Strum Me

by Allison, Ketley

  By the time the elevator brings me to the lobby, I’m as composed as I’ll ever be, and I step off with a much steadier gait.

  It’s only money. I can figure this out. I can keep my dad safe.

  I’m passing by the security desk, avoiding eye contact in case I still appear rattled, when I halt, the soles of my heels screeching with a hard brake against the varnished marble.

  Tousled chestnut hair, coming to a V at the nape of his neck—a spot as familiar to my lips as breathing—bows close to the guard, deep in conversation. Muscled, tanned forearms rest against the counter. A broad back turns at the fingernail-chalkboard sound my shoes make, and arctic blue eyes freeze against mine.

  “Oh, hey, Mack,” Mason says.

  I slow-blink.

  “Nope,” I say, then continue to the exit.

  4

  Mason

  McKenna Beckley was not supposed to fall into my lap like this.

  “Mack, wait!” I say to her retreating back, then push off the security desk. “Hold up!”

  Is she limping?

  I admit, I’m not here by chance. It took a lot of negotiation and bribery to get to this location, but I did not expect Mack to literally step off an elevator and into my sights the instant I entered the lobby.

  “Hey,” I say, running to catch up with her. She’s fast in heels, even if she looks a little … disheveled.

  Darkness settles across my brows upon assessing the state of her, because I know why she’s here.

  “Stop ignoring me, Mack—”

  I’m forced to dodge back as she swings through the revolving doors, unless I want my nose and a bunch of blood to decorate this fine establishment.

  Once space opens up, I duck through the doors and jog up to the curb, where McKenna’s forced to stop and pull out her phone, probably to call an Uber.

  “Have you gone deaf since I last saw you?” I say once I’m standing in front of her.

  Her gaze flicks up. “What do you want, Mason?”

  Fire can’t be green. There’s only molten blue, hot red, or burning orange. Yet, according to McKenna’s stare, green should have a heat level. A mutant, nuclear, apocalypse-inducing melting point.

  I grin. “God, I missed you.”

  Her eyes narrow. Her lips thin. But she says nothing, instead going back to her phone.

  That’s not like her.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, playing dumb. “You live in that building or something?”

  I want her to admit it, what she is, what she does. The minute I figured out what McKenna Beckley turned into in the ten years we’ve been apart, I’ve been dying to confront her. Demand she stop. Figure out why the fuck prostituting herself became an option for the girl destined for Yale.

  McKenna snorts. “No, this isn’t my place. Go away, Mason.”

  Did I say I deserved an explanation from her? Not even close.

  I say in a low voice, “Tell me what the fuck is going on, Mack.”

  She purses her lips. “Hmm. Let me think on that. No.”

  To this day, I dislike being dismissed. Even by chicks I haven’t seen in close to a decade. A guttural growl lingers in my throat. “Fine, then I’ll tell you.”

  Curiosity forces her gaze back to mine.

  “Your dress is wrinkled. Your hair’s a mess,” I say.

  McKenna adopts a fake, breathy voice when she responds, “Gee, Mase, after all this time away from you, I’ve been dying to hear you say those very things to me once again. Want to comment on my weight, too?”

  My lips flatline. “My guess is, you’re all up in disarray because you just finished fucking whoever was upstairs for money.”

  Even she, McKenna “I know and predict all” Beckley, didn’t see that particular missile hitting her between the eyes. She gasps and steps back, her expression morphing into something like surprised disgust.

  “That’s okay, darlin’, I’m used to getting that kind of look from you.”

  She slaps me. Actually, up-in-arms, slaps my face.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” she hisses, “coming at me in the dead of night and judging me after years of silence? You don’t give a shit about me! You haven’t given a damn since you ditched me at prom, like the predictable, clichéd broken bad boy you worked so hard to master!”

  McKenna steps forward, shoving me at the shoulders. I’m so stunned, an exhale of laughter escapes my chest.

