We’re distancing from each other as we grow and fame gets old, which is terrifying. We’ve been aiming for fame our whole lives, and now we’re getting tired of it? Pretty soon I’ll be left with Wyn, who seems more than content to remain fucking the status quo. I don’t think he’s noticed Easton isn’t coming tonight and will meet us at the airport tomorrow.
All because he’s found happiness outside of this band, and that is the true nightmare I refuse to let happen to me, or hell, even Wyn.
The closest I’ve come to contentment unrelated to status and music is … McKenna.
Or Jane.
Or whatever the hell she calls herself.
I’m pretty sure I nipped that in the bud by ruining her in high school, but even I can’t claim credit for what she’s turned into.
An escort.
A call girl.
A prostitute.
A hooker.
My Mack. The girl who turned into a bright red blooming rose any time the word dick was mentioned in her presence. The one who aimed for the Ivy Leagues and would achieve it, both through her lifestyle choices, her loner-isms and bookworm hidey-holes, and her family inheritance.
So, what happened between graduation and now?
And more importantly, why the fuck do I care?
I have the annoying suspicion that I’m so melancholy right now, so unwilling to fuck a hot chick, because Mack is on my mind.
The loner girl turned call girl whom I offered a quarter million to get out of her current life and stick to mine for eight weeks, where I can keep an eye on her.
I reach down and grab another beer from the six-pack hanging out by my feet, chuckling. Because my lifestyle is oh so much better than hers.
Mack’s fully aware she wouldn’t be trading up by accepting. She fucks the big boys now.
And here I am, alone, in this fancy-ass suite, enduring an emptiness that cannot and will not get out of my fucking chest.
A knock sounds at the door. Grumbling, I get up and stalk over, certain that Wyn ordered some kind of edible delight to join him in his boudoir. That, or another faceless snatch.
“Yeah.” I grunt at the closed door.
“Mason? It’s me.”
My brows jump. I’m unbolting the deadlock and twisting the knob before my brain registers what I’m doing. “How’d you get through security?”
McKenna—Mack, my Mack—stands at the threshold, her hair tossed up into a messy bun with scant make-up on her face and wearing tight leggings and a tee.
Those green eyes, always containing the same impact whether lined in black or natural and bare, slam against mine.
“Hello to you, too,” she says. “May I come in?”
“Sure. Yeah.” I step back to give her access.
The moment she steps into the suite is the perfect time for the moans to sound, followed by thumps, panting, and “oh yes, Wyn, right there, baby!”
Mack’s attention strays to Wyn’s closed door.
“Nothing you haven’t heard before,” I quip.
Mack’s jaw goes rigid. She parts her lips enough to ask, “Am I interrupting something?”
I tilt my head. “Are you wanting to join?”
She doesn’t flush red like I expect her to—like the young McKenna Beckley did when shrinking into her seat at school. Or get angry, displaying that newly discovered green fire that kinda turns me on.
Mack mirrors my head-tilt and answers, “From what I gather, there are at least two women in there with Wyn. I don’t do side chicks. I like it to be just me and the man, so he can appreciate every fine detail.”
My jaw locks. She’s made her point. I grit out, “Would you like a drink?”
She smiles and it reaches her eyes. Mack enjoys outplaying me. “Sure.”
I reach down and throw her a beer, which she catches smoothly. Mack settles herself on the couch Wyn recently vacated, using the time to take in what I can only assume is the room, the price tag, the mess, and the lack of company.
“I thought you guys partied hard before tour kick-offs,” she says while twisting off the metal cap.
“Times have changed.” I fall back into the sofa chair, legs spread as I help myself to another beer. “That, and TMZ has moved on from hotel-trashing parties to the finer details of celebrity shade on social media.”
Mack makes a noncommittal sound and drinks from the bottle, her full lips cupping the amber spout with the perfect amount of suction.
My dick stiffens to a half-chub.
