Chapter Seven. Mackenzie #2
“That’s enough,” says Sam.
There’s a man who must have come up from the side of me, his hands still extended toward my face. Sam steps again, fully blocking him from me.
“If I have the money to take off her mask, I can,” the man says obstinately.
I hold in a snort, but Sam’s voice has no humor in it. “Excuse you?” he demands.
“Rules are rules,” says the guy, trying to skirt past Sam and reaching for me again. “Don’t go turning this into some dumb fight.”
Sam catches him by the arm, his entire body rigid. “Then don’t give me a reason to.”
An embarrassing thrill goes up my spine. I’ve never needed anyone to fight my battles, and even calling this one is a stretch. But damn if Sam doesn’t look good doing it.
I cancel that thought on arrival, because the last thing I need tonight is a full-fledged fistfight on my hands. Both because I don’t want to wreck Isla and Twyla’s party, and also because I’m worried about what that tingle in my spine might turn into if I saw any more of this particular show.
“Sam,” I say, quietly enough that only he can hear it.
He doesn’t loosen a single degree, but he goes still. It doesn’t matter—whatever that guy sees in Sam’s eyes intimidates him enough for him to stumble away and head up the stairs without looking back.
“My hero,” I say wryly.
But Sam doesn’t turn back with the smugness I’m expecting. Instead, he shakes his head sharply. “I don’t like this.”
“It’s only a game,” I laugh.
Even with a mask covering most of his jaw, I can see it twitch. “Reminds me too much of those jackasses trying to grab you onstage,” he says.
I blink. Sam used to have a “bit” sometimes where he’d scoop me up and cart me to another part of the stage if anyone in the audience got too close.
But it was just part of the show. Sam acting all protective, but also annoying the hell out of me while he was doing it—it made perfect fodder for the crowd.
Only now that I’m seeing it tighten up every inch of him do I realize that he was actually, legitimately pissed.
I take a step down the stairs, distancing myself from him. I am no mathematician, but an angry Sam and an inconveniently hot and bothered Mackenzie will likely not add up to a productive conversation tonight.
“Rain check on the five minutes,” I offer. “Besides, if people see us together, they’re going to think we’re up to something.”
He clears his throat, rolling his shoulders. By the time he’s turned back to me, all his usual cockiness has been knocked right back into him.
“Oh, make no mistake. I’m up to something.” He extends a hand to me, nudging his head playfully toward the dance floor. “And they can’t get our masks if they can’t catch us. May I have this dance?”
I cross my arms, staring at his hand pointedly.
“Come on, Sparkles. We’ll break one little rule.” Even a damn mask isn’t enough to stop a trademark Sam Blaze wink. “Consider it my reward for a full minute of good behavior.”
As much as I hate myself for it, I want to hear him out. I roll my eyes, but I take his hand. It’s warm and firm as he leads me to the main floor.
“You wouldn’t know ‘good behavior’ if it bit you in the ass.”
“That’s just one more thing we can work on while we’re reviving our careers.”
I stop just short of the dance floor, forcing Sam to stop abruptly, too. I wait until his eyes are set on mine to speak.
“Make no mistake,” I tell him. “I don’t need you to swoop in and save my career.”
Sam almost blows our cover, the way he throws his head back and laughs. His laugh, just like the rest of him, is distinct—warm and loud and bright, pitching over the music and the crowd like its own song.
“I’m the one who needs you ,” he says.
I let out a huff, about to draw my hand away, but Sam doubles down on the rule he’s breaking and squeezes lightly. His voice is so low and sincere I barely hear it over the music.
“I’ll never be half as good a writer as you. We both know it.”
The words pull up a hurt so ancient that I have to look down at my boots before he can see it.
“You write just fine without me,” I counter.
“Bullshit,” says Sam candidly. “I’m the sound guy, but you’re the lyrics girl. Don’t go getting all modest on me now.”
But Sam’s got it all wrong. Now isn’t the issue. The issue started before Sam and I even met.
There were a lot of things to be grateful for the year I turned twenty-one—I was traveling the country in an old bright pink van with my two best friends, playing to crowds who sang my own lyrics back at me, fueled off sour candy and applause.
But best of all was that for the first time, our band was going to get featured by the legendary music YouTube channel Noted Scene.
What I didn’t know was that Sam would be their guest that day.
I must have watched the full episode where he trashed us, but I don’t remember that.
