Ripped

by Katy Evans

  “I’m a bit busy here.”

  Jokes, laughter, and bad words are exchanged, and I can hear his chuckle.

  Under. My. Ear.

  He’s eased his seat back and lifted the armrest, and his arm is around my waist. My brain is dazed as I try to understand why my ear is on Mackenna’s chest, and why his hand is spread wide and big across the small of my back. Conveniently my top is raised. Or did he raise it? His thumb ring is on my skin, tracing little circles over the dent of my spine.

  I feel a pressure between my legs as I struggle with this realization, but I’m so drugged I can’t even open my mouth. Am I dreaming?

  When the twins come over to engage in a discussion with him, Mackenna shifts his body and stretches beneath me, muscles rippling under my body, then he slides his hand from the small of my back up and up, to my nape, then up, to cup my ear. His husky voice is low, as if he doesn’t want to wake me while the guys discuss a party tonight.

  “She coming?” I hear the muffled question.

  “Obviously,” Mackenna rumbles. They laugh. I can still hear him under my ear. Between my legs, I tingle harder.

  “Might not be such a good idea. The girls are plotting her murder.”

  “Bah. This one could chew them up and spit them out,” Mackenna says.

  I can’t figure out if he’s insulting me or not. Is he taking my side instead of his floozies’? Something inside me feels warm, but I quell it. It’s been too long since we were friends. Sure, we had a closet make-out, but that was crazy. Lunacy. An animal moment. Currently, I’m too weak to fight the pull of his hand. I can’t get up, but the fact that I’m right here doesn’t mean we’re okay.

  I drift off again, thinking about his name. His name means “son of the handsome one.” I looked it up when I was young because everyone made fun of my name.

  I’m familiar with Pandora and her mistake—letting all kinds of bad shit into the world when she opened the box. I’ve always been at war with my name. I’m angry at it because, right away, it makes me think I can never be really good. I’m a jinx. I cause bad shit and represent nothing lucky, I suppose. But him? He’s this rock god. Son of the handsome one. All my feelings return to my body in a flash when I realize he’s brushing his mouth over mine.

  What’s he doing? Stop him!

  My body seizes as my brain shouts the command, and I make an inventory check and hear plane motors. He’s tonguing me now. I feel his tongue in my body, a body that was last used by him. And his mouth was last used by me.

  I want to get angry, but I’m too busy lying here, absorbing this kiss that’s almost like the kiss in all Magnolia’s fairy tales. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, she says, but the truth is, I do. Now Mackenna is the villain in my story and the reason I should’ve become a lesbian. If only my body had gone along with the plot.

  But now he’s kissing me like he’s enjoying me. He probably got horny and decided I was handy. I stiffen at the thought and try to pull away, when a hand cradles the back of my head to prevent me. He whispers, “Shh. I’m just tasting you.” Languorously, he fits his lips harder to mine, his mouth moving.

  “You need to drug your women to kiss them,” I slur as he continues rubbing his tongue to mine.

  “Just the wild ones like you,” he gruffly teases.

  I cannot process. I cannot control myself when he teases me—I’ve always liked it because it makes me smile, and I never smile. He tastes good, like whiskey and lazy, cocky male. I never thought lazy, cocky male could taste so good, or that being relaxed would make me savor lazy, cocky male even better than when I am on full alert. I can’t comprehend what’s going on. The things awakening in my body. The hole in my chest suddenly feeling full.

  Protests form in my brain, but they don’t reach my tongue because his slick, warm, whiskey mouth is caressing it.

  He’s toxic for me, and I can’t pull away. Instead, I’m rubbing my tongue against his slowly, savoring him. When I tell myself, Enough! and edge back, he follows me and croons, “Shh, relax your mouth, baby. Let me in.”

  He shifts so I can feel it—the bulge between his legs. I suddenly want it feverishly, but to my despair, I hear snickering. Then I hear him ask the flight attendant for a blanket. I didn’t even realize they still had those, but I feel him cover me. The drug is still heavy in my system and I try to open my eyes, but before I can look into his face, his lips cover mine. “How could I forget for a moment what you tasted like . . . how addictive you are . . . ,” he whispers to me. He’s devouring me with lazy abandon. He cups one breast under the blanket. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  Yes I do.