  McKenna’s face turns white with rage. “Now that you’re famous, you think you can say these things to me and get away with it? You think I’ll stand here tolerating such shit? Think again, you miserable, low-life, bag of dicks.” She punctuates her next sentences with another shove, each time. I let her. “I don’t care that you’re a rockstar. I’m not a fan. I hate you. You don’t deserve one ounce of explanation from me. Ever. Again. You got that?”

  See what I mean? Green fire. Needs to be a thing.

  “Loud and clear,” I drawl, once her arms have safely retreated. “But that ain’t gonna stop me from judging you, anyway.”

  She sneers, but a lot of her anger has deflated. I see it in the set of her shoulders. “Oh, fuck off, Mase.”

  “Seriously, Mack,” I say, losing some—not all—of the cockiness. “What’s going on with you? Why are you doing this shit?”

  McKenna rolls her eyes. “Why do you even care?”

  “Because as soon as I heard what you were doing, I wanted to rip door hinges off.” I close back in, stepping into her space. “Then, when I was done stripping wood, I wanted to go after the flaccid cocks that think they have any claim over you and rip them off at the balls.”

  “How heroic of you,” McKenna says, her attention drifting to the traffic on the street. “But I can take care of myself.”

  “Can you?” I hadn’t wanted to focus on it, but now that I’m close enough to catch her scent—she still spritzes that sexy gardenia perfume—my focus settles where it shouldn’t.

  Right on her clavicle, in the delicate curves of her neck, are ripening bruises.

  Outrage blasts to the surface. “Why does your throat look like you were caught in a bear trap, Mack? Did this guy hurt you? Did he fucking put his hands on you? I know where that fucker lives. I’ll go right up there and lock him by the—”

  “Mason, don’t!”

  McKenna grabs me by the arm as I stalk toward the entrance. Her hold can’t contain me. Mack’s grip is nothing but butterfly wings hovering against my skin and I can shake her off easily, especially if some douchebag thinks he can get away with manhandling a woman—

  “Wait, how do you know what apartment he’s in?” McKenna asks behind me, her touch lingering on my forearm.

  I pause.

  “Mason, answer me.” Her voice takes on a warning tone. “How do you know where I was? Did you come here looking for me?”

  I blow out a breath. It’s needed, since the hot cloud of rage needs to be dispelled somehow. “I might’ve.”

  “What—why?”

  Patience has never been my strong suit. “I told you. Because Rex saw you at one of our parties and it became pretty clear you were one of the hired girls.”

  She frowns. “Rex Sloane?”

  “Fuck, Mack, don’t be so dense. Yes, Rex Sloane. The guys you went to high school with recognized you. How could you not think it would get back to me?”

  McKenna exhales. “I was there doing a favor for one of my friends who couldn’t make her … shift. I wasn’t aware of who the band was until I got there. Didn’t make the connection in time.”

  “So you didn’t follow our rise to fame? Failed to keep tabs on me? Refused to follow me on social media and witness my climb to the A-list?”

  “Get over yourself.”

  “Never.”

  McKenna wanders back to the curb, waving at a vehicle that begins slowing down. “As titillating as this conversation is, my car’s here. Nice to see you again, Mason. And no, I don’t mean that.”

  “Mack,
wait.”

  She sighs. “What?”

  “You got me. Yes, I’m here at this building because I tracked you down. I wanted to see you again. I don’t want you doing this.”

  “Your concern is noted.” McKenna moves to step around me. “Now, let me get into my car and go home.”

  I hook her arm, but she reacts by yanking it away.

  “Get a clue, Mason! I don’t want you around. Leave me the hell alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have. For ten goddamn years. Keep at it, you were doing such a good job.”

  The flicker of hurt in her eyes doesn’t escape my notice. I shake my head and at last, come to admit why I came here in the first place. “I came to make you an offer, Mack.”

  Her brows scrunch together. “Offer? What kind of—” Her expression clears. “No. No way. Fuck off, Mason, I mean it. For good.”

