Chapter Thirteen. Sam #2
“Some of it was—I just wasn’t ready. She understood, but she kept pushing it anyway.” Mackenzie’s lips twist to the side. “She didn’t get it, though. Even if we made new songs, people would come see us for the old ones. The big, loud crowd pleasers. And I can’t really do loud anymore.”
“Isn’t ‘loud’ most of your discography?” I ask.
Mackenzie’s smile is grim. “Yeah,” she says. “The whole thing is a bitch.”
My throat’s gone tight. Maybe there’s nothing I could have done when all this happened, but I can’t shake it—not just the guilt, but the fear.
If anything truly terrible happened to her, I might be the last to know.
Letting Mackenzie go was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
It’s nothing compared to the idea of losing her entirely.
My voice is rough when I break the silence. “No more crazy shit like this happening without you telling me, got it?”
“That an order?” she asks, her lips quirking.
“Maybe,” I say. “But you’re breaking so many rules these days, I think you’ve got authority issues.”
“Pot, kettle,” says Mackenzie, suddenly twisting her body to straddle me on the couch. I shift to attention, the blue of her eyes like magnets compelling me.
“Never did meet a rule I didn’t want to break.” I settle my thumb on her lower lip, my hand holding her chin in place. “But let’s not break this one. I don’t ever want something like that to happen to you without me knowing. Not ever again.”
Her throat bobs, her eyes not leaving mine. “Same to you.”
The words feel more powerful than any lyric we’ll ever write together. It’s more than a rivalry or a partnership or even a romance. It’s a promise. And no matter how this thing ends, it’s one I intend to keep.
Mackenzie’s half whispering when she says, “Are we just going to write the song like this?”
“Looks like it,” I say.
Her smirk deepens, like I just issued a challenge. “You’re sure it wouldn’t be too distracting?”
“Trust me,” I tell her. “You’ve been distracting me for years.”
Her teeth graze my thumb.
“Years, huh?” she says. “Careful there. A girl might start thinking you actually cared.”
She starts to tilt back, but I don’t let go, nudging her chin closer to me.
“Mackenzie,” I say hoarsely. “You can’t possibly think I didn’t.”
Her eyes widen, her jaw slackening in my hand. I hold her stunned gaze, and there’s no question that it’s written all over my face—every damn word I’m about to say.
And she looks terrified.
“No love songs.” She clears her throat, pulling her face out of my grasp. “That memo you sent last night—you changed one of the words to ‘love.’ We should change it back.”
I stay as still as I can, even as my heart starts to sink. “I wasn’t clear if we made that a rule.”
“An understanding,” she says carefully. “We’re having fun.”
There it is—the line drawn in the sand. I step to the edge of it.
“I think we both know this could be a hell of a lot more than fun ,” I say, my voice low.
Mackenzie eases herself off me. “We’re friends,” she says. “I think that’s more than enough, all things considered.”
No. God, no. It’s laughable to think it ever could be.
“Friends who have fun,” I say.
She leans in as if to kiss me, but she settles her palm on my forehead, weaving her fingers in my hair, and firmly pushes my head against the back of the couch. I feel her keeping time with her pinky, but the seconds are uneven, just like our breaths.
Not keeping time anymore, but keeping me in my place.
Before the ache can settle, she dips low on the last count, kissing me hard and fast.
“All right,” she says. “No more fun until we finish the song.”
I swallow hard. I knew what I was risking from the moment I walked into Lightning Strike the other week. If this hurts now, I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.
But that hurt is too big to let myself feel even a piece of it right now. Not when we’ve got a job to do and I owe it to her to get it done right.
Once her back is against the couch again I brush her hair off her neck, exposing the faint scar. “I want to hear you sing,” I say. “I want to write to it.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t pull away. I skim the scar with my knuckles as I pull away.
“Please,” I add.
There’s a quiet stutter in her breath. But when she turns to me, it’s with resolve. “Well,” she says, “since you asked nicely.”
In some ways the writing is more intense than the touching. The adrenaline of building off each other, the hypnotic sound of Mackenzie’s new voice in my ears. Once I’ve got her singing again the song comes together so fast that finishing it feels like getting yanked out of a dream.
We get a rough recording of the full draft. Even then I can tell Mackenzie’s not using the full range of her voice yet, like she’s afraid to let me hear it.
But this is progress. And I’ve got to get out of here before I crack deep enough for Mackenzie to see.