  No I don’t.

  Yes I do.

  My mouth is moving faster, and his rhythm matches mine as he thumbs one nipple. Years of repressed longing seem to flood my body and energize my mouth. Nothing has ever tasted as good as him. Nothing.

  The way he felt last night crashes over me, and suddenly I’m the one kissing him back with abandon. He groans. The sound reverberates inside me. “God, that’s right. Want me, Pink? Want this? Fuck the rest. Let’s have fun. Just you and me.”

  His voice jerks me back to the present.

  Fun?

  The pain of losing him hits me full force.

  Using all the force I can muster, I edge back, wiping my mouth angrily. He looks at me and blinks as if dazed from our kiss, and we both survey each other’s mouths. He looks openly ravenous, but I’m still trying to decide how I feel. Trying to find my usual anger.

  “The cameras just caught that,” I say.

  “Yeah, couldn’t be helped.” He eyes my mouth again, smirking in obvious satisfaction. “You were too tempting, Pink. You smell like fucking coconut, and I haven’t smelled that in years.”

  I scowl. “You’re just a pervert posing as a rockstar to hide your love of bras.”

  We land. I try to reach upward for my carry-on, but he takes care of it for me. His T-shirt lifts as he pulls our shit out of the top compartment, and I can see his abs and the tattoo on the inside of his arm. It says something I don’t understand.

  “What does that tattoo mean?”

  He quirks one eyebrow and says nothing as his eyes move to my mouth. “Says I’m a dickhead. You know, if that mouth doesn’t look well kissed, then my name is not Mackenna.”

  I’m waiting for the indignation to come, but I’m still so relaxed, it doesn’t.

  “Fuck you. You’re lying. What does it say?”

  He smiles, because he clearly won’t tell me. Then he surprises me by leaning over and tipping my face with his curled thumb, his silver ring cold under my chin. “I may not have been good enough when we were seventeen,” he whispers, holding my eyes with a pair of wolfish ones that shine with an arresting intensity, “but trust me, I’m good enough now, Pink. I’m more than good enough.”

  “You’re wrong,” I whisper angrily. “Money. Fame. That has nothing to do with it. You were good enough before, but you’re certainly not good enough now.”

  “Look at you spitting fire like some angry little crow. How many fucking pills do you need to take to chill?”

  “One, actually. You’re the antidote.”

  I brush past him and out of the plane, feeling him amble behind me. I know he’s close when camera flashes at the arrival gate start exploding and girls start screaming, “Crack Bikini! Kenna! Lex! Jax!”

  Lex and Jax were in some private school, and they met Mackenna when he moved. Supposedly the twins liked pissing off their rich dad, and nobody pissed off Dad more than a guy like Mackenna.

  Mackenna Jones was rumored to have been on a suicide mission. He smoked whatever he felt like, drank, played loud music, made a mess, didn’t study. He also did extreme sports, and he beat people up. After his dad was convicted for drug trafficking, his uncle took him in, but he was no better. Judging by Mackenna’s lifestyle, it’ll be a miracle if he lives to his fifties.

  Crack Bikini was present at a bar fight years ago, and a repor
ter at the time managed to capture a quote, a quote that has since become famous—or infamous.

  “What is this? This a fight?” Mackenna reportedly asked.

  “Yeah,” someone said. “Don’t know whose.”

  Mackenna grinned, a little mayhem clearly making his heart happy. “Well, it’s mine now.” He whistled to the Vikings, and they jumped right in, not even caring who or what the fuck they were fighting for.

  Now they’re older, but I’m not sure they’re that much more mature. That is, until a crying woman makes Mackenna stop in his tracks.

  “Thank you. Thank you, oh, thank you,” she says, reaching out to him as though to touch a vision. I’m stunned when he pauses, confused, and takes her hand. “Nothing in my life has inspired me like your music, hearing your voice turns my day around . . .”

