Ripped

“How are you?” she finally asks.

“Good, Mom,” I mumble, staring at the toes of my boots. They don’t look so badass anymore.

“You’re keeping busy with work? Staying smart about your choices?”

“Of course,” I lie, dragging the tip of my boot down a square tile.

“You know, it’s hard for me to give Magnolia the attention you’ve accustomed her to.”

“I’ll call more often.”

She sighs, clearly displeased but conceding. My stomach hurts. She’s the only one who knows exactly what I am and what I can do and how easily I get broken. I “gauge my value by her love,” according to Dr. Finley, the therapist who suggested I accept my mistakes, as well as the mistakes of the people in my past, and move forward.

I thought I did.

I thought I had.

Hell, I thought tomatoing Mackenna would be the last “fuck you” I had to say in terms of my past.

I was so, so wrong. Maybe I should consider saying something else instead.

“Are you all right? Where are you?” my mother presses.

“I’m in . . . Kentucky,” I lie.

“You’re decorating in Kentucky?”

I wonder if she’s onto me and worry my lip a little while I worry in my mind. “A bachelor’s apartment. I’m using my usual eclectic combination. Steel, dark woods. It kicks ass.”

“Language,” she chides, but she laughs a little.

We end up talking a little bit. She’s not perfect, my mom. But she’s the only one who knows how much I’ve screwed up and hasn’t hightailed it out of my life.

She never lets me forget that.

Then I get to talk to Magnolia.

“I miss you, Panny, I have forty-seven things now.”

“Wait, let me guess! We’re going to dress like gorillas and bang our chests out on the sidewalks?”

“No! But that will be forty-eight!”

I smile with happiness, but the guilt I usually feel when I’m happy slowly creeps in.

I’ve fucked up. And Mackenna’s right, I’m mad mostly at myself.

“You’re my hero, Pan,” she then says, her voice dreamy as if I really am something special.

“You’re mine,” I whisper. She squeals, sends me kisses, and we hang up.

I stare at my bracelet, then tuck my phone into my back pocket and breathe deep. When I finally get out, the girls are at the guys’ booth, Tit exactly in my spot.

I don’t like the rush of possessiveness I feel when I see her busy talking with Mackenna. I don’t like how possessive I feel of his eyes and his smile and the hand he has spread out casually over the back of the seat . . . where I had been sitting. I have a spectacular urge to go and tell Tit to take her hand off Mackenna’s shoulder and park her ass somewhere else. Shit. I’m so over my limits of normal involvement here, I shake my head at myself and head over to the bar. Best to stay away from him.

Dealing with my mother always leaves me raw, and I don’t want Mackenna to improve on that.

“See that guy?”

I turn to the low baritone to my right, and a guy—thirty-something-ish, with a black cowboy hat and a huge-ass belt buckle—tips his head in a certain direction. When I follow the aim, my eyes land on you-know-who. You-know-who’s silver-laser-beam is staring straight at me from across the room. “You’re asking me if I see him? Does anyone not see him?” I counter.

“He your man?” the cowboy asks.

“In my nightmares, sometimes.”

But Cowboy isn’t appeased. “He sure looks like he thinks he is,” he drawls.

“Ignore him. He thinks he’s many things. God is one of them.”

“Bitches with him agree.” He points to the girls trying to catch Mackenna’s attention at the booth, but nothing seems to make those eyes go away—not even the frown I send his way before I give him a first-class view of my backside as I turn around to order myself a drink.

Why not?

Safer to let the tequila put me to sleep later rather than Mackenna.

“You nervous? Whatcha got there?” the cowboy asks, peering down at my bracelet, which I hadn’t realized I’d been playing with.

“Something that always reminds me how human I am when I look at it,” I say, brushing his hand off. “Don’t touch it, nobody gets to touch it but me.”

He rubs a hand down my back and trails it lower. “I think you’re hot despite your lips. I like red better. So you’re possessive about your accessories, what about the rest of you?”

He squeezes my ass.

Alarm skids through me. “Hey, we were being morose at the bar. What the hell happened to being plain old morose at the damn bar?”

