That’s on me. I went too far.”
Her head shook immediately. “No. You didn’t go too far.”
My jaw flexed. “Then stop acting like I did.”
She didn’t answer. She just crossed her arms, eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder, like she was bracing herself against something invisible.
“I told you I can’t fake,” I said.
“Yeah, well… you’re good enough at it that I can’t tell what’s real right now,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have asked you to play along. We’re too close.”
She stopped and bit her lip. For a fraction of a second, I saw something like contentment flicker across her face. She wanted me to work for it, for her.
She was such a fucking tease.
She started to walk away, and I grabbed her hand.
She stopped, not turning her head completely, but she didn’t move her hand out of my grip.
I started inching my grip up her arm, little by little, catching her elbow and gently pulling her into me.
When her shoulder touched my chest, I turned her body so that we were looking straight into each other’s eyes.
Everything else faded. Our hearts beat in sync as we stared at each other. Then I bent my head down so that my lips brushed against her ear.
“You like teasing me?”
Her breath stalled, and I could feel her pulse skyrocketing against my lips as I brushed them down her neck.
“You’re blurring the lines again,” she whispered back. But she wasn’t pushing me away.
“I think you want me to blur them a little,” I said, pulling my shirt down a bit off her shoulder and kissing the bare skin there.
Her breath was erratic now, her fingers gripping the front of my shirt like a vice. I pulled my lips off of her and looked back into her eyes.
She was hungry. The green irises were now molten lava. I wanted to touch her, taste her, sink into her. But she was my best friend, and I needed to take it slow. But my desire for her was so strong. It was overwhelming.
I bent down, my lips hovering right over hers.
So close. She closed her eyes, angling her face up to mine.
She wanted me to kiss her.
Her breath brushed my lips, and I swear I could taste her.
But I wanted her to work for it a little bit, too. I stepped back, biting my lower lip and holding in the tiny smirk I wanted to give her. She opened her eyes slowly, and when she saw that I wasn’t going to give in to her, a flash of pure anger rolled over her face.
She turned her back on me, hair spilling across the pillow like a halo as she lay down in her bunk. I stood there, pulse still pounding. I’d agreed to this fake-dating shit for her. And yet, here I was, falling for it. For her.
She could at least give me the benefit of the doubt.
But because I was such a fucking gentleman, I plugged in the nightlight I’d brought her, setting it close enough for the glow to spill over her. She didn’t turn around. But then she reached out and caught my hand. It was a quick brush of fingers before she pulled back like a petulant queen.
I shook my head with a soft smile because I was a fucking idiot and thrived off this shit.
I turned off the main light, took off my clothes, and climbed into the top bunk, the frame creaking under my weight.
“Goodnight, Trouble,” I said into the dark.
There was a long pause before I heard it.
“Goodnight, Max.”
My phone pinged at the same moment hers did. The screen’s glow illuminated her face in the dark. I didn’t need to lean over to know what it said.
I had already read it.
JACKSON KENSWICK
That little kayak date was cute.
Too bad you’ll never escape me.
The message was childish, but it made my jaw tighten. He was still circling her.
I let out a breath and looked up at the ceiling.
I had fucked up.
As soon as I saw her, a part of me I had locked up became obsessed.
To be honest, I had been lowkey obsessed with her for years.
I had stolen pieces of her journal, smelled her shirts when she wasn’t looking, and even thought about stalking her during the school year.
But I had never acted on it, because I was a standup guy.
She would kill me when she found out how fucking obsessed I was with her.
I don’t know why, but every time I was around her, I became a completely different person. And for some reason, this summer was when I decided to let everything implode.
I rubbed my hand across my face, blowing out another breath.
I had let my brain rationalize the most insane parts of myself, and I had crossed a line she didn’t even know I could cross. A line I told myself to never cross.
I wanted to protect her because I loved her. I was just finally coming to terms with it. I knew Mackenzie had secrets. I had guessed a while ago that she was running from someone, and that all these ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ weren’t family members.
Her drawings gave her away. I just didn’t know the extent of her trauma. Yet.
I couldn’t fault her for hiding it from me, because I had secrets of my own.
She thought I was just smart, the golden boy who got into MIT and two Ivy League schools. She thought I didn’t have depth, that I just played ball.
She didn’t know the truth, that my dad had taught me to hack before I could drive, that I’d been breaking firewalls and building bots since I was twelve. That I lived in an online world she didn’t even know existed.
I had done it before I even realized what I was doing. I had a clean, easy doorway into a life I was dying to be part of. Hers.
When I helped her set up her phone, I accidentally hacked in. Okay, not accidentally, I knew what I was doing.
I was discreet about it.
I wasn’t supposed to use my skills for stuff like this. Dad had told me this was just for fun, and one day I would use my skills for something useful. Was that day today? Probably not. But I was going to tell myself it was.
I couldn’t stop. Not with her. I needed to know what was happening. Every threat, every secret, every shadow she didn’t want to say out loud, I was going to know about.
I was always going to be one step ahead in whatever game Jackson was playing with her.
It was a little harder to hack his phone than hers.
He was good at covering his tracks, but while he had been busy stewing about Mackenzie earlier, I had grabbed his phone and jailbroke it.
I had made sure the little backdoor left no obvious footprints.
Now, I could watch Jackson’s accounts, trace his IP hops, catalogue his messages, log his times, and view his browser history.
I was browsing through his files when I discovered it. In his documents, a file labeled “Game_2_MK.”
MK. Mackenzie? Or Max McKinnon?
The file was encrypted, even with the backdoors I had built. That meant he wanted it hidden. I couldn’t open it, but I didn’t need to. The name alone told me what I already knew: Jackson was planning something, and we were being watched.
I think part of her suspected something was off with him, but I don’t think she realized the full extent of his psychosis.
In his files, there had been pictures I’d managed to retrieve. They were so grotesque I almost threw up when I saw them. There was a weird crest on all of them, though—thirteen-pronged. It kind of looked like a star.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I wasn’t going to think about it much.
Jackson was a fucking psychopath. And my job now was to keep her away from him. The only thing that would keep me from ripping his throat out was her.
Every second she spent near him, every smile she forced in his direction, I wanted to tear him apart. He thought he had her, but I had the chess piece.
She was the only thing he and I had in common. The difference was that I actually knew how to protect her. Psychopaths are predictable. They follow patterns. Jackson was no exception. Jackson wasn’t a threat. He was a variable. And variables can be eliminated.
I wasn’t just some golden retriever trailing after her. I was a Doberman. Her Doberman. Hers.
I was starting to scare myself with the lengths I’d go for her.
I mean, fuck, we had only been back at camp for less than 24 hours, and I was already turning into a raging, reckless lunatic thinking about killing her psychopath ex-boyfriend.
Something was changing in me. I didn’t want to fight it because she needed me. I was her personal vigilante.
She didn’t need to know how far I’d go. Not yet. But one day, she’d see that every insane, fucked-up thing I was about to do was because I was in love with her.
She was my entire purpose now.
My soulmate.
She had always been.
And I die before letting her go.