  I try for her elbow again. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Her arm goes slack in my hold. It gives me the opportunity to feel every tendon, each muscle type, flex and harden with contained, dangerous anger.

  “How … dare … you.” Mack seethes through her teeth. “Let go of me right this second, or I swear I will bite your dick off and spit it right back in your—”

  “It’s not to fuck you,” I say. When her eyes finally meet mine again, I continue, “I’m making an offer for you to go on tour with me. Eight weeks. I’d like you to … be my companion for that time, so I don’t have to deal with all the press and the fangirls and—”

  “You’re making this about you,” Mack says in awe. “You are actually making the offer of a quarter million, to a prostitute, about you.”

  My lips flatline. “No. I’m not.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Mason Payne. Not one goddamned bit.”

  “Mack. This is for your own good. Step away from your clients for a while.”

  “Goodbye, Mase.”

  I let her remove her arm from my grip, and as she opens the car door and gets into the vehicle, I say, “You have, though.”

  Her head tips up above the door.

  “You’ve changed so much, Mack. It scares me.”

  “Now you know how it feels,” she says before she disappears behind the black tint. “To think you know someone, when you don’t have a handle on them at all.”

  5

  McKenna

  High School

  Senior Year

  I take my seat at the front of the classroom, pen poised, back-up pencils sharpened, and wait for Miss Lucas and the rest of the class to enter.

  I’m always the first to step into the classrooms, mostly because I enjoy the peace and quiet of sitting in an empty room with the white noise sounds of slamming lockers and laughing, chatting students riding through the air behind the safety of a closed classroom door.

  I use that time to pull out my secret novel and sneak in a few chapters before I have to focus on teachers and schoolwork.

  The library is my other favorite place, and this morning I checked out the newest historical romance novel I’ve been dying to get my hands on. It’s fairly new, with only a few others checking it out before me, so the spine lightly cracks and the paper is crisp when I flip the book open and smell that gorgeous, pulpy, dried ink smell. I squirm deeper into my plastic scoop chair attached to a right-handed desk (I’m left handed, but there are no lefty desks in this school), and start the first chapter.

  Thump.

  My chin jerks up.

  I shove my reading glasses higher on my nose and glance around. I’m alone in the room, and the sound didn’t come from the hallway, either. I’m sure of it.

  Thump-bang.

  A high-pitched giggle follows.

  I carefully close my book, my attention drawn to the broom closet to the left of the teacher’s desk.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  A female moan bookends the noises, after a few scraping sounds, like fabric brushing up against wood.

  Suppressing an eye-roll, I cross my legs and get back to reading. Whoever’s in there will tumble out at some point, but I’m not about to leave the room and give them privacy they don’t deserve. This is my time, too, and I’m not about to spend it being shoved and bumped by elbows and hips—some more deliberate than others—at my locker.

  Never mind that my cheeks are going hot.

  Or the fact I’m envisioning all the dirty things that could be going on in that closet, helped along by my voracious reading of all things historical romance, what with skirts being lifted and dapper heads with tousled hair sneaking under, their hands caressing ankles, then calves, and kissing thighs, until finally—

  “Oh—shit.”

  The voice draws my attention back up, and I really wish it hadn’t, because I’m staring at my English teacher, Miss Lucas, with an unbuttoned blouse, wrinkled skirt, and a missing shoe.

  “McKenna!” she exclaims while frantically closing her shirt over a lace bra, only she’s finding the wrong button holes. “What are you doing in here?”

  I state the obvious. “Waiting for class to start.”

  “I—right—well.” Miss Lucas looks around, probably searching for any type of authority, but finding none. “Could you please wait out in the hall until the bell rings?”

  “I could,” I say, “but I’d rather not.”

  Miss Lucas smooths down her brassy blonde hair. “It’s not a request, McKenna.”