  It’s almost too intimate to watch. I ease back as I hear him whisper something to her and sign the paper she extends. His eyes shine with sincerity. He’s not being an asshole, like he’s supposed to be. He looks . . . genuine. His smile is natural, his eyes are on her as he gives her some line that makes her beam and blush.

  Again my walls tilt a little. Even the floor seems to tilt.

  When he pries himself away from the crowd and heads toward me, he lifts one of his eyebrows.

  “What? Nothing prickly to say?”

  “No.” I walk silently next to him. His actions have touched places I never expected. I open my mouth and hear myself admitting, “It must be nice to make a difference in someone’s life.”

  He stares straight ahead and keeps his voice low while the camera crew follows the entire band and the bodyguards struggle to keep the fans at bay. “It used to be what fed me . . .”

  “But?”

  “But it stopped filling me up and started draining me instead. Pretty soon you’re walking with a hole in your gut, singing songs you can’t hear anymore.”

  I remain quiet, a strange hurt inside me. I want it to be easy to blame him for leaving me, but he had a dream to chase and I couldn’t expect to be his everything. I want to hate him because he hurt me, but he seems so human that I can’t do anything but stay quiet and absorb the way he’s making me feel right now.

  The way his silver eyes look almost warm, an impossibility due to their shade alone, but they do. Warm, liquid, molten silver eyes looking at me as if he wants me to understand. “They all think it’s about the sex and the booze. It’s not.” He drags a hand over the top of his head. “It’s about the loneliness of the road. The girls, the sex. The clusterfuck of singing what you feel but having no one to fill the void, and the ache of wanting to feel something.”

  He stuns me speechless.

  I curl my hands at my sides to keep from reaching out as he waits for a reply. I can tell he wants some understanding from me, for he smiles and laughs. “All right. Nice chatting with you.”

  I want to hug him so bad. If he were a little smaller, I would. If he seemed a little tamer, I swear I would.

  But he isn’t small, or tame.

  The energy around us crackles like a live wire as he waits for me to do—to say—something. Anything. I want to be his friend, to have the sort of relationship where I might high-five my ex-boyfriend. But fat chance that’s going to happen. It’s like the Berlin Wall is between us, and even if he wants to let me into his own walls, I’m not dropping my own ever again. So I say nothing and just nod, wryly saying, “Nice chatting with you too.”

  He laughs to himself, a laugh that actually lacks happiness, and whispers, “You’re unbelievable.” He winds away, leaving me with a sick feeling in my stomach. I am alone, but maybe I’ve wanted that. I’ve been surrounded by people, but I’ve let no one in, and despite his fame, maybe he’s alone too. I judge him because I hate him, but what do I know of what he goes through?

  What has he been through in the last six years that I don’t know?

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t what you went through when he left you. . . .

  Angry all over again, I stand and try to quell it as Mackenna waves a peace sign out to Lionel. “Be back at the hotel later,” he yells.

  Lionel nods and turns to offer an explanation to the nearest camera. “Going to see his dad.”

  “His dad is in jail,” I blurt out.

  “Not anymore. He’s out and living in the vicinity.”

  At my blank look—I thought he’d gotten almost twenty years?—Lionel walks over to me. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I medicate to fly.”

  “Oh. Well then, you can ride to the hotel with me.”

  “Wow, thanks for the respite.”

  “Miss Stone,” he says. “Tomorrow the director and I would like for the choreographer to see you. We’d like you to learn one of the dances—the one where he sings your song. Our plan for the Madison Square Garden concert is for you to wear a mask and dance with Olivia, then remove it at the end of the dance so he realizes it’s you—then you’ll kiss him.”

  “You’re kidding.” I gape. “I don’t dance!”

  “As of tomorrow, you do. You signed a contract.”

  “It didn’t say I was going to—”

  “It said you were to follow our guidance and support the filming in any capacity we saw fit. Trenton and I see fit that you dance, with Olivia, around Jones. Be ready by morning.”

  EIGHT

  THE PAST DOESN’T ALWAYS STAY IN ITS PLACE

  Mackenna

  Father looks a hundred if he looks a day. He’s just ditched the supermarket and now clambers over to where I stand with my hands jammed into the pockets of my jeans. “Hey, Dad. You look beat.”

