Chapter Six. Mackenzie #2
I’ve had the day marked for ages. Hannah and I were planning to spruce up her apartment with flowers and fill up the pantry and fridge with all her favorite snacks to surprise her, and do welcome-home drinks at Lightning Strike.
And privately, I’ve been waiting for her to come back so we can talk things out. I thought we were in a good place before she left for her tour, but it’s clear from the way she’s been dodging my calls and the way she’s looking at me right now that we weren’t.
“You’re doing a duet?” Serena asks quietly.
My stomach plummets. “Who said that?” I ask.
“You did,” says Serena, her voice tight. “Just now. After everything you said last year you’re just—doing it with someone else?”
“I’m not,” I say adamantly. “Why are you back early? Is everything okay?”
Her eyes flood with tears so fast that the party feels even more like a strange fever dream.
Serena doesn’t cry. She is the picture of control.
From the first day Isla threw us together for our sound test when we were all twenty years old and naive as shiny pennies, she’s been the unyielding backbone of the group—the oldest of six kids and as “Eldest Daughter” as they come.
Sure enough, Serena blinks it back with such brutal, practiced efficiency that it’s more startling to watch it stop than start. I turn to Hannah.
“Can you give us a sec?” I ask.
Hannah nods, reaching out to squeeze both our arms. “Love you both.”
Serena softens, but only for a moment. She does a quick scan of the room. “Upstairs,” she says.
I follow her up the staircase, trailing behind her sweeping golden gown with its thin, dainty straps and corseted waist. We weave past rows of rooms and attractions—a library stacked with old books and ornate pieces; a series of small rooms with fortune-tellers, magicians, and temporary tattoo artists; another ballroom on the second floor with aerial hoop acrobats and silent dancers.
There’s nowhere to sit privately, so Serena stops at the next best thing—the small landing between the second and third floor where nobody’s gathered yet.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, leaning in close. “Isla said you were adding extra shows in London and Paris these next few weeks.”
Serena isn’t looking at me, eyes set on the stairs. “I will,” she says, voice clipped. “I just need a few weeks to focus on other things.”
Well, that’s a worryingly empty explanation. But I tread with caution. Serena may have ice shields thicker than Elsa’s, but Hannah and I are well-practiced in thawing her.
I rest my hand on her arm. “You didn’t tell me you were back,” I say.
Her eyes fly to mine then, with a bite. “You didn’t tell me you were going to be in a duet.”
I shake my head. “Isla’s trying to pitch me on it again, is all,” I explain. “I wouldn’t just—do that without saying anything to you.”
My throat tightens around those last few words. For months now I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell her about Seven. This is clearly not that moment, but it adds a ripple of guilt that she doesn’t already know.
A ripple that’s already riding a wave. The duet with Sam isn’t happening, but Serena would have every right to be pissed if it did.
Before she took off as a solo artist, she asked me to do a duet with her.
When I said no, she kept asking. When I told her my voice was too messed up for it, she offered to do whatever it took—she’d wait until it was better.
She’d adjust our sound. Every time I said no, she dug in harder, as unyielding as she’d always been.
I was grieving a voice I’d never get back. Serena wouldn’t let up. I’m not proud of the things I said when I exploded at her, but at the time it felt like there was no other way to make her stop.
“You should do it,” Serena says now. “The duet, I mean. If it makes you happy.”
I’m too distracted to give her a proper answer. Her words are sincere, but her voice is flat. Nothing like the force she usually is, onstage and off.
I lean back to take her in, but it’s hard to read her under the mask.
Instead, I touch the edge of her new red bob, tilting my head.
It was her idea for all three of us to keep our hair long to match in our Thunder Hearts days—Hannah’s dark, sleek hair against Serena’s wavy red locks against my wild blond curls.
I’ve kept up with all the posts from her tour stops, so if she cut it, it must have been in the past few days. But she won’t meet my eyes again.
“Don’t worry about that. Let’s get out of here,” I say. “Go back to my place or Hannah’s. Catch up.”
Serena pulls back from my hand. “I’ve got plans. I was already on my way out,” she says. “I only came so they can bundle our dresses in the charity auction as part of a Thunder Hearts thing.”
I know better than to try to convince her to stay, but if I can get her to ease up, she might stay on her own.
I keep my voice light. “But nobody’s taken your mask off yet.”
Serena lets out a bitter laugh. “That’s not happening tonight.”
I cup my hands around my mouth, doing the “paparazzi voice” we would pretend to use when we got famous enough to start making headlines.
