Ripped (Real, #5)(54)

“Melanie?” I smile when I think of her. She’s my opposite, and I need her. I need her in my life the way any living thing, except for a parasite, needs the sun. “Brooke, Kyle . . . I guess they care too,” I admit, then, on impulse, I unlock my phone and show him a picture of Magnolia as he continues wiping the glitter off his arms.

“She cares for me most of all.”

“Look at that. Who’s that little thing?”

I love his grin so much I ache in a delicious way inside my heart. “My cousin. Her mother battled leukemia but lost. Magnolia saved us—saved my mother and me. I don’t know where we’d both be if she hadn’t come into our lives.”

“We need a little cape for her with a big ‘M’ so she knows she’s a superstar, huh?”

I smile as I set my phone aside. “You’re teasing me, but I like the idea. She’d love that. She doesn’t want to be a princess, and she seems more inclined to be a cape person.”

“Like her Aunt Pink?”

I smile and he chuckles with me, then he turns somber. Oh god, I missed him. I’ve only been with the band two weeks, but I’ve felt his absence over the last few days. And I missed him more than ever.

“You know, the band . . . ,” he begins but stops to take a breath. “When Dad got arrested—when my life went to shit and I lost everything I loved—” He holds my gaze and nods solemnly. “The band saved me too.”

I feel that ever-present pain, acute as ever as it pricks me. “I’m glad it saved you, Mackenna,” I whisper.

“I f*cked up, Pink.”

“How? Because you walked away?” I don’t know why I ask this, but the words are out before I know it.

“No.” In slow, predatory moves, he approaches me. “Because when I could finally come get you, I didn’t. I didn’t think you’d want me to, but that shouldn’t have mattered. I should’ve come back for you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. Because my kitchen would’ve had more ammunition than just tomatoes.” I fake laugh, trying to lighten the mood.

Unfortunately he doesn’t find that funny.

Before he can push me and find all the cracks in my walls—which are becoming weaker and weaker by the second—I pull his head down and start nibbling on his lips.

“You miss me?” he suddenly demands to know. He eases his mouth away until it is less than an inch from mine. He tortures me by holding it still, keeping it from me. “You miss me?” he asks again, sliding his hands under the fall of my hair.

“Please stop trying to make me into some simpering fool over you. Just kiss me.”

“You’ll never be a simpering fool, just tell me you missed me,” he says, looking at me, gaze fierce.

I make a noise of protest, and he laughs softly. “Fine,” he whispers, brushing his lips to mine. I think I’ve gotten away with it, so I move to kiss him. But before I can crush my lips with his, he tells me, “But I missed you.”





FOURTEEN


PLANS


Mackenna


We’re in a tangle. No cameras. Nothing. Nothing but me and her. She’s sweaty and smells like sex, and that’s just the way I want her to smell.

I want her to smell like me.

Hell, this here—her hair with that pink streak spread out on the pillow and her limbs around me—this is so f*cking perfect, I don’t want to even go take a piss.

I want so much more, I’m a greedy f*cking man. Greedy as f*ck when it comes to her. I growl softly and nip at her shoulder, murmuring, “I need to go talk to Leo.”

She sighs, stretches. “About what?”

I look at her; she’s a pistol and a half, and I love having my hands full with her. “I’ll tell you later, woman. Cover up so I at least get my mind out of your luscious curves.”

“I’m hot and sweaty. I don’t want to cover up.”

She groans, and I bury my own groan in her neck. “And I don’t want to leave this bed.” Now I nip at the soft, tender tendon of her throat. “But the sooner I talk to him, the sooner I can come back here.”

“Mackenna,” she laughs, her arms tight around my neck, “are you seriously going now?”

I smack her ass playfully. “Yeah. I’ve got big plans for your future.”

“Come on! Stay here. Tonight I wanted . . .” She looks at me with those pitch-black eyes, then frowns as if she doesn’t like what she was about to say. They’re heavy-lidded, her eyes. “I want us to be friends,” she says at last.

“Friends?” I repeat.

“Yeah. I want . . .” She sits up warily, tugs her hair. “I want to try to move on, Mackenna.”

“You want to move on from me?”

Fuck me, but that’s just not what I wanted to hear. Still, I sound casual. She’d never guess the size of the blade I feel sticking out of my gut right now.

“No. From the past,” she says.

“Really,” I say, without inflection.

But I can’t let go. I can’t let go of the past. How can you let go when all you want is to turn back time and make a different choice? And yet she looks so f*cking hopeful, as if this right here is the moment where she can finally live a happier life.