Frowning, I set my drink down harder than necessary. “Mack, why are you here? You made it pretty clear on the street you weren’t interested in seeing me again.”
“Yeah, call me trigger happy.” Mack settles her beer between her thighs and leans back. “I’m sure you can’t blame me for needing to think about it.”
“I dunno, most chicks wouldn’t hesitate to pocket a quarter mill. Especially girls like—”
“Me?” Mack’s cheekbones glow in the lamplight as she tips her chin up in defiance. “That’s what you we’re going to say. Girls like me, right, Mason?”
My teeth grind down.
“That’s exactly what I’m unsure of,” Mack continues. “You have a complete lack of respect for me and what I do. And that’s okay—plenty of people feel the same. What I can’t wrap my head around is why you want my company for eight weeks. Or why you tracked me down. Jesus, Mase, I’m even wondering why I’m of any interest to you. Look at this place. Look at you. You’ve achieved everything you’ve ever wanted.” She splays out her hands. “What am I doing here?”
I scratch at my jaw. “You want the honest truth?”
“Considering it’s the reason I trekked over here in the dead of night to see a man whom I vowed never to cross paths with again, yes, the truth would be nice.”
“Because I can’t stand the thought of you fucking other dudes.”
Silence. Then, “I refuse to become your Pretty Woman fetish, Mason.”
I shake my head while scratching harder at my scruff. “You don’t get it. Rex told me he saw you at one of our after parties and it was clear you weren’t there as a ticket holder. I saw red, Mack. The instant I figured out what you are and what—who—you do, I fucking saw blood spots in my vision. And I had to find you. Talk to you. I dunno, stop you.”
Mack’s lips flatline. “Scratch that. I refuse to become the Julia Roberts you save in the end. This was a mistake.” Mack sets aside her drink and rises from the couch. “I’m happy. I don’t need to be rescued.”
I squint, peering closer at the flash of emotion that crossed her face as she said that. Unnamable, but raw. I latch onto it. “You sure you’re happy? Safe? What about the guys who aren’t so nice?”
Her delicate hands clench. “Guys like you, you mean?”
Ouch. “You’ve got no idea how I’ve grown these past ten years.”
Mack glances around the suite. Wyn’s sexcapades are still going strong in the other room. “I can take a guess.”
I stand, and as she’s walking away, grab her wrist. “Mack, stay. The money’s good, I swear it.”
Another emotion flutters through her expression, and this one I can read. Disappointment. “You don’t need me, Mason. And I … I don’t want the money.”
“Bullshit.”
“There are plenty of women who’d be more than happy to appear on your arm. Ones without our past and my unsavory occupation.” She rips her arm from my hold. “Ones who actually like you.”
“I don’t want those chicks. I want you.” I step closer. Invade her space. Breathe her in. God, she smells good. “Eight weeks, Mack. That’s all. No sex. Just company.”
She rolls her eyes. “I can’t be so important to you that you’d give up sex.”
I raise a brow. My dick spears in my pants. “You offering?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then I promise no sex with you. I’ll get my jollies elsewhere. You’d be doing me a favor. Be my companion at parties and junk
ets and whatever else my agent has up her sleeve so she can stop getting up my ass about showing up to these places single.”
Mack moves her head side to side. “It must be so hard to be constantly set up with gorgeous, single girls by your posse of ‘people’ that you hire to take care of you.”
I growl. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a girl on your arm and have no idea if she wants you for you or for your fame, money, or baby-daddy status.”
“Last I checked, Sorsha Dillon wasn’t any of those.”
One side of my mouth folds up into a grin. “You been checking up on me, Mack?”
Caught, Mack’s cheeks color, but her gaze remains defiant. “Hard not to, when that particular relationship blew up the internet for a good few months.”
I shrug. “She was cool. We were cool. But then she won an Oscar and it fizzled.”
