Chapter Twelve. Mackenzie
chapter twelve
MACKENZIE
For all the times I’ve accused Sam of being too cocky for his own good, it’s clearly rubbing off on me. Because for some reason I thought that this whole “hang out with Sam half-naked in an empty pool at midnight” thing was going to have no effect on me whatsoever.
Enter Sam, who is yanking his shirt over his head the second the security guard closes the door behind us. His lean, sharp form filled out satisfyingly over the past two years, enough that I can’t resist the temptation to make a new map of him as he walks to the edge of the pool deck.
A map that ends at his entirely smug face. “Enjoying the view?” he asks.
Turns out becoming Sam’s friend hasn’t done anything to stop that impulse to get under his skin. If I can’t do it by one-upping him anymore, I’ll settle for the next best thing—riling him.
“We didn’t make any rules against that,” I say.
It works. Sam’s brows lift in surprise, and this time when I look, I look . From the ripple of muscle in his thighs to the toned plane of his chest to the satisfyingly stunned grin forming on his face.
“Please. I’m blushing,” says Sam.
I roll my eyes. “You’re too shameless for that.”
He holds his hands up. “You got me,” he says. “But you’ve looked long enough. Don’t you think it’s only fair if I get a turn?”
A tingle runs up my spine. A harmless tingle. Just because Sam isn’t an option doesn’t mean that I can’t have some fun.
In fact, I’m entitled to it. I spent so long crying over bad boys who didn’t love me back that I never got to enjoy the thrill of having their attention in the first place. So that’s all that I’m doing, as I settle my fingers on the top front button of my sundress—getting my due.
“Well, then,” I say. “If we’re keeping things fair .”
I undo the dress button by button, slowly exposing the bikini underneath—a retro-style red halter top with a matching cheeky bottom.
It’s more revealing than any suit I’ve worn before, and it’s clear from the way Sam’s throat bobs as he looks me up and down that it hasn’t escaped his notice.
A few long, gratifying moments pass before he collects himself enough to speak.
“Well, damn, Sparkles,” he manages.
I walk slowly to the edge of the pool, soaking up every moment his eyes stay glued to me. “It’s Hannah’s,” I say coolly. The instant she found out the photos we took tonight would end up in the album art, she had it messengered to my apartment.
Sam only shakes his head, his eyes caught on the tie strings of the bottom before meeting mine. “It’s lethal, is what it is.”
My cheeks are burning now, but so are his.
“Someone better warn your buddy Grayson.”
If I were a better person, maybe I wouldn’t smirk at the jealous edge in the words. Sam doesn’t see it anyway, pitching himself backward and falling into the pool with a loud, graceless splash .
I take the moment to pull in a breath and collect myself. Damn. Something about being in a high school has turned me into a teenager all over again—all hot-blooded and flustered over nothing more than a few remarks.
Sam pops out of the water and shakes his hair out like a wet dog. “C’mon,” he says, gesturing outward. “It’s time for your swim lesson.”
That’s all it takes for the little thrill in me to sink. “I don’t need you to teach me how to swim,” I say, staying put.
“Oh, this isn’t for you. It’s for me,” says Sam. He drifts closer to the edge of the pool, eyes skimming my bare legs before meeting mine again. “If I keep thinking about how you can’t swim, it’s going to distract from my artistic process.”
I set my tote bag on the pool deck, pulling out my notebook and my phone. “I can’t write from the pool anyway.”
“Good thing we’re not writing yet,” he says. Then he tilts his endearingly floppy-haired, wet head at me and says lowly, “We’ve got the place for two hours. Give me ten minutes.”
This seems to be a theme with Sam—negotiating for my time. Maybe it should worry me that the more time we’ve spent together, the more I’m willing to give.
But I’m not going to overthink it. I’ve spent the last two years in my head, overanalyzing every mistake I made in my relationships. Overanalyzing the nonexistent one I had with Sam. A man is offering to teach me to swim. It’s only logical to take him up on it.
“Ten minutes,” I say. I ease myself down on the deck, sliding in as far as my knees. “ No minutes. Jesus, that’s cold.”
Sam lets out a laugh as he comes closer to me. “I didn’t take you for a wimp.”
“I didn’t take you for a masochist,” I say, shivering.
He raises his eyebrows. “Then you haven’t been paying attention,” he says wryly. “Speaking of, I’m going to have to break that little ‘no touching’ rule while I’m teaching you.”
As if we haven’t been finding little ways to break it right and left these past few weeks. “You better,” I say. “If I drown on your watch, Twyla and Isla will be pissed.”
