MACKENZIE
Mackenzie
Theo’s jaw cracked. His yawn was so big he practically dislocated his face.
“It will take us like ten minutes to get coffee,” he whined.
“We are going to be late.” Dragging him through the cruise ship would be much easier if I knew where I was going. Theo pointed to the left when we got to a split in the hallway.
“It’s just a spa appointment. Ren and Justice aren’t going to show up, anyway.”
I stopped dead and looked at him in horror.
“No, it’s not. It’s Aria’s appointment. Her personal appointment. She told me everything was booked, so it’s her spa day we’re taking. She told me she’d be mad if we were late.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. Aria scares me a little.”
Theo now was the one dragging me.
“And what do you mean, they’re not going to show?” Now it was my turn for a jaw-cracking yawn. After that stupid auction, Justice had taken us to Tiger’s Table. We’d taken over the private chef’s table room and didn’t leave until 3 a.m.
“They are not spa day alphas.”
Theo had a point. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be late.
He pulled the door open to Tranquility. The air was cooler than outside but warmer than most of the air-conditioned areas of the ship. The air smelled sweet, like they had just barely sprinkled sugar in the air, but with no other background notes. I closed my eyes and inhaled deep. That was it. That was the scent. It was just sweet, with no top or bottom notes.
Theo tugged on my arm again and pulled me through another set of doors. And they were there. Justice was leaning against the wall, tall and thin in another set of linen pants. Ren was in dark gray.
“We… we didn’t think you’d come,” I blurted out.
“And disobey a direct order from Aria? I don’t have a death wish.” Justice reached out a hand for me and then kissed my knuckles. He had done that last night, too. It was intimate and possessive.
“Is everybody afraid of her?” Theo asked.
Justice guided me toward the door that Ren held open.
“Yes, even those who fuck her, apparently,” Ren smirked.
Justice rested his fingers on the back of Theo’s neck and briefly kissed his forehead. I snapped my eyes forward and swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. I was having a hard time thinking straight. Daryl and Brock were saying and doing everything I had been wanting them to. But why didn’t it feel good? Ren brushed the back of my arm as I stepped through the door he held.
Theo and I had stayed up till almost dawn talking about Justice and Ren, obviously. Every time the conversation slid to Daryl, I changed the subject.
Daryl knew me. He had always been there. He was there when I first perfumed. When I had my first heat spike. When I missed so much school and couldn’t keep up with all the work they sent home, he turned it into a party. He made a big bonfire, and we tossed in all the homework and books and roasted marshmallows and drank champagne. My first champagne. He moved me into his apartment and gave me my own nest so I wouldn’t have to share with my birth pack sister. It was tiny but mine. He painted stars on the ceiling for me. He bought every single stuffy from the dollar store and filled the whole room with them. He did everything for me.
But none of it felt as good as Justice’s lips brushing my knuckles or Ren’s fingers skating across my skin.
Daryl was home. This was a fantasy.
I smiled brightly and nodded my head at all the right times. Massages were first. They led us into a softly lit room. They were laughing softly, taking off clothes. The masseuse gave out fuzzy towels. He had kind eyes and a gentle smile. He took a step toward me, his big hands handing me a towel.
Daryl’s hand hitting my butt.
Brock’s fingers digging into my thigh.
Sam’s fingers in my hair, pulling.
Chaz’s hand squeezing my boob.
Leaf’s palm between my legs.
The masseuse held his hand out for me. I backed up another step, and another, right into Justice, but I didn’t stop. I took another step back, like I could crawl into Justice’s aura.
“I don’t want them touching me.” I said as softly as possible.
“Manicures then,” Justice said simply. His hands went to my waist and guided me into the hallway, making it a little easier to think.
There was a flurry of activity. They weren’t ready for us yet. Justice sat us down in front of two nail tech stations. This was more familiar territory.
He held his hands out to me. “I’ve never had a manicure before. Should I do pink?”
“Pink is gross,” I said absently, and then focused on his hands. “Oh Justice, your cuticles are terrible.”
But it wasn’t just his cuticles. I pulled his hands closer. His nails were short, split, and cracked in places. Tiny white scars, old and faded, fanned out across every knuckle. There was a divot growing out on the nail plate of his middle finger, an obvious mark of nail bed trauma. I turned his hands over. His skin was smooth but very dry, with thick calluses on the pads of his fingers.
“Rock climbing is hard on the hands.”
The nail tech sat down and started arranging her tools. I scooted a little closer.
“Could we not cut his cuticles?” I asked. “He rock climbs, so we want to protect the nail bed as much as possible.” She inspected his nails again and nodded. “You wouldn’t happen to have straight-up jojoba oil, would you? Maybe vitamin E? If we soften them, it’ll be easier to push them back.”
She rummaged in her drawer and pulled out a little dropper bottle and massaged the oil into Justice’s fingers. I scooted even closer, looking over her product lineup.
“Could we skip Ohaiyo’s Hands Up cream?” I asked, pointing at the bottle. “It has alpha hydroxy acid in it. We don’t want to dissolve his calluses. He needs them.” The nail tech flashed a glance at me. “Maybe something like EverCare’s ceramides formula?” I asked. “Something to repair the skin barrier but not soften his hands too much.”
