Ripped (Real, #5)(8)

Mackenna laughs, the sound making me feel like someone just crawled over my f*cking grave. All the little hairs on my arms are standing on end.

“Lionel, we’ve got this. We don’t need her. The fans want us, not her.” He points at me, then runs his hand all the way through his head to the back of his neck in sheer frustration. Then he storms out through the door, calling with deadly authority, “Leave her out of this or I promise someone will have hell to pay, Leo!”

I don’t know why, but I don’t like him having the last word.

I don’t like feeling as if he’s protecting me from the cameras.

I don’t like any of it, and before I know it, my voice stops him. “Ha! Like your promises ever mean anything, dickhead!” As I speak, I tear free the ring hanging from my necklace and chuck it at the open door.

Time stands utterly still.

Deathly slow, Mackenna steps back into the room to where the ring lies on the floor.

He looks at the small white-gold band with the sparkly diamond resting at his feet, and his expression changes from surprise to anger, then to something I don’t comprehend. He lifts it and looks at it for the longest moment of my life, then he lifts his head and stares at me with an expression that wrecks me on the inside. He clenches his jaw, turns around, and slams the door shut.

I’m trembling.

Battling with the urge to run after him and . . . and what?

I hate that I can still feel the warmth from his hand when he used to hold mine. I hate that the memory of his mouth on mine still wakes me in the middle of the night. I feel a dull ache at the loss of the ring I’ve been hiding under my tops, and I ache at the sound of his voice and the sight of his face, and I hate that I don’t know how to stop it.

When I press my lips to my talisman bracelet as I try to hold myself together, fighting for those in the room not to notice how easily Mackenna gets to me, Lionel steps forward and takes my arm. “Dear, you wanted his attention?” he asks me, both amused and confused.

“I don’t want his attention. I don’t want anything from him!”

“You’re getting a lot of him, whether you two want it or not.”

I yank my arm free. “I’m not for sale. There’s nothing you can say or do to convince me to do this.”

“How about . . .” He leans over and whispers a very long, very big number into my ear.





TWO


THE WITCH FORGOT THE BROOM BUT NOT THE FUCKING TOMATO BAG


Mackenna


“She’s doing it, Kenna. You’ll be surprised to know it didn’t take all that much. I tell you, these new college grads will work for shit these days.”

As I step out of the shower, grabbing the plush terry robe and sticking my body inside it, I find Lionel in my room, beaming at the news.

“You can’t be f*cking serious?” I demand, rubbing my head with a hand towel. He looks deadly serious, and I shake my head as I grab some clothes. “Lionel! I snorted f*cking egg yolk up my nose. I think I’ve still got some in my ear.” I hold the towel against my ear and jump up and down, shaking the water out.

“You little shit. You said she didn’t exist,” he growls.

I toss my scattered wigs into their trunk and slam the lid shut. “She doesn’t,” I grit out. So what if I had to tell myself she didn’t exist? For six years, it worked. But now she’s here. Like some demon—some poltergeist—reminding me of what I wanted as a teen and could never have. Reminding me what I lost. What I’d do to get it back.

Pandora.

My nightmare, my dreams, my walking, talking fantasy.

Here.

Flinging my ring.

My own f*cking ring right in my face. My mother’s ring.

What an irreverent little minx!

And what’s with those f*cking boots? Jesus, all she needs is an axe and blood dripping from her fingernails. Or a broom and a cauldron.

God, that woman . . .

Something kicked me on the inside when I heard her. Her smooth voice, flat but not quite. Her voice, unique in the world. It’s like a song that makes you feel like shit. Makes me feel . . . like that worthless teen who craved her like a drug.

The teen who loved lyrics, songs, drums, pianos, melodies, whatever made me feel my life didn’t suck. Songs make friends irrelevant. Songs made me remember her, but also forget her. I love songs. Music saved my life and now it’s become my life. But no song’s ever been as good as hearing her. And no song’s ever been as bad as seeing her there, taunting me, challenging me with that endless black gaze.

“I thought you were singing about a fictional woman,” Leo continues, and when I settle on a T-shirt with a skull on it—to fit the mood that bitch has put me in—I turn to see Lionel’s eyes. They’re glassy and deranged, like they are when we get a record deal, a movie deal . . .

Or when he thinks we’ve just struck gold.

But Pandora is an endless dark mine with no diamonds for me. I want to forget I’ve just stared into her face, but it’s branded into my retinas and she’s all I see. That angry little shrew frown, those dark black lips, that ridiculous pink streak, the boots. I can perfectly picture her straddling a man and hooking those boots around his hips. Yeah, I want them around mine.

Fisting my hand around my mother’s ring, I lift my head in the direction of the door, my voice low. “Where the f*ck is she?”