Not a moment later his wide hands are settled firmly just above my hips. I let out a startled gasp, sure he’s about to yank me into the water, but he’s just watching me with a grin.
“It’s easier to jump in all at once,” he says.
My eyes flit to his face, the planes of it gleaming with pool water against the soft yellow light. I put my hands on top of his shoulders, tilting my chin in permission, and he pulls me into the icy water in one quick swoop.
I let out a yelp of shock, clinging to him as the cold plunges through me. It’s instinctive, is all. Find the heat and stay in it. The firm, muscular, ridiculously well-toned heat.
But then it’s not just the cold that’s got me frozen, but the fear. I didn’t think it would hit this hard or this fast. But it’s been so long since I even hung out near a pool that being fully immersed has my heart jackhammering in my chest, my limbs stiff as boards.
Sam doesn’t let go, arms still firm around me the way they were on the boat the other day. “You’re good?” he asks, close to my ear.
Damn it. The only thing sexier than Sam teasing me is Sam not teasing me. I didn’t think it was possible to be this embarrassingly afraid and turned on at the same time.
I nod, only untangling myself when my feet touch the bottom. The water comes up to just below my chest. I take a breath. When I meet Sam’s eyes, they’re soft and determined.
“We’ll start easy and try treading water,” he says. “Basically just holding yourself afloat.”
This is, in theory, a simple task. But after a few seconds of me not moving, Sam puts a hand on my elbow.
“I’ve got you,” he says patiently. “Just lift your feet up from the bottom first.”
I do, and for a few seconds I stay afloat. But then Sam starts to ease his hand away and I start kicking madly like I’ve never used my own legs before. I let out a self-conscious laugh and plant myself to the bottom again.
“Well, shit,” I say, embarrassed.
Sam doesn’t miss a beat.
“Instead of kicking up and down, try fanning your legs out to the sides. Like this,” he says, lowering himself down to show me. “Same with your arms. Gentler strokes. It takes a lot less work to stay floating than you think.”
His voice is so calm, his eyes so steady on me. He’s a good teacher. Or at least he would be, if I weren’t so tempted to focus on him rather than the task at hand.
I attempt to mimic him. It’s not good, but it’s an improvement. But a few seconds later I panic and my feet are right back where they started.
“Better,” says Sam. “Go again.”
There’s no trace of Sam’s usual cockiness. Damn. I must look really pathetic.
“You make it look so easy,” I say.
“My mom put me in lessons pretty early on,” he says, his attention still on my feet. “Why didn’t your parents?”
He takes me by the elbow again, prompting me to lift my feet.
“They weren’t like your mom,” I say, experimentally shifting my arms in the water.
Sam smiles to himself. “Nobody’s like my mom,” he says.
Anna Blaze really is something else. Whenever she could swing it, she was in the front row of our concerts, yelling every Candy Shard and Thunder Hearts lyric alike and jumping up and down in T-shirts she insisted on buying full price from the merch table.
She doesn’t even drink, but that never stopped her from partying us all under the damn table after every show.
“She loves you.” I blink hard, my eyes stinging in the chlorine. “I mean—not that my parents don’t. They just weren’t all that involved in my life.”
All this floating has me distracted. I didn’t mean to say that. But Sam nods without breaking focus and says, “You never talked about them much.”
I never talked to Sam much, period. But he’s not wrong. Hannah would gush about her parents in interviews, and Serena and I were both all too happy to let her take the lead on that. Neither of us had all that much to say.
It’s one of the reasons we were close early on, despite all of Serena’s type A tendencies.
When you grow up the way we did—with parents whose love you couldn’t necessarily count on—you recognize it in other people fast. Like you’re quiet allies on a battlefield, stuck in a war you never meant to fight.
“I think they liked the idea of having a kid,” I say.
“They both have really demanding jobs. My mom’s in corporate law; my dad’s a surgeon.
They didn’t have much time for me growing up, and when they did, it was like—they didn’t really know what to do with me.
Most of the time I felt like I bored them. ”
Oh, my god. There must be something in the chlorine scrambling my brain. I haven’t talked so frankly about them in my entire life. After I left New Jersey to try to make it big in the city, I never wanted to look back.
Sam’s voice is as quiet as the lapping waves of the pool. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
My throat feels tight.
“It wasn’t that bad,” I say, trying to keep my tone light. “Mostly I just tried to impress them. And then when that didn’t work, I tried to shock them. And when they didn’t work, well—I just said ‘fuck it’ and started a band.”