“I’m gonna tool with the tempo,” I warn her as I set her guitar on its stand. “Like you did in that one song on the first album.”
Mackenzie sets her notebook down and settles herself upside down on the couch, stretching out like a cat and letting her legs rest on my shoulder. “Oh, you mean your least favorite album in the world?”
I seize one of her calves and skim my hand down it, reaching her knee and then her thigh. “Only thing I hate about it is whichever assholes you dated inspired it.”
Mackenzie laughs. “Yeah, well, you hated all the guys I was with,” she says.
“Of course I did,” I say. “You deserved better.”
She slides her legs off the couch, skimming my neck and collarbone with her shin on the way down before sitting upright.
“What do you think I deserved?” she asks.
When I meet her eye, I see the same damn thing she must have seen in mine. The same damn unspoken, electric thing that keeps bringing us back together again and again.
The thing that tells me I’m not alone in this.
“All of it. Every damn thing you want,” I tell her. “You better promise me you won’t settle for anything less.”
Her eyes well up so fast that understanding hits me like a bolt of lightning. Mackenzie’s had plenty of men come and go, hooking her on all the things she thought she needed to hear. The last thing she needs is more words.
She needs time. Time enough to prove that the words aren’t just words, but have weight behind them.
And even if time isn’t enough, I’m not stupid enough to let her disappear again. Maybe it’ll be torture every day of my life, wanting more of her than I can have. But if I’ve got a shot—if I’m not wrong, and god help me, I know I’m not wrong—then I’ll give her however long she needs.
For us, that is. When it comes to hiding from the rest of it, I’m not giving her another second.
“I’m sending your vocals over to the label as is,” I tell her, flashing the recording on my phone screen. “It’s about time you let people hear it.”
Mackenzie startles, shaking her head. “I want to hear it back,” she says, reaching to grab the phone for me.
I hold it over my head. “I’m your archnemesis, remember? If I love it, everyone else is gonna go nuts.”
“Sounds like something a nemesis would say to trick me into embarrassing myself,” Mackenzie points out.
“Since when do you care what people think?” I ask.
Mackenzie winces. “I just—it’s complicated.” Her eyes cut to the closed door of the studio. “I thought I’d be more ready by now.”
I put the voice memo in a drafted message to Twyla and Isla, then hand it to Mackenzie. “Just think of it like we did in the old days,” I say. “Remind everyone how much better you are than me. Then you’ll forget to be afraid.”
She lets out a choked laugh. “Life hack. Try to best Sam Blaze.”
“Either way, clock’s ticking,” I say. “You can’t avoid it forever.”
She blinks hard, bracing herself. Then she taps the “send” button. The Messages app pops back up, and right at the top is another message from Caspar’s unlisted number, checking in.
“That so?” she asks.
The question is gentle, but pointed. She’s caught me opening this text thread at least a dozen times these past few days. I can’t help it. I keep thinking one of these times I’m going to open it and know what to do.
“I might go to Boston,” I hear myself say.
She straightens up on the couch. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know,” I add quickly. “Maybe when we’re done with all this.”
We’re quiet for a moment, Mackenzie intently searching my face.
“Would it feel less like a big deal if we just… went?” she asks.
After years of anticipating the wild things Mackenzie would say to get a rise out of me onstage, I’m pretty damn hard to shock. But nothing could prepare me to hear her ask that.
“Right now?”
Mackenzie nods. “Ben’s visiting his grandmas this weekend, right?” She tilts her head toward the door. “It’s not that bad of a drive. We could just go tomorrow. Day trip.”
My throat is so tight it takes me a moment to speak. “You’re offering to come with me.”
“I mean—we were looking for another haunt, right?” She says it like this is the breeziest thing we’ve said all day. “Well, we were always on the road. A road trip was inevitable.”
I’m no fool. I know she’s making that up on the spot the same way she spins lyrics. But I’m too grateful to her to call it out, even to tease.
She rests a hand on my leg. “But only if you want the company,” she says.
It’s not that I want the company. I need it. I couldn’t even admit it to myself, but now that Mackenzie is offering, the relief feels like a damn tidal wave.
I put my hand on top of hers and squeeze.
“Yeah,” I say sincerely. “I do.”
She weaves her fingers through mine and puts her head on my shoulder. Five seconds pass, and then another, and then another. I don’t worry about losing the time half as much as I worry about making it count.