Chapter Seven. Mackenzie
chapter seven
MACKENZIE
One time, when all three Thunder Hearts girls were considerably tipsy, we decided to look up each other’s names on Tumblr.
It only took one extra click to find rows and rows of self-insert fan fiction about Sam— POV: you’re stuck in an elevator with Sam Blaze and you KISS.
POV: you and Sam Blaze are trapped in a storm cellar and have to huddle for warmth.
POV: you’re locked in a glorified supply closet with Sam Blaze and realizing you’re the universe’s favorite joke.
Sam observes me from the wall he’s leaning against, arms crossed and irritatingly at ease.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I don’t bite.”
Oh, dear god. Did Sam read the self-insert fan fictions? I turn to him, incredulous, and realize—he didn’t call me Sparkles. He might not even know it’s me. I don’t have my signature hair, and the one lightbulb in here is so dim that I wouldn’t be surprised if it clocked out on us.
And I know my voice is different, even if he didn’t notice back at the bar.
“I might,” I say, without doing anything to hide the slight rasp.
Sam’s lips are barely visible under the mask, but I can feel the ripple of warmth radiating off him.
He definitely doesn’t know it’s me. The thing about Sam is that he’d flirt with me within an inch of our damn lives onstage, but he’d either avoid me or tease me from a distance when we were off of it.
“Is that so?” He pushes off the wall. The one step he takes is all he needs to bridge the gap between us. “Well, there’s plenty on the menu up here. You want to try?”
He plucks one of the cupcakes lined on the tower that’s taking up most of the space and saunters over to me. I feel the heat of his eyes even under the mask, and then the heat of his body as he stops just short of me and dips his finger in the thick frosting.
“Open,” he says.
There is some higher part of my brain that says, Absofuckinglutely not.
If I’m never going to see him again after tonight, why shouldn’t I have a taste of this, even just for a moment?
Of that curiosity I used to have, wondering what it would be like to be one of the dazed, blissed-out women who flitted in and out of Sam’s trailers.
A curiosity that snuck up on me when it hardened into pure, undiluted want .
My lips part. His thumb is inches from me, salty and sweet and close enough that I’m already salivating.
“Uh-uh,” he says, pulling his hand back. “I have a condition.”
I swallow hard.
“You have to hear me out about this duet.”
My face sears. It’s more of the same, then. Sam only ever seemed to be flirting with me when it was part of a bit , teasing me or dis appearing so fast after it happened that it felt like he was trying to put me in my place.
No need. I already know my place, and it’s anywhere far from him.
“Help!” I yell, kicking the back of my boot into the door. “I’m stuck in here with a man who is absolutely delusional .”
Sam licks the frosting off his own finger, watching me with amusement. “Pounding on the door and yelling. Why didn’t I think of that?”
A few seconds pass. Serena might be a dozen kinds of pissed off, but if she could hear me, we’d be out of here by now.
“ Help!” I try one more time.
“Yeesh,” says Sam, pressing his hand to his chest in that “pretend wounded” way of his. “Am I really that bad?”
“To be clear, you’re the one I’m calling for,” I tell him. “If we don’t get out soon someone’s going to find you smothered to death with cupcake frosting.”
He leans against the wall beside me, that faint smoky sweet smell of his too close to ignore. “You’d have to take off my mask first.”
“I’ll get creative.”
He offers me the rest of the cupcake. “Is that a promise or a threat?”
It’s clearly got peanut butter frosting with caramel and pretzels smashed into it. A Take 5 bar in cake form. Damn it if my taste buds are louder than my pride.
“A reminder,” I tell him. I take a bite of the cupcake, sinking my teeth into salty sweetness. “Unlike whatever’s in this, you and I don’t mix well. I’m just fine on my own.”
A lie and a half, but if there was ever a time to take a page out of Serena’s book, it’s right now.
But Sam just tilts his head at me, dipping his finger back into the frosting of the cupcake in my hand. “Since when did you settle for ‘just fine’?” he asks, licking it off again. “Doesn’t sound like the Sparkles I know.”
I can’t decide what’s worse, looking away from Sam’s lips so he thinks it has an effect on me, or stubbornly watching and letting it have an effect on me. I’m salivating all over again, for something other than frosting.
And that’s just the problem, isn’t it? We could never keep the music separate from whatever this push-and-pull is between us.
“The Sparkles you know doesn’t want her success to hinge on a bunch of strangers wanting us to fuck,” I tell him.