“Pop sensation Serena universally canceled after refusing to participate in good cause, and also not doing a round of glitter shots with her best friends in a ball gown after.”
She almost cracks a smile. I knock my shoulder into hers until it becomes a real one. Then I reach into my top and hand her my ticket—the one we were given to exchange with whoever’s mask we took.
She shakes her head. “Keep it,” she says. “I’ll use my own ticket on myself.”
It would feel like a dig, but I know Serena’s hang-ups too well.
She’s never been able to sit with the feeling of owing anybody anything.
Hannah and I figured that out the hard way after the band’s rocky start, when Serena insisted on calling all the big shots herself—it’s not that she doesn’t trust us.
She just doesn’t want to depend on anyone.
I used to envy her for it. She was the picture of independence, and I was so desperate chasing love in all the wrong places that I was the butt of dating jokes on SNL . But I’m not so certain if either of us were better off.
Especially now that I can see under her mask.
Serena is the kind of beautiful that makes strangers do comic strip–worthy spit takes—full-lipped, keen-eyed, with high cheekbones that make her look like she fell out of an Old Hollywood film—but she looks like two dimensions of herself right now.
Her eyes are red-rimmed, her skin pale, her expression wavering. It’s like someone smothered her shine.
Something in my face must shift, because her own hardens.
“Something’s going on,” I say. Not a question, but as close to one as I can ask without her throwing the ice shield back up.
She juts out her jaw. “Nothing’s going on.”
I take her mask from her, clasping her hand in mine. “Then tell me about the nothing. About anything. I want to know.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then she meets my eye, aiming the words carefully. “I wouldn’t want to be needy .”
Ah, shit. I deserved that, and we both know it. That’s the word I threw out when I got her to drop the duet idea—it was the most hurtful one I had in my arsenal, and I knew better than anyone how damn fast it would work:
Stop asking me. You’re the one the label wants. Can’t you do something on your own for once instead of being so needy?
Serena trusted us. It took years, but Hannah and I were two of the very few people in the world she let herself rely on. And I went and threw it in her face.
“You know I didn’t mean that,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I ever said it.”
It’s not the first time I’ve apologized, but it was clear the first time didn’t stick. It’s why I’ve called so many times. Why I considered just hopping on a plane and cornering her after one of her shows. But Serena has never wanted to hear it, and when she speaks again, I know why.
“Don’t be,” she says bitterly. “It was the damn truth.”
It’s not me she’s angry with—it’s herself. And that makes it a hundred times worse.
“And I mean it about the duet,” says Serena, before I can recover. “I overheard Isla in a meeting. The label won’t risk backing another Thunder Hearts member on their own. So just—do it, okay?”
Make that a thousand times worse.
“That’s the last thing I’m worried about right now,” I start, and then—
And then a goddamn camera flashes right in our faces.
“ Shit ,” Serena blurts.
It’s only an event photographer, but Serena goes from zero to “this just got uploaded to DeuxMoi” before I can blink. She yanks her mask from me and shoves it back on, flying up the stairs.
“Hold up!” I call.
“Do not follow me,” she calls back, the words throaty with tears.
Serena’s exercise regimen for the tour is no joke, because I feel like a baby horse trying to keep up with a cheetah.
A door slams, and when I reach the third-floor landing I can’t for the life of me figure out which one.
There’s a strip of light visible under one of the doorframes, so I chance it, swinging it open and pushing it shut behind me in case anyone followed.
“Don’t let the—”
Slam.
“Door close behind you,” says Sam.
Sam.
Not Serena, but Sam fucking Blaze. He’s in a black mask with faint gray edges like smoke against the night sky, hiding more of his face than any other guest here. What a joke—I’d know that voice if I was hearing it from my damn grave.
Even if I didn’t, there’s that telltale stubble at his jawline he always got when we were on the road, and his line tattoos peeking out from under the tailored sleeves of his cream-colored suit.
Fallen angel: Reformed Punk Rocker edition.
The look is lethal and there’s no way he doesn’t know it.
It only gets worse when he scratches the back of his neck, lifting his shirt up just enough to reveal a sliver of his toned stomach.
“Door locks from the inside,” he says.
No. Absolutely not. I refuse to be in this genre of waking nightmare. I turn and yank the doorknob with all my might. When it doesn’t budge, I lean my head against the doorframe and mouth the words Hannah will never hear: “ Oh no, oh no, oh no. ”