Chapter Twenty-Eight. Mackenzie #2
I knew about the tickets. Serena and I spent the morning negotiating a deal to let Tick Tune artists perform on either side of Mack & Sam, to get them some exposure and raise awareness about what the app was doing.
When they agreed and pushed the tickets live without Sam’s name, I just assumed the worst from them.
I never dreamed that Sam would give them the okay without telling me first.
The pounding in my heart is so loud now that I can barely hear myself over it.
“Come anyway,” I insist. “If we’re going to save Mack and Sam, I can’t do it without you.”
Sam says it so gently this time that I finally believe him. “There isn’t a Mack and Sam to save,” he says.
Whatever last stitch was keeping me in place comes undone.
I pull in an awful, hiccupping breath. It isn’t just tears this time, but the mortifying, full-body kind.
The kind of tears that feel irrational because you can’t fully explain them yet, except this time I can.
I’ve lived this enough times to know how it ends.
Maybe Sam thinks he’s just walking away from the music, but it could just be the first step before he walks away from us.
“Please don’t do this.” I hate myself for what I say next, but I can’t help it. “Please don’t go.”
Here I am again, in a place I never thought I’d be: begging a man to stay. I am my own damn self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I didn’t have a right to the heartbreak I felt about Sam when I wrote that song, but I will now.
No. This time is different. Sam isn’t letting go. I’m the one who pushed him away—one lie, one lyric, one silly rule at a time.
This time I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.
But Sam’s arms are around me again, his hands in my hair, his voice warm in my ear. “Hey. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
I sink into him, but there’s no relief. They’re only words—so easy to say, so easy to forget. I built a fortress out of the promises people already broke. I let Sam into it, and now I’m terrified I’ve started a fire that will burn us both from the inside.
Sam draws me tighter into him. “But I’m going to clear out for a little while,” he says. “Spend some time in New Jersey with my mom. I need to get out of the city, and you need space to do what you have to do. I would never forgive myself if I got in the way.”
My skin feels numb, my thoughts coming to a slow, stunned stop. I believe him. I believe him. I know that I should.
But it feels too much like all the other times I believed, and it hurt twice as much to be let down.
Sam pulls back and presses his lips to mine, and then to my forehead, lingering there.
He steps back and searches my face again, waiting for an answer that I can’t give.
It feels like I’ve been reading a book only to stumble on the last few pages and realize I’ve read it before and I already know how terribly it ends.
But I spent two years tearing those pages out of the book. I am not that woman anymore. And Sam is not that man.
I meet Sam’s gaze.
“I know what’s best for me. I’m not going to change my mind.
I want what we have.” I take a step toward him, but I don’t reach for him.
I need him to hear every word, and I need them to stick.
“You said you didn’t know you hurt me then, but that was on me.
I didn’t tell you how I felt. But I’m telling you now. ”
Now Sam’s eyes are swimming and I am the one who is calm.
“I want to do this with you,” I tell him. “I always will. So please. Be there.”
Sam’s throat bobs. I’ve never seen him this close to tears. He doesn’t try to hide them, but instead reaches out his hand.
“Come down with me,” he says. “It’s going to rain.”
I don’t move. “Come to the showcase,” I say quietly.
Sam looks down then, taking a moment to collect himself. It doesn’t work. His eyes are almost spilling over when he looks up.
“Tell me you’ll forgive me if I don’t,” he says.
I will. Of course I will. But I won’t forgive myself.
Every moment of the past two days has been spent trying to undo this.
Now that it’s over, the shame I’ve been too busy to feel hits so hard that my body has to brace itself.
My bones go stiff. My nails cut into my palms. My eyes cut to the dark, swollen clouds descending on us, but it still doesn’t rain.
I can’t bring myself to look back at him yet. He deserves an answer. But if I give one, it’ll make the whole thing real.
Then Sam pulls in a breath that sounds like it’s caught in his throat. When I turn back, his expression is wretched, like my silence was answer enough.
“Sam—”
“I can’t lose you,” he says, his voice so broken that it cracks something in my heart right with it. “Please. Mackenzie. You have to know I’m doing this because I lo—”
“Don’t say that,” I beg.
A tear streaks down his cheek. He lets out the rest of the breath in a shudder, lowering his head so I can’t see his face.
I’m the storm. I fixed my own heart so I could hurt his.
I take a step toward him, softening my voice. “If we say those words to each other—it won’t be here. It won’t be like this.”
Sam’s throat bobs. “If,” he repeats.
“When,” I correct myself. “I hope—I hope a lot of things. But mostly I hope that you change your mind.”
The storm never breaks. It looms above us like a threat as Sam clears his throat and gives me a tight nod. As his gaze lingers on mine and his mouth opens, but he doesn’t speak. As he pulls open the door to leave, stopping to find my eyes.
“I won’t change my mind.” His eyes burn into mine with resolve. “And maybe you don’t want to hear it right now. But I sure as hell won’t change my heart, either.”
And then I’m alone. Not Mackenzie. Not Seven. But something in between—a woman who isn’t sure if she’s the one getting left, or the one doing the leaving.