All I remember is Serena abandoning her road snacks to scoop me up into her arms, letting me cry into her shoulder.
All I remember is Serena balling her fists into the back of my glittery dress and saying through her teeth, Oh, I’ll kill him for this.
By the time Sam introduced himself, I didn’t have to pretend to hate him. I already did.
Sam tilts his head at me now, his concern so immediate and clear that I feel strangely naked. Like he isn’t just seeing under our masks, but under something else.
“You’re all right?” he asks.
An unmasked, tipsy guest in a ball gown is coming up behind him, clearly trying to take his mask. I pull Sam by the arm and take the lead, spinning him outward just fast enough for her to miss him.
“Careful there,” I say.
His grin is back, wide with mischief as he lets me use the momentum to tug him deeper onto the dance floor. “See what I mean? We’ve got each other’s backs.”
One song ends, and a familiar one starts—a ballad version of “Play You by Heart.” Twyla and Isla’s doing, no doubt. Sam hums along cheekily as he draws in close.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” I accuse.
Sam stops to take my waist, his touch gentle but his words wicked. “No rules against that.”
He eases us into a rhythm, so light and electric that I’m tempted to lose myself in it. But I know better than to do that with Sam Blaze.
I breathe in, grounding myself. “Don’t forget you’re on the clock here. Five minutes are ticking.”
“I told you I don’t need them all,” he says, all bravado again. “I’m taking my time.”
He slows our pace then, steady and lulling, and—oh, fuck it.
I’ll take my time, too. I’ll let myself imagine we’re in another time and place.
One where we met at school or work or a coffee shop.
One where nobody knows our names. One where I’m tempted to do something worse than kiss him—something like rest my head on his shoulder and breathe more of him in, like I could if he were mine.
“Listen,” says Sam, voice so low that it does nothing to break the spell. “You could strike out on your own. I thought about it, too. Be a ghost like those artists on Tick Tune, even.”
Thank god for the mask, or he’d see the truth burning in my cheeks.
“Yeah,” I say after a moment. “I suppose.”
Sam’s grip tightens so lightly on my waist that I’m not sure he’s aware of it. “But we’re the same way, you and me,” he says, just above a whisper. “We’re better when we’re working with other people. When we’re getting challenged by other people. And who the hell does that better than you and me?”
My throat feels thick when I swallow. “We do have an unfortunate knack for it.”
“Sparkles. We’re exceptional at it,” he says. “We wrote this ridiculous song in a half an hour by accident. Imagine what we could do if we did it on purpose.”
My skin is tingling, the pull of his words too strong to resist. “Maybe we just got lucky.”
“Or maybe we just know how to handle each other.”
He dips me so low and so suddenly that I let out a gasp of surprise. He leans down to meet me, his grip so solid and firm that I can’t chalk any of the fluttering in my stomach up to fear.
“That little stunt just cost you one of your minutes,” I tell him.
“Another mask vulture,” he says innocently, snapping us both back up to face each other with a gleam in his eye. “We have to stay close.”
Funny. I don’t see a single person near us. In fact, the dance floor is considerably more bare than it was when we started. The eyes that were on us before are all watching from the edges of the room. Even in disguise, it seems, we can’t help but make a spectacle of ourselves.
I let him draw me in tighter. It’s not that I can’t resist him. It’s that—this is another test. It’s okay for me to be attracted to Sam. So normal it’s downright cliché. But if I can prove that it’s only in my body now—that it doesn’t do anything to my heart—then maybe we can make this work.
“So, what else do you get out of this?” I ask him. “Aside from my dazzling presence.”
“Well—we both get a chance to explore a new sound.”
He leans his head in closer to mine. I brace myself, certain it’s to say something maddening right into my ear to try to rile me up again.
“And I get a chance to stay close to home without leaving Ben,” he says instead. “The kind of music we’re writing doesn’t ask for as much production or touring. And the speculation about us—it would keep the attention off Ben.”
I can’t see his face, but his voice is as vulnerable as I’ve ever heard it. It softens me instantly. I may not know Ben, but I feel a strange protectiveness of him. The same protectiveness I’ve felt for Sam, even when I was trying to write him out of my heart.
I squeeze his arm so he knows I understand. We wouldn’t feed into the speculation. But if it already exists, we might as well take advantage of it.
“But the most important thing I get out of this?” says Sam. “I get to work with the best damn songwriter I know again.”