Mack’s intelligent eyes narrow. “You mean, you became too much of a liability to be paired with an A-list actress, what with your…” She gestures to the drug paraphernalia on the table. “Proclivities.”
I say, with a flat expression, “Those ain’t mine.”
“So,” Mack says on a sigh, unperturbed by my answer, “Now you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by hiring a hooker to be on your arm.”
“Don’t degrade yourself like that.”
Mack ignores me. “You can’t be this desperate, Mason.”
“That means you’re considering it, then.”
“This could blow up in your face. You’re also going into this with the full knowledge that I can’t stand you.” She levels her gaze with mine. “Why risk it?”
“You think I’m doing this to clean up my image? Fuck my reputation. I like who I am. I don’t care who I date. All I know is, you’re staying with me.”
“I’m not going to change who I am after the two months are over. Or what I do.”
My molars grind together. “We’ll see about that.”
She tips her nose up so it nearly brushes against my lips. She hisses. “You’re not staging some sort of intervention. You proved I’m the shit on the bottom of your shoe a long time ago. You don’t get to scrape it off now.”
I bare my teeth. “I do what I want, when I want, and that includes you. And you, Mack, can’t ignore an easy quarter mill. You need it. I see it in your face every time I mention the amount. So, if you can’t stand my company, at least picture the bathtub full of bills I’ll give you for tolerating my presence.”
“And isolating me from my clients.”
“Fuck, yes.”
Mack hisses out a breath, but steps back. “I’m a fool to agree to this.”
I settle my hands against my hips. “So you’ll do it?”
Mack’s shoulders slope. She mutters, “My suitcase is in the hallway.”
A slow, shit-eating grin forms on my face and I move past her to grab her things from the outside hall. “Welcome to Nocturne Court’s Greatest Hits Tour, McKenna Beckley.”
I think I hear her whisper, “Be careful what you wish for,” but I’m too busy tossing her stuff inside the suite before she tries to change her mind.
Not that I’d give her the option.
I never lose.
8
McKenna
High School
Senior Year
He doesn’t show.
Not that I should be surprised. Mason and I both don’t want this.
I close my binder containing notes on Catcher in the Rye, sit back in my chair in the empty classroom, and stare at the ceiling, because I’m well aware of my fate.
We may not want this, but Miss Lucas does, and she has the capacity to make the last few months of my senior year more insufferable than it already is.
I clean up my small area of study materials, throw my backpack over my shoulder and head out into the hall. It’s after school hours and I’m content with the smattering of students lingering by their lockers, none of them threatening. All the predators have gone back to their natural habitats.
Which means, I’m pretty sure I know where Mason is. He’s practicing with his band somewhere. What I’ve heard, by being present when nobody notices me, is that they gather in his garage, usually with a small gaggle of girls they bring with them to watch. Mason and his three friends: Rex Sloane, Wyn Chance, and Easton Mack, none of whom are as nasty as Mason. Maybe because they have no idea I exist.
“My goodness! Look who’s loitering the halls after hours! Do your parents know you’re past curfew, little dove?”
The female voice sends an instant irk down my back, the kind that stiffens your spine and your upper lip all at the same time. I don’t bother to turn around as I walk, but I pick up the pace.
“It’s four in the afternoon,” I say, staring straight ahead. “I don’t have to be home for my bottle until four-thirty.”
“Oh, she has spunk today.” A hand lands on my shoulder and jerks me to a stop. “Hold up, Big Mack. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
I’m forced to make contact with gold-brown eyes and honey-gold hair. April Landers stares down at me, clad and shiny in her cheerleader’s uniform. Her two other minions, Courtney and Melissa, blonde and ebony-haired respectively, flank her in matching school colors.
April’s full, sparkling and wet-glossed lips stretch wide. Her manicured nails dig harder into my shoulder.
“Do we have to do this right now, April?” I ask. “School hours are over. I should be off your shit-list during recreational time.”
