Chapter Thirteen. Sam
chapter thirteen
SAM
If there is a drug more potent than Mackenzie Waters, I hope to god I never find out.
It was bad enough just to wonder about her all those years.
How her thick hair would feel tangled in my hands, or how she’d taste with her lips crushed against mine.
But the man I was back then was no good for her, with all her big declarations about love, so I told myself a lie—that I was making something of nothing.
I only wanted Mackenzie because I couldn’t have her.
All it took was one damn piece of her to know that all I’m ever going to want is more.
And if Mackenzie really is a drug, I’m hooked. It’s been three days since we stumbled soaked and smug out of that pool with half of a new song and a handful of sloppily taken photos. We’ve seen each other twice since then, and we’ve barely got any music to show for it.
Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had to use more than enough self-control around Mackenzie in this lifetime. If someone’s responsible for getting us back on track, it shouldn’t be me.
“I’m not worried,” said Mackenzie as she slid her hand under my shirt in the back office of Sugar Harmony yesterday afternoon, my guitar and her notepad forgotten.
“This is for our—what’d you call it? ‘Artistic process.’” She splayed her palm over my heart, tapping one, two, three, four. … “We’re learning about keeping time .”
It’s the title we decided on for the next song. She slid her hand away on five , with a wicked grin. I caught it with my own hand and set it back on my chest.
“What are you doing?” she said, still grinning.
I raised my eyebrows, then lifted her wrist to my lips. “Keeping it.”
Mackenzie was quiet, then let out a soft laugh. “Well, the reports of your charm were not exaggerated, huh?”
She kissed me before I could answer, but the words stayed with me the rest of the day and into this one. The rueful way she said them. Like I was exactly what she thought I’d be, when she never thought much of me in the first place.
Like this wasn’t any different from what came before it, when it feels like my whole damn world got turned upside down.
I’m nowhere near used to that world as I take the elevator up to her apartment. Sweaty palms. Racing heart. It’s like standing in line for a roller coaster, not knowing if that seat belt will work before the drop.
But the drop has to come. I’ve been a lot of things in this life, but what I’ll never be is a coward. If there’s a chance Mackenzie feels the same way I do, this time I’m not going to screw it up and let her go.
Hell of a weight to have on my shoulders as I knock on her apartment door for the first time, but something stops me before I can. A song I’ve never heard before. The words are muffled, but the melody is slow and yearning. It takes a moment to realize it isn’t a recording, but Mackenzie herself.
It’s been a whirlwind since Mackenzie told me the truth about her voice. But somehow, I haven’t heard her sing once.
Her voice carries as she moves closer to the door. It’s Mackenzie, but with a new depth. Softer vibrato. A slight rasp in place of the usual bite. If her old voice commanded you to pay attention, this one is grounded enough to assume you already are.
The voice sounds oddly familiar—enough that I’m trying to place it. But of course it’s familiar. It’s still Mackenzie.
The door opens abruptly across the hall.
“Oh, shit,” says Mackenzie’s neighbor, nearly dropping her briefcase. “You’re Sam Blaze.”
I tip my head. “For better or worse,” I confirm.
Mackenzie’s door swings open so fast that the neighbor and I both flinch. Neither of us looks half as stunned as Mackenzie, whose hair is in a bun that adds a good half a foot of height to her small frame.
“How did you get up here?” she asks.
Not the hello I was hoping for, which involved a lot more of our hands on each other.
“The security guard let me in,” I explain, crowding her in the door.
She blinks. She must have lost track of time, or she wouldn’t be in a tight little sports bra and sweatpants. “Without ID?” she says, even as she leans in closer to meet me.
“He’s Sam Blaze,” her neighbor calls with a shrug.
Mackenzie is uneasy. “Were you just standing out here like some kind of ghoul?” she asks.
The elevator door shuts behind the neighbor. We finally close the distance, me pressing my palms into the small of her back, drawing her in as she snakes her arms around my neck.
“I heard you singing, if that’s what you’re asking,” I tell her.
I feel the breath stop in her chest. “You did?”
I lift my hands so they’re cupping her cheeks. She watches me, her blue eyes wary and sharp.
“Beautiful,” I murmur.
Her eyes water. She blinks fast. “Shut up,” she says, but leans into my touch.
“I should,” I say. “I want to hear more of it.”
