by Score, Lucy
She sagged against the wall, blew out a swift breath. “I’m only here for six months,” she argued.
“That’s your plan. Plans can change.”
“That’s what people say when it’s someone else’s plan.”
“Baby, I’m just asking you to be open to the possibility.”
“The possibility of what? Fucking you and one of us discarding the other after a few weeks? Or giving up the career I’ve had my eye on since I was six years old and becoming a small-town wife?”
He wasn’t sure which outcome scared her more. “Fine. We’ll move. Anywhere your career takes you. Me and Sunshine will be there.”
“Linc.” Her voice broke. “We haven’t even had sex, and you’re planning a future.”
“We can remedy that soon enough.” His dick pulsed its agreement. “But I’d rather talk to you first. What’s got you so riled, Mackenzie?”
“Riled?” She paced in front of him.
Irritation crackled off her. Irritation and that fear again.
“You pressuring me is not attractive.”
He felt his own spine stiffen. So they were both button pushers. “I’m not pressuring you. I didn’t shove your hand down my pants. I didn’t take your shirt off.”
Flustered now, he saw. Her cheeks were flushed. Eyes glassy.
“Just because you’re used to getting in a woman’s pants doesn’t mean you’re getting in mine,” she said.
“What the hell is this, Mack?” Now he was getting mad.
“I’m saying your confidence doesn’t mean I have to fuck you.”
“You’re damn right it doesn’t. Now, tell me what this is really about. Because I’m not ashamed of how I live my life. How I treat the people in it.”
“You bounce from woman to woman, never getting too close. Now, you’re claiming that I’m ‘different’ and I’m ‘special’ and I need to give up everything so I can be different and special for you.”
Linc’s hands closed into fists on his knees. “I’m gonna give you a pass on that one. Because you’re pissed off and scared. But don’t put your shit on me. I’ve been nothing but honest with you.”
“Are you saying I haven’t been honest with you?”
“I’m saying you aren’t being honest with yourself. You’re scared because you feel something. I feel it, too. But the difference is I’m up for the adventure. I’m not interested in hiding from it. Maybe you’re more comfortable with being numb?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “I can’t believe I almost—”
“What?” he asked, standing. “Let yourself feel something real? Be not completely in control for once in your life?”
“Fuck off, Linc.”
“Back at you, Dreamy,” he said, brushing past her to the door. “You can let yourself out.”
He’d deny her the fight she was itching for. The reason she could use to back away. Call it quits. Hide.
He wanted to stay in the gym. To pound his mad out on the heavy bag. He hated that even after she’d dug her claws into him, after she’d taken a direct shot, he was still hard for her. He still wanted her. Desperately.
But he was just the affable good guy with no real feelings. Or the manwhore.
The front door closed with an almost slam.
She left. Her lipstick still intact. But his heart wasn’t.
26
Mack limped into her place under a full head of steam. The evening hobble around the block had done little to calm her temper.
“How dare he,” she said to her empty living room. She stormed into the kitchen, intending to make a cup of tea. But, as was now her habit, she looked out the window. Linc was still in his gym. He was shirtless now. Even from this distance, she could see the sweat glisten on that perfect body. He threw a vicious uppercut into the bag with a rage she felt echo in her bones. She turned her back on the scene.
“Making assumptions. Calling me a control freak and a coward.” He hadn’t. Exactly. Not in those words. But he’d implied it.
“He has no right to judge me,” she muttered to herself and opened the refrigerator.
There was an open bottle of white wine on the door. She filled a glass almost to the rim.
She was agitated. With the boot, she couldn’t run. She couldn’t work out the way she was used to. That was it.
Or maybe it was the fact that he spoke the truth.
The tiny voice in her head was unwelcome. And annoying.
“I decide who I want to sleep with and when,” she said aloud.
She’d wanted to sleep with him. She’d wanted to straddle him on a weight bench and ride him, chests pressed, sweat mingling, breath coming hard.
But she’d thought of her shadows. Of the scars. And had changed her mind. She closed her eyes. She hadn’t changed her mind. She’d chickened out.
She spared another glance out the window. He was still boxing. Brutal. Violent.
Mad she could respect.
He hadn’t unleashed that on her. He hadn’t risen to the bait of a fight. And in doing so, he’d won.
“What is wrong with me?” She glanced down, realized she didn’t have a fluffy yellow lab waiting to hear her confessional. She was alone. As always.
Mack took the wine into the living room and turned on the TV. If she couldn’t run the mad out of her system maybe she could binge-watch it away.
But all she saw was the hurt in Linc’s eyes. The way he absorbed the blow she’d thrown. He’d been honest and real. She’d been the one to hide behind her defenses and take pot shots.
Why?
Because the damn fire chief was right. She was scared. Shaking in her air cast scared.
He made her want things she had no business wanting. He made her feel things she had no business feeling. Lincoln Reed was nothing but a charming, built, sexy deviation from her plan. She wasn’t wrong for ending things before they got started.
