Ripped (Real, #5)(32)
“Look at you spitting fire like some angry little crow. How many f*cking 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 reporter 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 f*ck 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 *, 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 clusterf*ck 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.”