Chapter 12
MACKENZIE
We listened to the cleaning instructions and left the parlor.
My nerves burned under my skin like a fever.
Things were unraveling, slipping through my fingers before I could even decide if I wanted to hold on.
Not even twenty-four hours into this fake relationship, and Max was already ruining it with his stupid soft smiles, matching tattoos, and the way he looked at me.
He felt safe. And that was the most terrifying part. He felt like home, like belonging, and I had no idea what to do with something that dangerous. I didn’t deserve someone like Max—and the worst part was I still wanted him anyway.
He would hate me when he found out about the things I carried. The rot I kept buried inside me. Memories I’d never said out loud.
Like the chilling echoes of screams that had haunted my basement. Or the guttural grunts of my father as he dragged yet another unwelcome load through the back door.
Or the dull sound of the saw on bone while my mother hummed a lullaby to lull me to sleep. Things I should never have been forced to witness as a child.
But with Max, all the darkness that haunted my life dissolved.
One look at him, and a desperate desire to kiss him seized me—body trembling, craving something I knew I shouldn’t want.
Love, affection. Those words felt hollow here.
This was supposed to be controlled, a fleeting distraction, a performance staged in shadows.
Instead, it twisted into something darker, more visceral.
Perhaps I was just waiting for a new horror to consume me.
The truth was, we’d been more than friends long before either of us admitted it. At sixteen, it was the kind of restless awareness that made me avoid his gaze. At seventeen, we knew exactly what we were doing when our hands brushed a little too long. By last summer, it was already a slow implosion.
He was intense, always had been. But that intensity was becoming something more. An unspoken devotion that was scary as shit. We were always on the edge with each other, waiting for years for it to finally happen. But we were both in denial.
I let my gaze linger on his a second longer than I should have, and then I ripped myself away.
But the ache stayed, lodged in my chest. I was possessive over him.
Jealous that he could move through life happy and unscathed.
Part of me wanted to touch the light, flutter towards it like a moth to a flame.
Another part wanted to diminish the light just to see if he’d stay.
I wanted him so badly I almost wanted to crawl into his skin and make myself a home.
I shook my head. When I dared glance back, his eyes were still on mine, steady and sure, as if he was waiting for me to catch up to what he already knew.
Perhaps he wasn’t in denial, after all. I was the only one who hadn’t caught up to the plotline. Was this the part of the story where the unobservant girl was murdered?
I talked a mile a minute in the truck, words spilling out to fill the silence. Max listened patiently, as if he were trying to understand every word. But the way he looked at me, as if I were an entirely different person, made me restless and uneasy.
I was absolutely terrified of him now. The ink burned on my skin, a permanent reminder of our bond.
Our tattoos weren’t just marks; they were chains, tying me to him in a way I couldn’t explain, and couldn’t escape.
I didn’t know if he felt it too, that pull, that inevitability, but to me, it was almost like a vow I had secretly agreed to.
Like he was my soulmate.
I didn’t know what to do with all these conflicting feelings in my chest. All I knew was that I was his. And that might destroy us both.
We walked from the camp parking lot side by side, the grass brittle beneath our shoes, the air thick with heat. My arm brushed against his, and my chest immediately clenched tight.
I could still feel the heat of his cheek under my palm from earlier, still feel the echo of his gaze tearing me open. I didn’t know how to exist beside him without drowning. Because I wanted to dive into him.
As we rounded the bend to the cabin, that’s when we saw him.
Jackson.
He was by the fire pit, hauling a crate of kindling, his shirt sticking to his back. He looked up immediately, as if he’d been waiting for me, and his stare slid over Max before landing on me. His gaze was cold and possessive—unsettling in the daylight.
A cold whisper of dread climbed up my spine. I didn’t think. My hand reached for Max’s on instinct, like my body knew what I needed before my brain caught up. His fingers closed around mine without hesitation, grip solid, his thumb brushing over my knuckles with muscle memory.
Jackson’s smirk faltered. Satisfaction sparked hot and sharp in my gut.
I stopped walking. Max turned to me, brows drawing together.
“You ready?” he whispered.
I rose onto my toes, wrapping my hands around his neck so he had to bend down.
I pulled him closer—not for a kiss, not yet, but close enough that my forehead pressed against his.
Our lips hovered, breath mixing and tangling.
His hands found my waist, gripping me firmly as if he’d been waiting for this moment.
