by Score, Lucy
“I think we’re done here,” she said, rising.
“Sit,” he barked.
She sat.
“That stupid motherfucker was me.”
“Okaaaaaay.”
“I kicked Harper out of my house, my bed, my life because I was a stupid motherfucking chickenshit. That woman is everything to me. She’s given me a life I never thought possible because she was brave enough to go after what she wanted. She was willing to take the lumps and hang in there while I took my dumbass time catching up. I thought that my past determined who I was. I thought it set my course. I thought that trauma defined who I was.”
Mack stared at the empty fireplace and tried to pretend she wasn’t hurting in body and soul. That his words weren’t resonating in her bones like church bells.
“I was too fucking scared to let myself love her, to need her. And here was Harper, this beautiful, kind, stubborn woman who loved me so much she wouldn’t let me close down on her. I almost lost her, Mack,” he said, looking at her. “You’re going to lose Linc, and granted, I don’t love the guy, but if you don’t work through this shit now, you’re never going to have a chance at what I found with Harper. You’ll always feel alone.”
Well, hell. That hurt.
“And look. If Linc took one look at you like this and walked away or let you walk away, maybe he’s not the guy.”
“He didn’t see me. Not really. I didn’t let him in.”
He sighed. “Believe me, I’d like to keep hating the guy forever. But maybe you should have let him in. And he definitely should have fought harder,” Luke said. “Bottom line. You both fucked up. And now you both need to decide if you’re brave enough to give it a real shot.”
A real shot. Could she even have that with the way she was raised?
“I don’t even know what a healthy relationship looks like,” she confessed, slumping back against the couch cushion.
“Open your damn eyes, Mack. Look at Gloria and Aldo. Look at Soph and Ty. My parents. Hell, me and Harper are doing pretty damn great. Because we love each other. We trust each other to handle the heavy stuff. We know we’re always, always going to be there for each other. You didn’t give Linc the chance to be there for you. I guarantee if you would have called him and asked him to pick you up from the airport, he would have been there.”
“But then he would have seen this, Luke.” She gestured at her face. “He’d see a victim who needed saving, not a woman he could maybe spend the rest of his life with.”
He sighed heavily. “That’s just the stupid motherfucker in you talking. Bottom line: you either trust each other to be there through the bad times or you don’t.”
“Coffee’s ready,” Aldo called from the kitchen. “I made some of that green tea crap for you, Dreamy.”
The nickname did it.
Mack put her face in her hands, yelped when she bumped bruises. “I hate everything.”
Ty came back inside with the slam of the front door. “Cold out there. But I got some interesting news from the PD in your mother’s neighborhood,” Ty said, leveling her with a cool gaze.
Her story, her past, was leaking out, the poison oozing out and affecting the people near her.
“You’re pressing charges,” Ty told her. “I will not leave this house until you agree.” To prove his point, he toed off his boots and made himself comfortable in the armchair facing the fireplace.
Aldo shoved a mug of coffee at him.
“Pressing charges is just going to make it all worse,” she insisted.
“See that?” Luke asked, pointing at Ty. “That’s what you do. You stick.”
She’d wanted Linc to stick.
Wished she could have had the guts to ask him to stick. But neither one of them had tried hard enough. And that said something.
“You sticking around?” Luke asked Ty.
“I’ve got all the time in the world, till the doc here sees the error in her ways.”
“Same,” Aldo said.
“I have an errand to run,” Luke said, rising.
“Keep your left up,” Aldo told him, setting a mug of coffee in front of Ty. “My turn, Dreamy. Let’s talk about vulnerability.”
“Oh my God. You guys. You’re the most masculine girlfriends I’ve ever had.”
“I watched a lot of Oprah when I was recovering from having my leg blown off,” Aldo said cheerfully. “And then Ty made me read this book.”
“Did you watch the ‘standing in her shoes’ bit?” Ty interrupted.
“Fuck yeah I did.”
Ty pounded a fist to his chest. “Every time. Gets me right here”
“I need a drink,” Mack sighed.
50
Linc’s office door burst open. It had taken him over an hour to get rid of the women. He rose, prepared to brush off the next well-meaning busybody. However, he wasn’t prepared for Luke Garrison rounding his desk and connecting his fist with Linc’s face.
“What the fuck, man?” Linc demanded, holding his jaw.
Luke’s fist flew again, and he barely managed to dodge it, sending the blow glancing off his jaw.
“You knocked some sense into me once. Now it’s my turn, you stupid jackass,” Luke said.
Linc blocked the next shot and threw a defensive punch to the gut.
“That’s the spirit,” Luke grunted, grabbing his arm and dragging Linc over the desk. The computer monitor tumbled to the floor.
“What is your problem?” Linc demanded, shaking free. He delivered a quick jab to the jaw and took satisfaction in watching Luke’s head snap back.
“Hey, chief—Shit.”
“Stay out of this, Lighthorse,” Luke insisted. “This idiot needs his ass kicked.”
“No argument here.”
“Whose side are you on, Lighthorse?” Linc complained. Luke took advantage of the distraction and landed two gut punches, knocking the wind out of him.
