Chapter Eight. Sam #2
“Fucking fuck?” I say with a surprised laugh. But when her eyes fly to meet mine, they’re full of the kind of embarrassment that has an edge, like she’s mad that I saw it. Or maybe just mad that my arms are around her, securing us both in the bottom of the boat.
Still, she doesn’t pull away. “I can’t swim,” she says through her teeth.
The words are so unexpected that all I can think to say is, “But I’ve seen you in a swimsuit.”
Correction: I’ve seen her in many swimsuits.
A plunging retro one at Hannah’s annual “end of the summer” lake party that had necks cracking.
A neon-green one at my old high school pool that Candy Shard and Thunder Hearts broke into one night with cutouts that made no sense, but perfect sense at the same time.
I have embarrassing recall for things that have been on Mackenzie’s body.
The boat rocks slightly again and she stiffens. “Turns out you can buy those without flashing your swimming license at the cashier!” she says, voice pitched with panic.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her, and I do. My arms are still braced around her shoulders to steady her. The temptation to pull her into me is almost too strong to resist, but I don’t have to—she settles her weight into me, pulling in long, hard breaths.
I stay perfectly still as her breaths even out against my chest, as her heart stops hammering against my arms.
“Thanks,” she says quietly, her face already a passive mask.
I clear my throat. “You never took swim lessons?” I ask.
She shrugs, repositioning herself on the seat. “My parents were busy. I think they just never thought of it.”
I frown. “Were you just scared shitless the whole time we were filming that music video?”
“I wasn’t scared,” she says, without meeting my eye.
There’s no way in hell she wasn’t. We were on the water the entire day. At some point they had the boats rigged so they were getting pulled along, for a whole scene where she and I were racing each other in the boats.
“We said no teasing,” I remind her. “I’m not going to make fun of you for being scared.”
“I wasn’t,” she insists again. She’s looking at me now, a faint smirk on her face. “Never had the time to be, back then. I was always too busy trying to show you up to be afraid.”
The words catch me by surprise. Partly because Mackenzie rarely admits I’m worth trying to keep up with at all. But also because that’s not how I remember it.
“Nah,” I say. “I was the one using you for that.”
My first few years in Candy Shard felt like being in a pressure cooker.
I was young and careless and all too aware how much of the band’s success depended on its front man being young and careless.
I was never allowed to lose my cool, even when we rose to fame fast enough that it felt like whiplash.
It snuck up on me, the way the big things got easier with Mackenzie around. I was so much calmer on the road after Thunder Hearts came along for the ride that Divya used to call Mackenzie my “emotional support enemy.”
But now Mackenzie shakes her head. “You were smooth sailing by the time I showed up. It was just my job to blow you out of the water.”
Our eyes connect the instant that last phrase comes out of her mouth.
It’s the same crackling feeling we had two years ago in the back of that bar, when she first uttered the words Play you by heart.
After years of never knowing where we stood, we’d stumbled on an idea compelling enough to put us on common ground.
Mackenzie does the same thing she did then, and pulls a notebook out of her bag, starting to scribble. I catch the words Out of the water , but then she tilts it away from me.
I wait until she pauses to reread her work. “Gonna share with the class?” I ask.
She shakes her head without looking up. “It’s not there yet.”
“Damn,” I say idly. “If only you had a cowriter who might be able to help.”
I lean forward to peek, tilting the boat enough that Mackenzie lets out a quick yelp. “Sorry,” she blurts, snapping the notebook shut. “Fuck. Sorry.”
“Don’t steal my sorry,” I say. “I’m the jerk who rocked the boat.”
She still won’t look at me. I reach for one of the life jackets and fan it over her shoulders. After a moment she bends her arms, letting me ease it onto her.
Even when I reach forward to tighten the straps on it, her eyes are cast toward the bottom of the boat. “Sparkles.” I snap the front buckle and hold my hand there, giving it a light tug so she looks up. “You’re stuck with me now. I’m not gonna let you drown.”
She stares at me for a beat, looking almost startled. Then she lets out a breathy laugh and pulls her eyes off mine.
“No more photos,” she says. “This thing makes me look ridiculous.”
I let her go, then pull one of the ugly hats out of her bag and stick it on my head. “Now we both do.”
When she looks up again, she lets out a real laugh. The kind so unexpected that she has to clap a hand over her mouth to keep it from echoing across the water.