  I’m not used to defying authority, but in this instance, I’m desperate. “Miss Lucas, please, if I could just stay here. I’ll, um, close my eyes if you need me to…”

  Miss Lucas’s eyes go wide, like she can’t believe I’m honestly asking to stay when I’ve just caught her in the act. I can’t blame her. Most students would’ve scurried out long before. But I’ve never been like most people.

  She glances behind her at the closet door left slightly ajar and still containing whoever is in there with her.

  I chew my bottom lip as Miss Lucas debates her fork-in-the-road moment. She can’t threaten to send me to detention, since what I’ve witnessed will trump any disciplinary action she tries to take to the principal. She also can’t quite believe that I’m still sitting in the front row, paperback open, waiting to get back to my chapters.

  “McKenna.” Miss Lucas sighs. “I realize we’re in a predicament and you don’t owe me anything, but if you could please—”

  “She ain’t gonna move,” a male voice says from the closet. “Big Mack’s too afraid of the big bad she-wolves in the hallway.”

  Every part of me stiffens. My shoulders. My fingers against the pages. My freaking kneecaps. I’m too familiar with that voice and all he brings with it. So conditioned am I that tears automatically spring forth, but I blink them back, allowing the boiling water to burn the back of my eyeballs rather than give him any satisfaction.

  Mason Payne ambles out of the closet without one fuck to give. His chestnut hair is a mess, but in that sexy way where it falls across his brow and he has to use a heavy hand to smooth it back. His eyes, so blue the sky wishes it could clear enough clouds for that color. And those dimples, those indents flashing in ways the heroes of my novels would die to unleash on their heroines.

  It’s not fair, for someone so beautiful to wield the power of such cruelty.

  Miss Lucas stutters, her hands moving as if she’s going to try and shove him back in—which I truly wish she would, and please find a deadbolt—but she falters, raking her fingers through her hair instead.

  “Fuck,” she whispers. “Goddamnit, Mason, couldn’t you have stayed in there five more minutes?”

  Mason’s sly gaze is on me as he zips his jeans and drawls out, “Nope.”

  “McKenna, I—” Miss Lucas pauses to lick her lips. To think.

  Part of me should feel sorry for her, since she must know what it’s like to be under Mason’s thumb. Maybe I should even commiserate with her, since we both know the only person coming out unscathed in this sc
enario is Mason Payne himself. He will be the hero of this story, the guy who bangs the hottest, youngest teacher in school, while she most likely loses her job or worse, gets jail time, and I spend the rest of senior year further in the social trash pit than I’ve ever been, subject to Mason’s whims, boredom, and posse of mean girls that follow him around like his personal pitbulls.

  I want to ask her, Is he worth it? Is sex in a closet with Mason Payne between classes really worth losing your life as you know it?

  But I don’t dare. I’d rather not draw more attention to myself than I already have.

  “Besides, Big Mack won’t say anything, will she?”

  Flinching, my peripheral vision catches Mason coming up to my desk, his long, dextrous fingers curving over the edges of the wood. This is the most random time to remember he’s in a band with a few of his friends and that he’s the bassist, hence the thought of his limber hands and how he uses them. Except, I’m picturing them inside my English teacher instead of coaxing guitar strings.

  My flinch turns into a wince.

  “Aw, don’t get shy on us,” Mason says as he bends close. Whenever I’m in his scope, my cheeks tingle. I feel those metallic eyes of his seeing through my white shirt and picking apart every inch of me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, a foreign one, coupled with a zing I’m having trouble identifying.

  I keep my head down, unwilling to show him the rouge on my cheeks.

  “Mason,” Miss Lucas snaps. “Class will start any second. Take your seat.”

  Mason looks over his shoulder and smirks, that dimple of his a mere arm’s length away. “When you took a seat on my face I wasn’t nearly as rude, Miss Lucas.”

  Miss Lucas hisses in a breath, her entire face splotching. I swallow, wondering why the hell I decided to stay in this classroom and witness this R-rated exchange instead of running off school campus.

  Oh, yeah. Because of Mason’s minions, who I’m convinced wait in the halls for me.