“Huh,” she said, surprised. “That’s actually a really great idea.” She dug through one of the drawers in her workstation and came up with a pink and yellow bottle.
Justice made a surprised noise, and I looked up at him. “I thought manicures were nail polish and acetone.”
I gave him a look. “You’re just a special case. Justice Twill, you’re a mess.” I looked down at my own manicure. I had a chip in a nail from the ATV ride. “You really don’t take good care of yourself, do you?”
He made a soft sound and his voice became rough. “No, I don’t.”
I picked at the chip in my nail. They were medium almond-shaped and ballerina pink. Daryl’s favorite. Suddenly, my heart started beating wildly. They were Daryl’s favorite .
“Have some class and stop chewing on your nails like a toddler.”
I got acrylic tips the next day, and now builder gel.
I shoved my hands at the tech. “Take them off. Right now.”
She reared back. “You want to do a soak-off?”
“No, it takes too long. Just cut them off. Just cut them off right now. All of them. Short ovals.”
She traded a look with Justice.
I grabbed the tip of a nail and tried pulling, and then I bit at it, put it in my mouth, used my teeth to try to pry it off.
“Cut them,” I said again. Justice gently put my hands on the table.
“I’ll have to drill them down to rebalance the apex.”
“Now,” I said, leaning across our table.
“I can’t work from this angle,” she said.
Justice slid over and propped his leg up on the bench, pulling me in between his legs. He sat at a right angle to me, his leg right behind me, pressing into my back. “Can you manage?” He asked the tech who nodded.
My hands were shaking. I’d never wanted nails. Daryl wanted them.
“So what the fuck is a skin barrier?” Justice asked.
“What?”
“Little-known Justice Twill fact: I failed biology. The only thing I know about skin is that it’s the largest organ.”
“You failed biology?” I asked, my attention diverted from my nails. The drill buzzed in the background, acting like white noise.
He held up two fingers. “Only two F’s in my entire life: biology and biochem. I wasn’t instantly good at them, so I decided I didn’t care and never went to class.”
“Oh well, that’s not really responsible.”
“Wrecked my GPA. So what is a skin barrier and alpha acid?”
“Alpha hydroxy acid. It’s a chemical exfoliant. Really great at breaking down calluses and smoothing out your skin, but that’s not what you need.”
“Oh, and what do I need?”
“A good nail tech. And maybe my repair cream.”
“What brand is that? I’ll see if Todd the Butler can get it.”
I shrugged my shoulder. “No, I mean my cream. It’s my own formulation.”
He narrowed his eyes like I was speaking a foreign language. With the hand the tech wasn’t working, I pulled the scent balm out of my wristlet.
“I experiment with skincare,” I said, shrugging my shoulder again. “This is scent balm. It’s actually really hydrating, but it can help when there are too many scents around and it messes up your head a little.”
“Like a scent blocker?”
I laughed. I’d had this exact same conversation with Theo. “Not really. It’s not a blocker or a neutralizer. That’s a pheromone thing and takes, I don’t know, real chemicals, not things you can buy online. This has neroli oil and coffee bean extract in it. So think of it this way, it gets you to focus on your own scent, so the other scents around you are less distracting.”
He leaned in to take a sniff.
“Do you want to try it out?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Why would I want to smell my scent when I could smell yours?”
The sound of the drill stopped. I inspected my nails. They were perfect short ovals that just hit the end of my fingertips.
“What do you want to do for polish?” She fanned out her selection of Ohaiyo Nails gel colors.
I pulled my hands into my lap. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m snapping at everybody.”
Justice tilted my face up.
“My brain isn’t working right. Somehow picking out nail color seems like too much.”
He smiled and asked the nail tech if she had a dark blue, maybe with some sparkles.
“We could do a cat eye,” she said.
“What, like a cartoon cat eye? How is that sparkly?”
The nail tech and I looked at each other and then broke into giggles.
“Cat eye is a style of nail polish that has micro glitter, think metal dust, suspended in it. You use a magnet to align the particles into different configurations that you flash cure under a UV light to hold its shape.”
“Here,” the tech said, swiping a coat of silver cat eye across my nail. She then used a magnet to draw the glitter to the surface and move it around.
“No fucking way.” Justice leaned over, taking the opportunity to put his hand on the back of my neck. I melted.
“This is really going to blow his mind.” She winked at me and pulled out another tool. She held it above my nail and a little heart appeared as the specially shaped magnet manipulated the glitter.
“Fuck me.” Justice had genuine wonder in his voice. “That’s a little too cutesy.”
“I have an idea.” She pulled out three bottles—a navy base and then two cat eye glitters. She applied the base, cured it, and then worked the glitters so that the resulting pattern looked like a trail of stars in a dark sky.
“All boys like space,” she said with a wink
“Galaxy nails. Do that.”
Ren and Theo emerged just as the tech finished painting a few start bursts on an accent nail with silver chrome. I could hear Theo’s purr from halfway across the room. His hair was sticking up at all sorts of weird angles.
Ren held a hand out for me. “I need your help,” he said, tucking me under his arm. “Pedicures are next, and I have a terrible foot fetish. I need a chaperone.”
The rest of the morning was lovely and relaxed. We ended in the sound bath room. I climbed into Theo’s lap in a giant bean bag chair as we listened to rainfall and singing bowls, feeling safe and cozy like a nest should feel like.