It’s such a cliche, I know, to be bullied by cheerleaders, but high school is nothing but cliches until you manage to escape it.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says.
“Probably because little kitty cat’s afraid,” Melissa pipes in, her squinty hazel eyes growing smaller with glee.
Considering the last time I saw them, they stole my underpants and pulled down my gym shorts, and it was the day I wore a skirt to school, they honestly couldn’t blame me.
I clutch the strap of my backpack tighter, muttering to the floor, “I just want to go home.”
“So sad.” April clucks her tongue. “But according to a text I just received, you’re coming with us.”
My brows furrow. “What? No, I’m—”
“You are.” April’s hand moves from my shoulder to my bicep and she pulls me into a stride. “Mason requires your presence at his home in forty-five minutes.”
“Since when d—” I clamp my mouth shut, swallowing the rest of the words. I have my answer, anyway. April always runs Mason’s errands and jumps his bones when he calls. She’s his rescue lapdog, and what’s worse, she’s proud of it. Pride dances across her features whenever he pays attention to her, whether it be to toss a french fry at her in “jest” in the cafeteria, or a quick make-out session as he passes by her seat in class before taking his own.
I’d almost feel sorry for her if I didn’t constantly fantasize over setting her hair on fire.
“Well,” I say, despite being jostled and surrounded by her friends like Mason’s personal Secret Service agents, “tell him he was supposed to have shown up at the English classroom, and since he didn’t, I’m going home.”
“No can do, Burger Girl,” April says. “You’re getting in the car with us and I’m taking you to him.” She looks down at me with a sneer. “Though God knows what he wants with you.”
I don’t think I want to know, either. “He doesn’t live anywhere close to where I do. How will I get home?”
Courtney—the blonde—snorts behind me.
“That’s for you to figure out,” April says. “Hitch a ride with his druggie brother or something.”
I decide against running, since these girls, with all their cheer training and spin and smoothie classes on Saturdays are well ahead of me fitness-wise, and I also stop struggling. Resisting their hold means my brain is focused on the physical, when I need it to flip to mental strategy.
These girls are prettier than me, but I’m smar
ter than them. I have to hold on to that. I have to survive.
We make it to April’s scarlet red Volvo SUV, a personal gift from her father, and she stuffs me into the backseat with Courtney. April and Melissa take the front.
April cranks up the music as she starts the engine, Top 40 hits flowing into the car and crashing against my ears. I’m half-surprised it’s not Mason’s band I’m hearing pound through the speakers.
“I thought you were Mason’s biggest fan,” I say before thinking.
April and I lock eyes in the rearview mirror. She says, “Excuse me?”
I point to the stereo. “I figured you’d be listening to his music.”
“That garbage?” She scrunches her face, and unfortunately, remains pretty doing it. “I’d rather not ruin my leather interior with those sound waves. I do my part, cheer him on, be the bestest girlfriend, but everyone knows they’re not going anywhere. Especially Mason. He’s bound to be working cars just like his father, maybe even boosting them.”
I can’t help but ask, “So … why do you like him, then?”
April giggles. “What can I say, girls? I have a weakness for bad boys.”
“And slumming it,” Courtney adds.
Melissa and April answer with a chorus of laughter.
A part of me almost feels sorry for Mason and the people he’s chosen to surround himself with, but then I remember who we’re talking about and I stare out the window, my upper lip curling in disgust.
Let him have her. He deserves it.
“We should get some fast food,” April says, out of the blue. “Huh, ladies? Afternoon workouts starve me.”
Both Courtney and Melissa state their approval. April’s sly gaze meets mine again in the mirror.
“What do you say, Big Mack? Want a burger?”
I bite my cheek rather than voice a retort. The silence doesn’t deter April.
“Burgers it is!” she says, then pulls into the nearest drive-through.
April gives her order through a spout of giggles and also adds a bunch of milkshakes. When we pull up to the window to pay, my bag is swiped from my lap.
Strum Me Page 5
