Ripped

“Really now.” He smiles again, the smile tender. Even his hold on my arm, his whispered voice, sounds tender. “Come closer, Pink.”

I narrow my eyes and move closer.

He presses my thumb underneath his, and I realize he was tricking me. He chuckles wickedly, and I can’t even protest, because the plane is taking off. I suck in a breath and glance out the window at the ground speeding beneath us. For a couple of minutes I try to calm down, but it’s near impossible. Mackenna’s hand is still on mine, but instead of squishing my thumb, he’s rubbing it.

And it feels so wrong and right and deep in me and soft over me that I could probably stand the plane falling right now, but I can’t stand his hand on mine.

“Let go,” I say.

He lets go, and an odd glimmer of pity or sadness passes his face. “Just relax,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut. His voice does things to me. He groans and says, “Come here, baby.”

“The wolf says to the lamb. Don’t call me baby,” I whisper and refuse to obey, tucking my hand under my thigh. I’m acutely aware of every inch that separates us.

He leans over. “You’re anything but a lamb.”

Our eyes meet and everything about him, from his voice to his scent to his eyes, unsettles me to the point where I want to cry or scream.

The plane jolts again, and a couple of nasty clouds are coming toward us. My eyes blur, and everything in my body presses into the hollow in my tummy. I’m tense as I grip the seat, praying for the clonazepam to take effect. If it weren’t for Magnolia, I might not give a shit about dying. But aside from Mom, I’m all she has. And Mom is . . . Mom.

Mackenna’s glass is refilled. I watch his hand every time he lifts it, sips, and drops it. His fingers are magical. He once played the piano like the keys were an extension of his fingers, but right now, he’s a rocker dude. He’s always been bad, but he is a real guy with a real love of music and sound.

The pill starts taking effect and my eyes flutter shut. I make sure to slide my head to the opposite side of where he sits.

He says nothing.

As my head starts getting fuzzy, I cuddle to the window, trying to make sure my shoulder doesn’t touch his.

I remember stealing out to see him every afternoon. It didn’t matter that my mother worked for the DA. It didn’t matter that his father was a criminal. We were both in the courtroom that day, and I was already half crazy in love with him—unbeknownst to me, to my mother, or to him.

I insisted on going to court with my mother that day, telling her simply that I felt like going. She eyed me warily but could not deny me. I sat outside on a long bench, with him close. I had heard that his father was going to be given many, many years for dealing.

Maybe I shouldn’t have slid up to sit closer to him the day they set bail. We could’ve been seen, but I couldn’t help it. He was sitting there, looking at his hands, when his father and my mother were at it inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he said.

He lifted his head, and I could feel him looking at me as intensely as if I was burning. I reached out to take his hand.

And that was all that we needed.

He’d defended me from bullies at school, and now I held his hand whenever we were alone. That day we were alone in an empty hall on a single bench, and the boy I couldn’t stop thinking about was ready to hear how much his father would have to pay to remain free until the trial date.

“Meet me at the docks where we met last time,” he said to me, squeezing my hand just as the courtroom doors swung open.

With a quick nod, I pried my hand free.

My mother walked out and called me back to her with a clear, crisp, lawyerly command. I felt him watch me—lonely, motherless, and, soon, fatherless—from that bench as they took his father away from him until he made bail. My mother said once the trial took place and his dad was convicted, Mackenna would be taken in by some uncle who was just as bad a gangster as the father and that soon, he’d probably be an outcast in school and would have to move.

It seemed like my mother was a witch. Everything she predicted came true.

But before he left, and between bail and trial, he was mine.

For days, weeks, months, he was all mine and I was his.

Sometimes, when I walked home from school, he walked with me. All my bullies mysteriously got purple eyes. When my mother saw him one day, she pulled me aside. “He’s up to no good, that boy. Revenge, that’s what that boy is up for. You stay away from him, Pandora.”

“He’s not,” I kept telling my mother.

But how could she understand? She didn’t see Mackenna and his remote, sad eyes. So sad even the silver turned to gray sometimes.

She didn’t know that nobody else had told him they were sorry for him. She didn’t know that when I kept going to “study” at other people’s houses, I really was going to meet Mackenna. She didn’t know how we talked, how we laughed. Sometimes we just sat by each other, doing nothing. Sometimes all I was aware of was the position of my hand and how it was in relation to the position of his hand. Sometimes all I knew was the sound of his voice—despite whatever words it said. Sometimes I caught him staring too. At my mouth. My boobs. Sometimes we went to the marina and stole a boat at night. We’d take a dip in the chilly water, and when we came up to the boat, we’d take off our clothes and warm each other.

He’d saved me in school. Now it felt like I was saving him.

He told me he loved me, and I wanted to say it back. But in all our time together, I never said it. He showed that he loved me in little things he did for me: carrying my stuff when no one noticed, quietly following me after school, sometimes waiting outside my house, in the rain, until I could sneak away for another moment with him. Maybe I was his source of compassion, and he couldn’t stand anyone hurting or touching me.

My mother didn’t know that long before the trial, I’d begged Mackenna to have sex with me.

He promised it would happen the following weekend. It did, and it was magical. He took me to the wharf, where we stole past the guards and into a hidden nook under the Ferris wheel. We climbed into one of the cabins, he spread out some blankets, and we made love.

He said he loved me. He asked if I loved him. I did. I really did. He made me tear up. I felt so beautiful, treasured, so perfect.

We kept meeting. Always in secret. Every time it was even better. Better than perfect. He hummed songs to me in his deep voice. At school, we’d have foreplay with our eyes, and then we’d touch each other at night.

Then the trial happened, and soon he didn’t come back to school.

But our plan still stood. After the trial, we’d run away.

Except he never showed up.

I even went to look for him at his uncle’s house, but he wasn’t there. Two older women were in his bed. “You looking for Kenna?” they asked.

I swallowed, wondering if they’d touched him, and if they hadn’t, where he was.

“He’s gone. Took a flight to Boston. One way. He said he sent you a message.”

“He lied. He didn’t send me shit.”

I ran, and ran, and when I got home, I locked myself in my room and went to pull out my box and tear up every picture of me with that lying, mean, cruel fucking asshole.

Nothing survived, except for that stupid pebble in that box from the time when he told me not to trip again.

Aren’t I tripping with the same pebble now?

I’ve told myself that it’s not like I remember. His hands. His lips. Our first kiss. He used to get so jealous about me.

One day, before Mackenna asked me to be his official girlfriend, we were arguing about Wes Rosberg. “He’s taking you out?” Mackenna asked, his eyebrows furrowing over his nose. “Where’s he taking you out? Why’d you say yes? I thought you didn’t like him?”

“He’s just a friend,” I said, shrugging.

He shoved to his feet. “Oh, yeah? What if he wants to have a girlfriend?”

I shrugged again. “Well, maybe I would like to have a boyfriend.”

“I want to be your boyfriend.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I want to be your boyfriend.”

“Kenna! Get over here!” a voice yells from somewhere in the background, bringing me to the present. Hearing the rumble of his voice under my ear, I’m momentarily confused.

“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.