His dark, intense gaze locked onto mine.
I stared into his eyes, sinking into the blue depths that unveiled his secrets and opened the door to his heart.
Max consumed every thought I had. He leaned in suddenly, closing the gap between us.
The desire was all over his face. His eyes fluttered shut as he attempted to kiss me, but I jerked away instinctively, my heart pounding as Jackson’s gaze burned into us.
I turned aside, desperate to escape his control, clawing at the oppressive feeling of him taking over my mind, as fear surged through me.
I started to panic. I could see Jackson watching us, and I was scared. Scared of what he would do to me after this. Scared of what he might do to Max for kissing me.
Max’s thumb on my chin snapped me out of my thoughts. He pulled my face up to him, forcing me to look directly into his eyes.
“Look at me,” he whispered, bringing me back to him. “Don’t think about him, look at me.”
Relief washed over me as we looked into each other’s eyes. He smiled, his eyes brimming with warmth, hope, and love.
“Thanks for today,” I murmured, my voice trembling.
“Anything for you,” he answered, and his voice was trembling back.
He was nervous. It was cute. I heard Jackson let out a low, angry growl, his heels digging into the dirt on the path near us as he began turning away in a huff.
“I think he bought it,” I whispered. I could feel Jackson’s eyes burning into the back of my neck, fixed on the strip of Saniderm over my new tattoo.
I pulled away from Max, prepared to return to the cabin and face my fate at Jackson’s hands, but Max clutched my shirt, gripping the fabric tightly, and hauled me back into his arms, crashing his lips hungrily against mine.
I gasped, utterly overwhelmed. Then I kissed him back, fierce and insatiable. His taste was heat, salt, and everything I had been refusing to admit, and when his hands seared around my waist, I knew I was as lost as he was. We fused together in an intense, fiery embrace—melting into each other.
His hands came up, cupping both sides of my face, holding me in place like I might run, but I couldn’t. There was nothing soft in his kiss. It was a silent vow between teeth and tongue. Max kissed me like he was trying to bury himself in my bones, like he needed to mark me.
His hands dropped to my ass, and he yanked me even closer to him. I moaned against his mouth, and he swallowed it. He wanted everything. Every breath. Every sound. Every fucking part of me.
His grip bruised; his kiss bruised deeper. He kissed me like he was starving. Like I was the first real thing he’d ever tasted.
And I let him. Knowing full well we were digging our graves.
I fisted the front of his shirt harder, needing something to hold onto as heat tore through my veins, settling deep between my thighs. I was shocked at how quickly it happened—the wetness. It pooled in my underwear so quickly. I burned for him.
We moved together like magnets, pulled by something unshakable.
The kiss didn’t softly hint at our love; it roared it. So fiercely that even the woods seemed to tremble. A flock of birds exploded from behind the treeline, swirling around our heads as we inhaled each other’s souls.
It was the best damn kiss of my entire life. The kind of kiss that didn’t ask for permission. It was messy and hungry, just like us.
When he finally pulled away, our chests were heaving, breaths ragged, eyes locked as if we were the only two people in the world. His eyes burned like molten lava, flooded with his love for me.
I wanted to stay in this moment forever.
But I tore myself away just enough to look at Jackson.
His eyes gleamed with madness. His cheeks were flushed, his grin stretched too wide, fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
He wasn’t just angry. He was unraveling, consumed by a dark, careful kind of hatred.
The way he stared at Max made my stomach turn. Like he was already imagining where to put the body.
“Little one. Hold the shovel, please.”
My father’s voice slid to the forefront of my mind. The memory of him dragging the remains of his latest victim toward an open hole in the backyard.
I had stared at a single yellow daffodil growing beside the grave. My anchor to a life I didn’t want to be part of. I shut my eyes, pretending I couldn’t hear the shovel hit dirt. Or bone.
I was always surrounded by monsters. Even in my memories.
Maybe I was one of them.
Max tightened his grip on my hips, fingers digging like he knew I was disappearing.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m always here. Come back to me.”
I looked up at him, our eyes connecting. I fell into him as he continued to watch me like I was everything in the world that mattered to him. Like I was the moon, the stars, and everything in between.
Max was my yellow daffodil.
He didn’t want chapters written on him. He wanted the whole damn story.
He wanted me. I wanted him.
But only one of us would survive Camp Blackshear.