Chapter 11
MAX
We rode in silence. Not the easy kind we’d fallen into a hundred times before, but something wound tight. It was tense. She was holding something in. It hurt to watch. She looked like she was figuring something out, and it was scaring the shit out of her.
I risked a glance at her. Her jaw was set, her eyes locked on the window, but her hand was gripping mine so tight I could barely feel my fingers.
“What’s wrong?” I asked softly, keeping my eyes on the road.
I eased my hand from hers only to place it on her knee. She didn’t realize it, but she always clung to my touch when she was anxious. And I always gave it to her, as if I could transfer my strength to her and take her fear away.
She didn’t answer. My chest tightened. The longer she didn’t respond to me, the more I began to fidget. But then she turned, and fuck, her eyes.
Not just green. They were wild, storm-after-the-rain green, cutting through me, pulling me under. The kind of green that made you forget what you were about to say. They weren’t soft and delicate. Sharp, always watching, always calculating, like she could see the parts of you that you kept hidden.
I loved her eyes because they were so expressive. When she was mad at me? They burned like glass, catching sunlight. But when she laughed or smiled? They turned into moss and clover and everything about summer that felt like home.
I could get lost in her eyes and never want to crawl back out.
“I’m good.” Her voice was too calm, the kind of calm that hides something sharp beneath it. Her gaze dragged down my body, stopping at my waist before flicking back to my face. But it was the flush in her cheeks that damn near undid me.
I had to look away. I was so wound up from our conversation at the diner, I wanted to pull the truck over and tell her to get in the backseat.
I forced myself to breathe, to keep it together, despite my hardening cock in my jeans. I seriously could not control myself around her. I tried so hard not to look at her again, but my eyes betrayed me, drifting back to her.
I was always drifting back to her.
She was beautiful in that messy, infuriating way; cutoff shorts, a braid falling loose, looking like trouble and freedom and home all at once. Every time I looked at her, my body reached for hers before my brain could stop it. We were tuned to the same frequency. Always riding the same wavelength.
Mackenzie wasn’t just perfect. She was everything. I craved intimacy with her because I just craved her. I wanted the connection. She was my fucking soul.
She laughed, breaking the silence. “Remember when we were fifteen, and you dared me to jump off the cliff into the lake? You thought you were so brave going first to catch me, only to nearly drown.”
I laughed, the sound pulling us back into familiar territory. “I was brave. You were the one screaming the whole way down.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was not screaming.”
“Please. You sounded like a banshee auditioning for a horror flick.” I howled like a wolf, and she jabbed me in the ribs.
“Shut up,” she said, but her grin told me otherwise.
I grinned wider. “You were the one who wanted to go up there. You’ve always chased the high. Maybe that’s why I keep getting dragged into your chaos.”
She tugged her hand free, though her smile stayed. “Or maybe it’s because you like the chaos as much as I do. You like to think you’re protecting me.”
I shot her a look, squinting.
“Maybe. But some chaos is worth it.”
Her expression flickered, serious for just a second. “We’ve always been a mess together, huh?”
Without hesitation, I reached for her hand again, threading our fingers.
“Yeah. But I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“Me neither,” she whispered, smiling.
Then, like she needed to shatter the electric energy between us, she asked, “So… did you ever find that girlfriend back home?”
My smile dropped. Her words punched me square in the gut. That’s what she’d been thinking? That I was taken? Why the fuck would I be doing what I’m doing with her if I had a girlfriend?
“Uh… no. I... dated a few girls, but none stuck,” I said, exasperated. “I told you this.”
She nudged me, teasing, but I caught the careful curiosity beneath it. “Come on, spill. Who was the most memorable mess?”
I gave her a sideways glance. “Memorable? None.”
Because none of them was her. None of them ever stood a chance against Mackenzie.
I thought about shutting down this conversation for a second, but then I caught the look in her eyes, the one that said I could trust her. That she really wanted to know.
“There was one girl,” I admitted finally. “Kind of wild. A little reckless.”
Her brows lifted. She gave me a look to continue, but I saw it. Jealousy. There was a dark cloud hiding behind her eyes, and her breathing accelerated.
“What happened?” she asked.