She shakes her head against my hands, then draws me in for the kiss I’ve been waiting for since she opened the door. She’s on her tiptoes to meet me, so instead of ducking my head I grab her ass and lift her to my level. She laughs into my mouth and hooks her arms around me, deepening the kiss.
I pull her tight against me, easing her back down as I touch the bare, hot skin of her back.
She digs her fingers into my hair and tugs me down to meet her without breaking the kiss.
My mind is in too many damn places at once—on the seams of that little sports bra I want to pull off her, on the sweet smell of her hair I want to bury myself in.
Letting her go only proves my little theory. A few seconds without Mackenzie’s touch and I’m already in withdrawal.
“So what were you singing?” I ask, following her down the light blue entry hall to an open living room. “Something original?”
She’s flushed as she turns to look at me. “Just finishing something up,” she says, pulling on an old Thunder Hearts T-shirt that was resting on a chair. “A little ditty I call ‘Nobody Knocks These Days.’”
I cross my arms, looking her up and down. “Well, don’t get dressed on my account.”
She tilts her chin up at me as she passes on the way to grab a guitar. “And here I was thinking you liked a challenge,” she says.
Too much for my own damn good.
She goes looking for her guitar capo and I take in the space—a lot of light walls and inviting furniture with pops of color. Like a cozier version of all that neon Thunder Hearts glitz.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding all this time,” I remark.
I take a few steps to see how far it goes back.
The wide hallway is decorated with a long twisting music staff where she’s hung sweaters and hats.
One of the doors is ajar to a recording space with deep magenta walls covered in old Thunder Hearts posters.
I’m wandering toward it when Mackenzie diverts me with a kiss in the doorway.
“I wasn’t hiding,” she says, shutting the door and leading me out to the living room.
I weave my fingers through hers and tug lightly, so she falls with her back against my chest. “Said the woman impossible to find,” I say into her ear.
She looks up at me, eyes wicked. “Were you keeping tabs on me?” she asks.
No point in lying now. “Course I was.”
Her eyes narrow up at me. “Keeping an eye on the competition?”
“Something like that,” I say, my voice low in my throat.
Mackenzie’s gaze softens on mine and lingers. I skim a hand on her waist. Now is the moment. The words won’t be pretty like hers, but they’ll be honest—I wasn’t the man she needed then, but I am now, if she’ll have me.
But before I can speak, Mackenzie looks away, pulling in a sharp breath. “Well—it’s no Dad Side in here, but I like it,” she says, pointing herself back to the living room.
I clear my throat. After we write, then. That’s when I’ll tell her.
In the meantime, I follow her down the hall. A week or two ago I never imagined the words “Dad Side” would ever leave her lips. Now she’s been there long enough for Ben to rope her into helping brainstorm this week’s creation and make her a friendship bracelet in Thunder Hearts colors like mine.
“It feels very you,” I say, falling back on her plush couch.
Mackenzie sets her guitar next to me, then settles herself on my other side. “Does that mean you’re going to call it Sparkles and make it want to fling you into the sun?”
I shift until her thigh is pressed into mine. “It means I like it. A lot.”
She hums to herself and then against my lips. Damn it. The only thing I love more than writing with Mackenzie is touching Mackenzie, and it’s impossible to do both at once.
After a whole lot longer than those five seconds we held ourselves to, she pulls away.
“Be honest,” I say, hoisting the guitar into my lap. “How many Thunder Hearts ragers have I missed here?”
Her eyes are rueful. “As much as I’d love to give you FOMO, the answer is a resounding none.”
“Right. I forgot you famously don’t have any friends,” I say, lightly thumbing her guitar’s strings to tune it.
But Mackenzie’s staring out the window, where there’s a private deck with a sweeping view of downtown. She blinks and says, “It feels wrong to do much when it’s still weird with Serena.”
From the looks of things, they’ve been at odds since the band broke up, but it’s gotten worse. Mackenzie took a call from Hannah during our last writing session. Mackenzie didn’t want to get into it, but it didn’t take much to figure that Serena had blown them off and they’re worried about her.
“She can’t be mad at you about us still,” I say.
“Oh, she can be and she is,” says Mackenzie.
My eyes drift to the thin scar at the hollow of her throat. It’s still hard to wrap my head around it—that something so massive happened to her and I never knew. But I made damn well sure of that by pushing her away.
Still, I never meant to push her far enough to miss something as big as this .
“Did you not team up with her because of your voice?” I ask.
Mackenzie shakes her head.