  Dad grumbles something under his breath. “Packing vegetables all day. It’s killed my soul, it has,” he complains as we walk to the corner cafe.

  “Hey, it’s honest work. Honest,” I emphasize.

  The guy used to give me a good life. Anything I wanted. I can give that life to myself now, and to him. Any guy worth his salt has gotta take care of his folks.

  “See, Dad? Good view. We can eat here without you having to lift a finger, not even for the check.”

  He looks at me, and I pull something from my pocket. “Speaking of checks.” I hand it over to him, a check for a hundred thousand. “I’m not sure if I’ll be back to visit you until we’re done with the movie. But I’m trying. I’m trying to get time out to spend with you.”

  “Why the fuck you’d want to do that?”

  As if on cue, people start whispering and pointing at me, and for the next half hour I’m signing autographs on my table. By the time I’m done, my meal is cold. I push it away and tell him, “Let’s get out of here.”

  We ride to his apartment in the hotel car that brought me here. The apartment is a place a guy who bags groceries could not afford, but he’s my dad. He wouldn’t let me get him anything near to what we used to live in, but this place was a compromise that both of us were comfortable with. He’s been laying off the booze, drugs, everything that used to make him a miniature Wolf of Wall Street back in Seattle.

  “How the mighty have fallen,” he mumbles as he watches me look at his place.

  “You weren’t mighty.” I laugh and slap his back. “And you fell. But the point is you stood up. That’s how a man measures himself, right?”

  “I’m standing only because of you, otherwise I’d still be in that . . .” His mind drifts off, and I can only wonder what horrors he saw there, in jail.

  “Dad, do you remember the girl . . . the one I used to like?”

  “Like?” He snorts. “Mild word for what that was.”

  “You remember her?”

  “The daughter of that fucking DA? Of course I remember.”

  “She’s with the group now. Leo wants her in the movie.” I scrape one hand down my face. I don’t expect any advice, but I guess I just had to talk to someone about her. Someone who’d take it seriously. Not Jax or Lex, who find it amusing, or Lionel, who finds it financially wise. Dad finds it serious. He scowls a
nd explodes.

  “Stay away from her, Kenna! She broke you once.”

  “She didn’t fucking break me,” I scoff.

  “The day you came to see me in prison telling me you were no good for her . . . I don’t ever want to see that hurting boy again. Ever. Joneses don’t do that.”

  My pride rears up in me with the urge to defend myself, but I got nothing. Because she did break me. I flex my jaw.

  “You still like her,” he gasps.

  “Purely sexual. I plan to bang her brains out ’til she can’t walk. Hell, you can’t blame me for that!”

  He looks at me like he can see right through me, and with the worst expression possible in his eyes.

  Pity.

  “I’m sorry, son. I know you lost her because of me.”

  “Never lost her. Never had her to lose her, really.” I shrug and stare outside, my mind in the past.

  Is this a promise ring?

  What are you promising me?

  Me.

  Fuck, we were so stupid.

  What did I think I was promising her? My dad was being tried for dozens of counts of drug trafficking. I had nothing to give her but that ring and a promise she ended up flinging back in my face.

  I swing around then. “But that’s over. We’re making changes, you and I. You’re becoming a better man. Let the good things in, right?”

  With a dreary sigh, he drops down on a couch and signals to his surroundings. “Don’t know, son. Not sure this life of honesty is for me. It’s so fucking boring.”

  “Dad, you be honorable. Let the good in. All right? I’m fucking proud of you, Dad, I really am.” I go slap his back, and he snorts and continues scowling like I’m asking him to shovel shit for the rest of his life.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he then says, pointing at me. “I will let the good in, embrace this life of honor . . . if you work her out of your system, then forget you ever laid eyes on her. You want me to stay clear of dealing? Then you stay clear of toxic girls like her. No fucking DA’s daughter bitch is gonna break my son’s heart twice. No such thing as love, remember that. The only love I’ve ever known . . .” He trails off as he looks straight at me. “. . . was my son’s love.” His eyes go red, and, like a pansy, I can’t take it.