But she’d done it badly. She’d hurt him needlessly. Worse, she’d accused him of pressuring her.
When had she turned into such a damn coward?
“Fuck.”
She turned off the TV, left the wine on the coffee table, and limped her way upstairs.
She took a long hot shower, hoping to wash away some of the self-loathing. Some of the icy fear that collected in her belly. Closing her eyes under the spray, she let herself think about his hands on her, his mouth. The dirty talk mixed with the sweet.
She wanted Lincoln Reed. And for some reason, that scared the ever-living shit out of her.
Shifting her weight carefully on her good foot, she reached for the shampoo and for the reasons why she was too gutless to let the man into her bed.
She loved a good fling. The rush of it. The comfort in knowing exactly what the expectations—or lack thereof—were. Linc had made his expectations clear, she thought.
The man wanted too much, asked too much of her.
But he wasn’t guilty of anything other than being honest with her.
Dammit. She was going to have to apologize to him.
It was the maddening thing about being an adult. She wanted to hold on to her righteous mad, not be faced with her own shortcomings, her own responsibility in the problem.
Being a responsible adult sucked. She could almost see the appeal of her mother’s choices. No sense of responsibility or empathy. Andrea—Auhn-DREA-ah, never Andrea—O’Neil-Leyva-Mann or whatever her name was now was capable and happy to look out for only one person in this life. It didn’t matter how many husbands or boyfriends she had, how many children she had. Nothing came before Andrea’s wants and needs. Nothing was satisfied before her own addictions.
The water was starting to go cold. And so were the fingers around her heart with thoughts of her mother. Still unsettled, Mack got out and toweled off. She ran a comb through her hair, so tired she just wanted to go to bed. But the thought of aggressive bedhead in the office tomorrow had her reluctantly reaching for the hair dryer.
Hair dry. Hea
d aching. Heart dented, she wriggled back into the boot—doctor’s orders—and half-heartedly clomped into the bedroom.
She turned on the bedside lamp and petulantly let the towel drop. It sat for a full two seconds before she decided she’d be more pissed at herself in the morning for leaving a wet towel on the floor and tossed it over the door to dry.
Biting her lip, she gave in to her curiosity and looked out the bedroom window. His lights were on upstairs. He was probably getting ready for bed, too. Alone.
Hadn’t she spent enough time alone?
Could two people enter into an agreement wanting different things? Was there some sort of tenuous middle ground they could agree on?
Strings, commitments. That’s what Linc was after for reasons she couldn’t fathom. She’d had no use for them, always assuming that someday, when she landed where she was going to stay, that strings and commitments would follow in a natural progression.
She saw movement in his bedroom. A big, muscled arm and then the rest of—
Dear God. The man was naked.
She was naked.
They were staring at each other through panes of glass and an uncrossable swatch of green grass. The fence between them was both a physical and metaphorical boundary.
Chief Reed in all his naked splendor was breathtaking. The body of a gladiator. That broad inked chest. Those hefty biceps and big hands. Thick muscled thighs. And between them…
“Yeah, I definitely need to apologize,” she muttered. The numbness of the shower dissolved as a wave of heat warmed her cheeks.
He watched her neutrally, coolly. She was too far away to see the clench of his jaw, the stirring of the half-ready cock. But she felt the push and pull of anger, hurt, and a want that just might be willing to forgive anything.
She craved that body. Could picture it over her, in her, under her. Her knees trembled, and she opened her lips to say something, anything to him.
But he was drawing the curtains closed, leaving her all alone again.
* * *
That night, Mack dreamt. Dark, shadowy dreams that squeezed at her heart, made her blood run cold.
The room. That hot, stuffy room. With the disintegrating Kermit-green carpet. The twin mattress on the floor and the soft pink blanket. Her constant companion through moves and new men Mom said to call Uncle. It was the only thing in this place that gave her any comfort.
The cheap door might as well have been a steel vault. Her little hands couldn’t break the lock. So dark. She was going to be in trouble when Mom came home and saw that she’d used the corner of her tiny room as a toilet. She’d had no choice. It wasn’t her fault.
But things like choice and fault didn’t matter to Mom.
The window. Painted shut. It had taken hours, maybe even an entire day. She wasn’t sure. But she’d methodically pried it open with the open door of a Matchbox car. The ground was so far below. But the air felt so good on her face. It dried the tears and felt like the biggest of victories.
Could she jump? She was scared. Was the ground worse than that hot, stuffy room? Worse than no food and being alone?
Then the scene was shifting. She wasn’t alone. Linc was on the ground.
“I’ll catch you,” he promised.
She trusted him. She believed him. She was falling.
There was a face on a stark white sheet that was slowly turning red. His face. The face of a dead man. The one she’d killed.
Mack woke, gasping desperately for air.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, clumsily kicking the bedrail with her boot.
She held a hand over her scar. The phantom sensation of pain made her skin feel clammy. It was just after four. And there was no way she was going back to sleep.