It’s rare that I ever catch Sam off guard, but he goes satisfyingly still. He knocks the back of his head lightly on the wall, setting the cupcake down.
“Well, shit,” he says.
Nobody could claim we weren’t famous in our own rights before we were thrown together, but there’s no denying what catapulted that fame. When you’re teetering on the edge of something—even a staged something—for as long as we were, people get invested. They want catharsis. They want release.
And nothing holds their attention more than giving them everything just short of it. Our near kisses that never landed. Bridges with harmonies that never fully resolved. A what if? so sexy and compelling that our careers depended on it not having an end.
“Yeah. Shit,” I agree. “Half of our sales relied on all the teasing and tricking and touching onstage.”
I’m expecting him to pick one of the above to barb me with, but he’s quiet. Thoughtful, even. I’m so unused to it that I can’t help but fill up the silence, fast.
“Speaking of, what the hell are you doing up here? Planning on meeting someone for a pastry tryst?”
“Tempting. Lizzie asked me to check and make sure all her desserts were delivered.” He turns his head toward me. “Is that what you were hoping for when you followed me up here?”
I shudder. “No. I can only assume I’m here to pay some kind of karmic debt.”
I can hear the grin in his voice. “So you’re saying it was fate.”
A split second later I’m pitching backward, the door abruptly opening behind me. Sam moves with lightning speed, grabbing me by the forearms before I topple backward into an incredibly surprised server.
Sam holds me there for a suspended moment. My heart is pounding from the near drop, is all. Not from the heat of his hands on my bare skin. Not from the way the light from the hall is casting gold against the hazel in his eyes.
“I’m thinking,” he says. As if it’s his fault we haven’t moved.
I blink, pulling myself away. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
The third floor is so small that it only takes a few moments for me to try all the doors. Every one of them is open, and every one of them is empty of Serena. I sweep my gown up to make my way back down the stairs when Sam grabs me by the crook of my elbow, stopping my momentum.
“We both have different sounds now,” he says.
Isla sent me samples of the kind of music Sam has been working on the past few months. Now the upsettingly hot videos of Sam in worn-out button-downs singing low, acoustic love songs at Sugar Harmony get to live rent-free in my brain forever.
“So?” I ask, without pulling away.
“So, we can tell a different story,” Sam proposes. “This time as—mature, mutually supportive friends.”
My brain doesn’t even bother with the mental gymnastics of imagining that. “Elaborate,” I demand instead.
“We’d focus on the music,” he says easily. “No teasing. No tricks. No touching.”
I narrow my eyes up at him. I played into our dynamic as much as he did, but Sam was always the one who improvised to wind up the crowd.
He’d take off a belt and put it around my waist to pull me in.
He’d press his forehead into mine so I’d rise up to meet him until we were near bruising. He’d initiate every “almost” kiss.
I may have rolled with it, but he thrived on it. Enough that by the end even I was convinced it was real.
So I lean in and say, “If those are the rules, then I give you five minutes before you fuck them up.”
His eyes flicker at the challenge, sliding his hand on my forearm as he releases me. I feel oddly cold when he lets me go, his eyes still steady on mine.
“I don’t even need all five to convince you,” he says. “But I’ll take whatever you’re offering.”
As if to emphasize how committed he is to the bit, he puts his hands up, sliding past me on the wide staircase close enough for me to feel the warmth radiating off his body.
I roll my eyes and surge ahead of him, but within a few steps it’s clear we’re entering a very different party from the one we left.
Half of the crowd is unmasked, laughing loudly over flutes of champagne and starting to mill up the stairs to the themed rooms on the second floor.
I spot Hannah unmasked on the landing between floors, looking worried until she spots me.
“There you are,” she says.
“Serena?” I ask quietly.
Hannah shakes her head, leaning in. “She had a car waiting. I couldn’t catch her.” Her eyes snag on the space just behind me, and she leans in. “Also—who’s your tall friend?”
I follow her gaze to the person in the smoky black mask standing next to me. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Sam lets out a breathy chuckle, and even then, Hannah’s expression is blank. Turns out a nice suit and some low lighting is all it takes for a former punk rocker to disappear.
Someone calls Hannah’s name up the stairs. She starts heading back up, but not without a warning. “Well, whoever you are, beware. New rules. Anyone can take off your mask if they double their donation.”
I haven’t even processed the words before Sam takes a large step to crowd in front of me. There’s no intimacy or teasing in it—it’s quick and protective, with an edge.