Chapter Eighteen. Sam
chapter eighteen
SAM
Mackenzie’s drying hair is fanned out across the couch like a halo, her body fully stretched against mine on the couch with her bare feet on the coffee table.
I take a sip from the open bottle of Pinot Noir and pass it back to her, watching the rain from the window cast shadows on her face.
It’s been one of the wildest days of my life, but the end is simple as ever—I still want as much of her as she’s willing to give.
“Mackenzie,” I say lowly.
Her face immediately flushes. I do my best not to smirk. The only thing I like more than saying her name is watching her hear it.
“I need a favor.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Convenient of you to ask when we’re half a bottle deep,” she says, taking another sip herself.
“It’s about damn time I hear you sing.” She opens her mouth to protest. I don’t let her. “I mean sing . You’ve been holding back.”
She doesn’t deny it. Just stares at the rim of the wine bottle, lips twisting.
She knocks her head against my shoulder. “Okay. We’ll practice ‘Run Out of Road.’”
“Nice try. I want pure, undiluted Mackenzie,” I tell her. “Sing something you already know.”
“I don’t really have a repertoire these days,” she says wryly.
It’s been weighing on me ever since she told me about her voice. She said it so easily, but the grief in her eyes was so plain. Years and years of writing a history of herself, and now she can’t even touch it.
“‘When I Was Green,’” I suggest.
Mackenzie blinks at me. “I’ve never even performed that live.”
It’s a bonus track on Thunder Hearts’ second album. Mackenzie is the only one singing on it. It’s unlike any of her others—not a love song, but a quiet, personal one about the time it takes to come into your own.
“It’s slower than the others,” I say. “It would be easy to scale back.”
“Yeah, I know. But how do you know?” she says.
Now it’s my face getting hot. I swipe the bottle from her, pulling myself up to my feet.
“I told you I don’t do anything halfway,” I tell her. “Especially not scoping out the competition.”
Mackenzie lets out a stunned laugh. I pull out the old guitar we found in the closet earlier. I tune it, then play a few chords until I get the pattern right. When I look up, Mackenzie’s eyes are incredulous.
I clear my throat. “I’ll try lowering the key. Stop me if it isn’t working.”
Mackenzie watches my fingers on the strings like she’s in a trance, but at the last second, she pulls in a sharp breath and sings. In the first verse her voice is still soft. Uncertain. But as we reach the chorus, she finally meets my eye and sings not just from her throat, but her whole body.
Her voice is rich and soft and—familiar, somehow. I can anticipate how she’ll use it, when she has to change it from the original.
But as soon as I have the thought, she stops.
“Hey,” I protest.
“That’s enough of that,” she says lightly, reaching for the wine bottle again.
I pluck it from the table before she can. “You can have the whole damn bottle, if you admit your voice is a knockout.”
“It’s raspy now,” she says.
“It’s got depth. Like a fine wine,” I say, holding the bottle above my head.
She rolls her eyes. I wait for them to meet mine again; then I lean down to level with her.
“It matches the song better,” I tell her. “It was meant to be sung that way.”
Mackenzie sighs. I take a performative sip of wine, waiting for her to admit I’m right. But her lips settle into a small smile.
“I’ll tell you something funny,” she says. “I wrote that song because of you.”
That’s the last thing I’m expecting her to say. “How?”
“In that interview with Noted Scene—you called us ‘green,’” she says. “I got stuck on it. What it means to be green . What I’d have to become, so I wouldn’t be. The song just fell out of me.”
I know better than to think it fell out of anything. Mackenzie’s always had a way of polishing scraps into something that shines.
“Damn,” I say. “So you’re saying I should mouth off more often.”
“You and that mouth of yours have done plenty.”
It’s about to do a whole lot more tonight, judging from the way Mackenzie’s leaning in right now. Her robe is loose enough that I can see her bare shoulder and the top of her pale breasts.
“What if I told you I wrote a few lines because of you, too?” I ask, using the knot on the tie to her robe to pull her closer.
Her blue eyes are like sparks against the dim light. “Oh yeah?” she asks.
“‘Kiss and Desist.’ That line about wanting to taste the edge of your smirk,” I say.
That same smirk is deepening now. Enough that I can see the faint dimple on her left cheek. When she leans in, I can smell the sweetness of the wine on her breath, feel the tickle of her hair on my shoulder.
“‘Nice to Un-meet You,’” she says, listing a song off Thunder Hearts’ third album. “Fallen-angel face with a devil tongue.”
I skim my tongue over my teeth. “Bold claim,” I counter. “You hadn’t tried it yet.”
She presses a thumb over my lip then, using it to hold me in place. “But was I wrong?”
Her other hand settles on my thigh, slowly moving it higher.
“‘Forget Me Not,’” I say as evenly as I can. “I’d never cross a line, but I’d do anything to cross your mind.”
She looks me up and down. “I can think of some lines we can cross right now,” she says idly.
“Like this one?” I press my lips to her shoulder. “Or maybe this one,” I add, pressing another to her collarbone.
I ease back to see the flush on her cheeks, the heat in her eyes. Already I feel her burning through every other touch I’ve had on my skin, like she’s branded me for good.
“And most certainly this one,” I say.
I don’t just taste the edge of her smirk then, but every inch of the broadest, most shameless grin that has ever crossed her lips.