“You finally have a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, and you were just looking for an excuse to fuck it up.”
“Told you,” Brody said to someone else in the hallway.
“I didn’t fuck it up! She’s the one who shut me out,” Linc argued.
They exchanged rapid-fire blows.
“What the hell is going on—oh.”
There was a crowd growing in the office doorway.
“Any action on this?”
“Normally I’d go with loyalty and say the chief, but Garrison is pretty pissed.”
“There’s a difference between shutting out and shutting down, you moron,” Luke said as they grappled. He threw an elbow that made Linc’s face sing.
“She gave up first,” Linc said, grunting as he tried to get Luke in a headlock. They went down in a tangle of legs and unintelligible swearing.
“Did you even look at her when you were unleashing a lifetime of bullshit insecurities on her?” Luke demanded.
“Fuck you, asshat.”
“Did you see the bruises?”
Linc froze, and his opponent took advantage. Luke rolled, taking the top and hammering his fist into Linc’s face twice.
Linc tasted blood and fear. Mackenzie was hurt. “What bruises?”
Luke pulled his fist back again, but Linc held up his hands. “Goddammit! What bruises? Is she hurt?”
Luke grabbed him by the shirt front and shook him. “That’s something you should have figured out for yourself instead of piling onto her like an insecure dumb fuck.”
Energized by a new fury directed at some unknown threat, Linc threw Luke off him and jumped to his feet.
“Daaaaaamn,” Skyler said when she got a good look at him.
His face felt heavy and swollen. There was a cut on his forehead that was clouding his vision with a steady trickle of blood. He wondered if his nose was broken. He looked back at Luke, who was using a chair to pull himself up to his feet. The man had a cut under his eye and one on his jaw. Bruises were already starting to bloom around his cheek and eye.
<
br /> “Out of my way,” Linc growled at the firefighters in his doorway.
“You better be on your way to her house to grovel,” Luke yelled after him.
Linc flashed him a middle finger over his shoulder. “Go fuck yourself, Garrison. Someone watch my dog.”
With that, he was sprinting down the stairs to the chief’s vehicle. He punched the lights and sirens and tore out of the parking lot without a look back.
* * *
“Open the door, Mackenzie,” he said, giving the front door of the cottage another pound. “I’m not leaving until you come out. I know you’re in there.”
“I’m not in there. I’m right here, and now you’re free to leave.”
He whirled around and found her on the walkway behind him. She was dressed for a run in tights and a long-sleeve shirt. She had a cap pulled down low, but he could still see. Those red lips. Her face was flushed, hair damp with sweat. Her eyes were red, probably from tears that he—the worst asshole human being in the universe—had caused. But what caught his attention now was the blooming black eye she sported.
There were more bruises ringing her neck.
He advanced on her, unable to check the barely restrained need for violence that bubbled up in him. He reached for her but stopped when she flinched.
Goddammit. He felt like a monster.
He wished Luke were here so he could pound him into the ground. “Who the fuck put their hands on you?” he asked, congratulating himself on keeping his tone even.
“Does it even matter?” she asked wearily, giving him a wide berth as she stepped around him.
She unlocked the front door and went inside. He barreled in behind her.
“Mackenzie!”
He found her in the kitchen, guzzling water.
“Go away, Linc. I’m over having visitors today.”
He planted his feet wide and crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving. Tell me who the hell did that to you.”
She looked at him, really looked at him, and her eyes went wide. “Jesus. What the hell happened to your face?”
“Luke Garrison.”
“You’re kidding me, right? He said he left here on an errand, not a beatdown.”
“Stop trying to change the subject. Who fucking hit you?”
“My sister.”
“You don’t have a sister,” he argued.
“I lied.”
He wasn’t sure where to go from there, so he planted himself on her kitchen chair.
“I lied. I withheld information about my life. And I didn’t come running to you when things went bad at my mother’s.” She stripped the gloves off her hands and shoved up her sleeves, and Linc lost his damn mind when he saw the bruises on her arms.
He reached for her and shoved her sleeves up higher to examine the marks that looked like meaty handprints.
“That one was from my mom’s new boyfriend,” she said bitterly.
She had a series of short scratches just under her scar. They looked like fingernails.
“The neighbors rightfully called the cops, and my dear mother and psychotic sister told the police I started it.”
He released her arms and whipped out his phone. He dialed blindly, his vision going red with rage. “Jillian? I need you to book me a flight to Chicago. Get me there today.”
Mackenzie’s eyes went wide and horrified. “Don’t you dare!”
“You’re not running away from home, are you?” his sister asked.
“I’m going to go tell Mack’s family in person if they ever so much as think about sending a text message to her, I will end them,” he said succinctly.
“Stop it,” Mack said. “You can’t go there.”
“End them. Got it. Can you fit in a middle seat?” Jillian asked.
“You can’t ever meet them,” Mack whispered. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. She didn’t seem aware of the tears that coursed down her cheeks.
“Call you back, Jills,” he said and disconnected. He grabbed her harder than he meant to and gathered her against him. “Okay. It’s okay, baby. Just hang on to me.”