Two and a half hours of unpacking every remaining moving box and carefully stacking all the cardboard neatly in the garage that was too small to house her SUV later, Mack picked up her phone and dialed.
Violet answered chipperly. “Nguyen residence, Violet speaking.”
“Hey, Vi. It’s Mack.”
She managed to sound both amused and annoyed at the same time. “I know it’s you.”
“I didn’t think your Mom and Dad’s landline had caller ID,” Mack said.
“It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize your voice. Jeez, Mack. Sometimes I think you think you’re a stranger.”
The easy, almost sisterly banter soothed Mack’s soul. She settled onto the kitchen chair and propped her foot up on the table. “How’s the school year going so far? Any trouble with that shithead from last year?”
“Oh. My. God. So get this. I show up on the first day of school ready to just lay it out and be serious with her like you told me, right?”
“Right.”
“So I get there, and I’m all ready to be all calm and sh—stuff. Tell her she’s no longer welcome to be disrespectful toward me or anyone else. And one of Lynnetta’s minions walks by and she’s all ‘Did you hear about Lynnetta?’ and I’m like ‘No,’ and she’s like, ‘Lynnetta got caught bullying some loser eighth-grader online over the summer, and her parents were so pissed they shipped her off to some boarding school for mean girls.’”
“No way,” Mack said, knowing the required response.
“That’s exactly what I said. So new year, no Lynnetta, and tenth grade is basically the best year of my life,” Violet said.
“That’s amazing.”
“I know, right? Oh, hang on. I need to grab breakfast before school. Want to talk to Mom?”
“Yeah, that would be great,” Mack said.
“Hey, come home sometime before you become an actual stranger, okay?” Violet said. She didn’t wait for a reply. “Moooooom! It’s Mack!”
“Mack!” The joy and surprise in Dottie Nguyen’s voice made Mack feel both guilty and relieved.
“Hey, Dottie.”
“I was just thinking about you. How’s Benevolence? How are you adapting to small-town doctoring? Do people call you ‘doc’?”
Of course Dottie would remember the name of the town Mack had mentioned in passing when she’d told the Nguyen’s she was relocating. The woman’s care and attention to detail were in stark contrast to Mack’s mother’s self-centered existence.
“As a matter of fact, they do call me ‘doc,’” she laughed.
“When can we come visit?” Dottie demanded.
She meant it, too.
Mack’s heart clenched just a little. She’d always been grateful—painfully, pathetically so—for Dottie and Winston Nguyen (comically known as Win-Win) and the ten weeks she’d had with them as a child. Strangers who’d immediately proved to be far more stable than any blood relative Mack had known. They’d all cried when she left. She’d spent years after wishing it could have been longer. When she’d turned eighteen, she’d found Dottie on Facebook and sent her a message. “You probably don’t remember me, but…”
Dottie had remembered. And she’d been overjoyed then, too. Had peppered her with questions about how she was and what she was doing. And when Mack had confessed her desire to go into medicine, Winston, a thin, energetic podiatrist with an entire catalog of terrible foot jokes, had counseled her on pre-med programs. They’d offered to help her pay for college. She hadn’t accepted. It was a point of pride to do it all on her own. But the memory of that earnest offer still made the stalwart Mack just a little teary-eyed.
“Vi just asked me when I was coming to visit you guys.” Violet had been the foster kid Dottie and Winston could keep. Mack had been both overjoyed for them and profoundly sad that it hadn’t been her. But the decision hadn’t been in the Nguyen’s hands any more than it had been in her own.
“No reason not to do both,” Dottie insisted. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
Mack laughed, feeling her chest loosen. “I haven’t even picked up candy for trick-or-treaters yet.”
“I know you, Mackenzie. If I don’t nail you down and make you put the date in your ca
lendar, it will never happen. We’ll come to you for Thanksgiving,” she decided.
She felt a tickle of panic. “My place is the size of a dollhouse.”
“We’ll get a hotel room.”
“I don’t know how to cook a Thanksgiving feast, and I might be on call.”
“Win will use us as sous chefs. And I know darn well that town of yours has an urgent care that will be open on Thanksgiving. And if you do get called to the clinic, we’ll hold dinner for you. But you are expressly forbidden from taking a flight shift that day. Got it?”
“Yeah, about that,” Mack said, studying the ugly boot on her foot. “I can’t take any air med shifts until I’m out of the walking boot.”
There was a beat of silence, and then, “Why are you in a walking boot, Mackenzie?” Dottie shrieked.
Mack filled her in with a toned-down version.
“What kind of town is this? Was he on meth? Are you living in a meth hub?” Dottie demanded.
Mack laughed. “No. I promise. It’s actually a very nice town. And that’s kind of why I was calling. There’s a guy.”
Another pause during which she could hear Dottie tear open a single-serve bag of chips, her one and only vice. “Tell me everything. But be prepared to circle back to the broken ankle thing so I can guilt-trip you about not telling us the moment it happened. We care about you, Mackenzie O’Neil.”
“I know. And thanks. And I’m sorry.”
“Good. Now spill it.”
27