I raked a hand through my hair, buying time. “We just… went our separate ways. She wanted to be serious, and I didn’t.”
What I didn’t say was that I had been caught staring at a photo of Mackenzie. I was given an ultimatum, and I chose Mackenzie. And that was that.
“Sounds rough,” she murmured, sympathy softening her features.
Our eyes caught, something raw sparking between us.
“Yeah,” I said, shutting it down before I spilled too much.
She smiled. “You deserve someone special, Max. Someone who loves you completely.”
My throat burned with the thing I wanted to say. You. It’s always been you.
But I kept quiet. Because if I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure I could stop.
We stepped into Wildwood Ink, a hole-in-the-wall, but there wasn’t much to choose from out here.
The air inside the tattoo parlor smelled like ink and antiseptic. She glanced around curiously, a nervous energy buzzing off her, and I was forced to focus on anything other than her body when her shirt rose on her back as she leaned over to look at the fresh designs on the wall.
Her jean shorts fit snugly at her hips, while her oversized tee was tied at the waist. She glanced back at me, tossing a small smile over her shoulder, which was almost worse. It was so sweet, and my thoughts were so filthy.
She started talking to someone at the front desk, and I mumbled something to John, the artist who would be doing her tattoo. Before I knew it, he had already led us to the back of the room.
There was something about the way he appeared—too suddenly, too quietly—that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But a giggle from Mackenzie pulled my gaze away.
She sat on the cushioned table, her fingers tapping restlessly against her knee to hide her anxiety. But I could see past her act. Her leg bounced nervously, and she started to overanalyze the situation, biting the inside of her cheek.
“You sure about this?” I asked quietly, keeping my voice low even though the buzz of the tattoo gun and the music from the front drowned us out. “We can leave. Just let me know.”
She was humming to the music; it sounded like something she would listen to. Heavy guitars, deep screaming. It was calming to her.
She looked up at me and nodded, “I want this.”
I believed her. But I also knew that there was another reason why she was doing this.
It was the same reason she was having these nightmares.
Mackenzie had many secrets. There was always more beneath the surface with her.
I didn’t fault her for keeping them from me.
I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to carry it alone, even if she hated me for knowing.
That journal of hers, I didn’t read it. Not really. But she left it on her bunk a lot over the years, and I’d seen enough of her sketches to know they weren’t just doodles. They were confessions, stories. Scratched out figures, frayed lines, harsh shading.
There was one page I couldn’t forget. A man’s silhouette, towering over a petite figure. She hadn’t drawn his face. She’d just darkened it in, pitch black, like even remembering him was something she couldn’t let herself do.
It didn’t take much to connect the dots.
I knew something had happened, something with her dad. She never said it outright, but she didn’t have to. I remembered the way her voice flatlined when his name came up once.
And then it all clicked when Jackson said I didn’t know who she was or where she came from. The boundaries, the fear, the way she sometimes looked at me like she wanted to be close. Something was always holding her back.
It pissed me off that Jackson knew, and I didn’t. I wanted to tell her that she could trust me, but that wasn’t what she needed.
Because even if she couldn’t say it, I already knew. I had seen it in her eyes in the truck. She wasn’t afraid of me. She wasn’t even afraid of me finding out about her past. She was scared I would leave her.
I hope she knew that I wasn’t going anywhere.
She turned in her chair, her back to me, revealing the pale, knotted scar on her neck. I had glimpsed it before, while swimming, changing, or running together at camp, but I really saw it for the first time today. She always hid it from me, but today, she wasn’t.
There was trauma linked to that scar, a pain she was trying to escape. When I kissed it last night, I wanted her to know how I felt about her. I didn’t know how to say it out loud.
“Is this what you want?” John whispered, his voice low and chilling, making me jump. He was a towering figure, covered in tattoos that twisted like dark veins across his arms, a septum piercing glinting ominously in the dim light.
I moved to stand in front of her, trying to shield her from him, while remaining within his line of sight in case something went wrong.
Leaning against the cold wall with my arms crossed, I forced myself to appear casual, though my entire body felt lit up.
The moment the needle pierced her skin, she didn’t flinch.
She didn’t even wince. I was trembling more than she was, my nerves fraying at the edges.