Stubbornly, she stayed stiff in his arms for a beat before slowly wrapping hers around his waist and hanging on for dear life. The feelings. Rage and love and fear and hope pummeled him from the inside out.
“It’s okay, Mackenzie,” he promised, stroking her hair, her back.
He vowed it would be. Whatever it took. He would make this okay.
“Is Sunshine with you?” she asked softly.
“No, baby. But I can get her here.”
She sighed against him, and he buried a hand in her hair, holding her to him.
“I guess you’ll do for now.”
“You need to talk to me. And then I need to talk to you,” he said gruffly. “Or maybe I should go first.”
“Can I shower first?”
He moved them both toward the stairs. “What are you doing?”
“I’m showering with you. I’m not letting you out of my sight, Dreamy.”
Upstairs, in the tiny bathroom, they both undressed. He kept a tight lid on his anger when he saw the bruising on her ribs. The scrapes on her shoulders.
The handprints, man-sized, on her biceps and forearms made him clench his jaw so tight his head hurt.
She was strong. She wouldn’t let this hurt last. But he wanted justice. He wanted to ruin the people who’d done this to her. Who’d so stupidly, selfishly tried to hurt what he loved.
He cranked the water in the shower to just below scalding and pushed her gently under the water. The stall was so tight there was no way to not touch each other. He didn’t even try to give her space, running his hands over her body, reassuring himself that she was okay. She was here.
“Let me,” he said, taking the bottle from her. Her shampoo smelled like flowers and herbs when he squirted some into his palm. As gently as he could, he massaged it into her hair, rubbing her scalp in slow circles.
She sighed, bracing her hands on the wall in front of them, her back to his front. His cock had thoughts about her wet, naked body sliding over his. Enthusiastic ones. But Linc wasn’t going to let anything derail him from what he needed to do, to say.
Mackenzie turned in his arms. Her nipples puckered as they skimmed his chest. Goosebumps rose on her arms at the contact. “I’ll do you,” she offered.
Wordlessly, he handed her the shampoo and knelt before her. He rested his face between her breasts while her hands worked gently through his hair. Her touch, the soft curves of her breasts, the steady beat of her heart soothed away some of his rough edges.
He pressed a kiss to her heart and heard her shaky breath.
She tilted his chin to get a better look at his face. “I need my kit,” she said, prodding around the cut on his forehead. “I’ll fix you up good as new.” Then in a gesture so pure, so sweet, it broke his dented heart, she brushed her lips to the cut.
“I love you, Mackenzie.”
51
Mack’s heart tripped in her chest.
“I love you,” Linc said again, pressing a kiss to her belly, his hands splaying across her back, her ribs, holding her in place, keeping her safe.
She wanted to laugh and cry and settled for a little of both, hugging him to her.
He rose carefully, still holding her, and turned off the water.
“Let’s have that talk,” she said, reaching for one of the fluffy towels on the hook.
“No matter what you’re going to say, Dreamy, I’ll still love you,” he said, accepting the towel she handed him.
“I guess we’ll see,” she said quietly.
He followed her into the bedroom and let her push him down on the mattress. “Stay,” she said and disappeared downstairs to grab her med bag at the door.
She returned to find him sprawled out against the pillows, taking up most of the entire bed. Those blue eyes opened when she entered, and she felt the beginnings of a hope so fierce she was afraid of it.
“It ta
kes me a while to process things,” she began, settling next to him and opening her bag. “To get comfortable with them.”
He closed his fingers around her wrist when she moved in with an antiseptic swab. “It’s okay. I’ll just keep telling you until you catch up, Dreamy. I love you. I’ve never said it to anyone outside my family. Well, maybe Brody. But I’ve never said it to anyone this way. I love you. I’ve loved you. I will continue to love you, and I really, really need you to stay, or if you don’t want to stay, I’ll go with you. But I’ll keep telling you until you’re ready.”
She felt her lips curve. “That’s not what I mean. I love you, Linc. I’ve known since—”
But her words were cut off when he surged up and kissed her. His fingers tangled in her wet hair, his lips hard against hers. And then his tongue was sweeping into her mouth, gently, firmly laying his claim. She melted into the kiss. Basking, warming, hoping.
But there was more he needed to know. She drew back.
“The cookout.”
“The cookout?” he repeated, then hissed when she sneakily pressed the alcohol swab to his cut.
“When you swooped in here with grocery store flowers and ingredients for dip and gave your dog a bath with the hose. I’ve known since that moment that I loved you, and I’m just now working up the nerve to tell you.” She leaned in and blew on the wound.
“Well, how about you work up the nerve to tell me the rest of the story, and then we can spend the rest of the day making up?” he suggested.
“I hope you’ll still want that, want me…after.” She looked away, organizing her supplies on the comforter.
“Dreamy, have you ever run a puppy mill operation?”
She looked up, shook her head.
“Ever purposely murdered a bunch of my family members?”
“Not to my knowledge.” She smiled as she dabbed Neosporin on his wound.
“Have you ever thrown a bag of fast food trash out of your car window because you were too lazy to find a trash can?”
“God! No!” She pressed the butterfly bandage in place.
“Then nothing you say is going to change how I feel about you.”