He grins. “See that other guy?” He nods in the direction of Leo as he watches us from next to a big black camera. “He offered compensation if we made the night interesting for your crowd.”

“Is that so?” Leo. Ohmigod. What a douche bag.

I remove Cowboy’s hand from my ass and consider slapping him and having Leo put that in his precious movie. Cowboy squeezes my ass again. I’m getting ready to knee him in the balls when I hear Lex’s voice call out in a friendly way, “Hey, bud, you don’t want to lose that hand, trust me.”

In the opposite of a friendly way, the cowboy is suddenly pinned back on the bar with a jolt that sends a couple glasses rattling.

“You touch her again, I’m ripping your guts out through your throat.” Mackenna pushes him back against the bar even harder.

“Kenna!” Jax grabs his arms and tries to stop him.

“Fucking let go,” Kenna growls as he yanks his arms free.

I look at Leo in disbelief. He was setting up Mackenna for a show. Their precious manager would let a mass murderer in here if it would get him buzz for his precious movie. Wow. I really don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore. What am I doing? Magnolia is alone with my mother, my mother is suspicious, Mackenna is in my head, he’s in my fucking bed. He’s getting into a bar fight because of me, as if he’s my . . . boyfriend still. Like all those years. Oh god.

I stalk across the bar, when a familiar hand with bracelets and silver rings catches me by the elbow.

“Hey, come here, look at me,” Mackenna says, and he pulls me to his side. As much as I don’t want to, I tremble at the instant release of feeling warm and safe with his arm around me as he leads me to some sort of storage room, where we find peace and quiet.

“So,” he demands.

I scowl.

“What’s going on, baby?”

Seeing him visually checking me to see if I’m all right, I scowl harder.

“You planned to stay at the bar all night?” he asks.

“I was having fun, actually,” I bait.

“Oh yeah? That sure looked like fun for that motherfucker.” He cracks the knuckles of one hand, then the other, a violence I’ve never seen before roiling in his eyes. “Where did you run off to before?”

“I was calling home.”

He looks incredulous. “You call home in the middle of a bar?”

“Mother called me,” I mumble.

“And you can’t make her wait?”

“No, ’cause it makes it worse! It makes her suspicious, and she doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Of course not,” he agrees, his entire countenance hard.

“Stop questioning me, asshole, I’m not yours to command!” I push past him, and he stops me. I squirm in his hold, whining, “Let go.”

“You still dancing to any tune she sings?” he asks. “Are you?” he commands.

I don’t know if I can take the frustrated disappointment in his eyes.

“Do you crave her love so much you’d sacrifice your own dreams and everything you want to please her?” he continues.

I can’t answer.

“She’s not the only one willing and able to protect you from anything, Pandora. Anything!”

A door slams shut nearby, and Lionel walks in. A chill seems to spread. Mackenna’s eyebrows crease in contempt. “You’ve gone too far, Leo,” Mackenna whispers, a low threat.

“Kenna, relax. Where’s your sense of humor?”

A muscle flexes angrily in Mackenna’s jaw. “It’ll come back when I have my fist where I want it on your face.” Reaching out to me, he hooks a finger into the loops of my jeans and tugs me to his side. “I’m taking her back to the hotel. No cameras.”

“One camera. Just one,” Leo pleads.

“Fuck you, Leo.”

Mackenna pulls me angrily out of there, and I follow. One of the camera guys is stumbling behind us. “And fuck you too, Noah.” Mackenna flips the camera. The call with my mother reminds me of why Mackenna and I can never be.

I should tell him right now.

Stop this right now.

But knowing I have to stop it makes me want it all the more.

“I don’t need you to give some asshole a purple eye for me anymore,” I huff as he guides me outside.

“Great. Now you choose to be chatty,” he grumbles.

We slide into the hotel limo, and he looks at me as Noah climbs in next to him, camera and all. Silence settles in the car. Mackenna stares at Noah in quiet rage, then at me. I meet his gaze, because backing down is a sign of weakness and I can’t stand him to know he makes my knees weak.