“You look like an unhinged Muppet,” she cackles.
Her laugh is such a relief that I’d put ten of these monstrosities on my head to hear it again.
“Joke’s on you,” I say, easing back and grabbing the oars. “As a dad I now hold all the Muppets in great esteem.”
Her laugh tapers as I use the oars to turn the boat.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asks.
I tilt my head toward the boathouse. “Taking us back.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she says, with a sharp shake of her head. She shoves the notebook back in her bag. “Just, uh—consider this a PSA to put Ben in swim lessons.”
I still haven’t seen a single new word she’s written, but I let it go. She’s shaking so hard that she can’t hide it. Which is saying something for a woman who has headlined entire stadiums without breaking a sweat.
So I pull up the oars again and keep moving, this time toward the edge of the tree-filled Ramble that borders the water.
“Ben could probably go for a refresher,” I say. “Not that he’ll mind. Kid’s a jock through and through.”
Mackenzie’s death grip on her bag straps loosens by a degree. “Is he now?” she asks. “How exactly did you manage that?”
“Recessive genes,” I crack.
Mackenzie’s eyes are back on me in full force. There’s no panic in them this time. Just curiosity.
“I know when you found out about Ben,” she says. “But—how? How did Lizzie figure it out?”
It’s easy to forget that Mackenzie knows Lizzie.
Of all the women I saw casually while we were touring, Lizzie was the only one who introduced herself to the rest of the crew.
We knew each other from high school, so there was enough of a history that on the weekends when she flew in for some fun, she felt fine to wander around and chat people up, rival band members included.
“Well—Lizzie thought Ben was her ex’s kid. He was never involved, but his mom came by once,” I say, pushing the oars along. “It was pretty anticlimactic. They were looking at Ben’s baby book. She saw that he has type O blood. Which I guess would be impossible, because Lizzie’s ex is AB.”
It was something Lizzie’s ex didn’t know, but his mom did. Not that her ex had ever stuck around long enough to find anything out about Ben in the first place.
“She got in touch with me that night,” I say. “I was on the next plane out of LA.”
Mackenzie nods slowly. “We all woke up and you were just—gone.”
She doesn’t sound hurt, but bewildered. The way she sounded in that last conversation we had before we lost touch, when she called me to check in and I told her about Ben.
Truth be told, I try not to remember that call. I’m not proud of it. A lot of the specifics are lost on me, but the feeling isn’t—whatever I said, it was to push her away.
It felt like the only move. I’d spent years steering clear of her.
She wanted a big romance, the kind of guy who was in it for the long haul.
She didn’t just talk about it, but sang her heart out about it.
I wasn’t that guy when we met, so for years I shoved all the feelings I had for her so far down that I nearly choked on them.
But there was this moment, the night before I found out about Ben. We accidentally crossed a line.
We kissed.
When I realized it wasn’t accidental at all—that Mackenzie felt something, too—that’s all it took. Just like that, I was ready. As ready as I’ve ever been.
And then there was Ben. Suddenly there was this tidal wave of love and shame, of wanting the world for him and feeling like an alien invader in it. There was no room for anything else, and even if there had been, I couldn’t put that on Mackenzie. I’d never forgive myself for holding her back.
“It’s weird,” says Mackenzie. “Twyla said it was a family thing, so I thought your dad had gotten in touch.”
My brows lift in surprise. I don’t talk much about my dad. “You did?”
“You mentioned him once,” says Mackenzie.
My face burns at the memory. It slipped out the night we were writing “Play You by Heart.” Booze and sleep deprivation and the adrenaline high of writing will do that to a guy.
Before I knew it, I was admitting to Mackenzie something I’d barely admitted to myself—that some part of me had always wondered if he’d see me in Candy Shard, and try to get in touch.
I could tell her right now. He did, in the end. And not only does she know who he is, but she probably knows all his hits, the same way half the world does.
But if someone else knows about Caspar—hell, if Mackenzie knows—I’ll have to own up to being a damn coward about it.
“Nah,” I say. The grin on my face feels stretched. “Just got a surprise preschooler.”
Mackenzie watches me carefully, like she can see a hole in what I just told her but doesn’t know where to dig.
“Is that why Candy Shard broke up?” she asks. “I never knew because we ended up calling it quits around the same time.”
I shake my head. “Divya wanted to go back to school; Rob wanted to settle down. It was a good time for us all to bow out,” I tell her.