Ripped

by Katy Evans

  Because truth be told, while she’s packing, I’m panicking. For real. I don’t want her to go, and I sure as fuck am not inclined to let her fly without me.

  “Promise me you’ll stay here,” she says, clutching some sort of undergarment in her fist as she shoots me a warning glare. “You have a concert and I have . . . to go. Promise.”

  I take the undergarment from her hand and fling it aside, squeezing both her hands in mine. “Pandora, I’m not letting her stop me from being with you again,” I tell her gruffly.

  “Mackenna, this has to be a misunderstanding . . .” She trails off, then she’s up on her toes, taking my mouth, hard, leaving me winded. A hungry kiss. Like she’s fucking desperate for more.

  When she turns to keep packing, I stop her and force her to face me, because all this? It’s eating me up. “She may deny it. Are you going to believe her over me?”

  “She won’t deny it,” she whispers, dropping her gaze to my throat. “If it’s true.”

  I drop my hands and a low, bitter laugh leaves me. Not lie about it? Yeah, right. That woman has been hell-bent on keeping us apart for years. It’s always been me. Never good enough for her—and even then, like the masochist pussy I am, I still fucking wanted her. “It is true. I won’t let her break us up, Pink,” I angrily warn.

  “We’re not breaking up, we weren’t even back together!” she counters.

  “Then let’s,” I insist.

  “What?” she gasps.

  “You heard me. Let’s officially get back together.”

  I dig out my mother’s ring from the pocket of my jeans. I don’t care she threw it back at my feet. The fact that she’d kept it all these years tells me what she won’t tell me in words.

  I saw her watching Brooke and Remington. I know she longs for that—craves it even—and I want to give it to her. Hell, I’ve been itching to get free of the crazy band hours, the fans, the paps, the cameras too. I want no one but this girl, but if I’m not good enough now, then fuck me, I’ll never be good enough for her.

  “We can’t get back together,” she whisper-gasps, then plucks at some imaginary lint on her black T-shirt. “It’s not as if we can change anything, or pretend that we didn’t . . . fuck up.”

  “True.” I reach around her and lower her suitcase lid so she stops packing for a hot sec and focuses on me. “But see, I don’t want to talk about the past right now, Pink. I want to talk about the future.”

  She’s holding her breath.

  “New York concert is in five days, right?” I press.

  “Right.”

  “So go home. Do what you need to do. But come back to me.” She stares at the ring I’m holding up, and I stare into those confused, dark coffee eyes. I’ve done this before, except six years ago, she was excited to see this ring.

  Is this a promise ring?

  What are you promising me?

  Me.

  But now she looks trapped. Sad. Lost. The tensing of her jaw indicates some deep frustration. My voice roughens with emotion because I don’t want her to be lost, I want her to feel certain, of me. I want her to find whatever she’s looking for, in me.

  “I want you to come back, Pink,” I whisper, my voice husky as I hold her startled eyes with my own. “Not because they’re paying you to, but because you want to.”

  “Kenna, what are you doing?”

  He tips my head back. “In my life, there have been three times when I’ve had to make important choices.”

  She can’t breathe.

  And neither can I.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve opened up like this to anyone. In fact, I can only remember opening up to one person like this in my life—and that person is standing right in front of me.

  “The first time was when I left you. The second was when I joined the band. And the third,” I stare deeply at her, “the third one is right here, right now.”

  “Kenna, this isn’t your choice. Me going home is my choice.”

  “You’re right, but then I also have a choice here. You see, I choose”—I emphasize the word—“not to live without you anymore.”

  She stares at me with those eyes that make my head spin, biting her lower lip in the way that makes my teeth ache.

  There’s pain in her eyes.

  Hell, I feel pain inside me.

  But I can feel, deep in my gut, that she feels for me the same way I do for her. She’s just fighting it harder.

  “I can’t do it so easily. I won’t leave my cousin, my friends, my life. I can’t! You don’t mean this.” She’s shaking her head frantically as if I’ve just proposed death instead of just the idea of being with me.

  “You won’t have to leave your cousin, baby . . . I’m leaving the band.”

  “What?” She’s stunned now—her suitcase, her packing forgotten as her mouth gapes wide. “But the band is a part of you.”

  “So are you,” I point out cockily, then I lower my voice. “In fact, you’re the biggest, most important part of me.”

  She stares at me like what I’ve just said is pure, raw torture. Like it’s hurting her, really hurting her. But I can’t let her go this time. I can’t walk away from her for the second time in my life. “Pink, I like writing my songs, and singing, but I want you more. I want to settle down . . . I want something normal. For once in my life, I want something normal.”

  “I’m the furthest thing from normal, Kenna,” she chokes out with a bitter laugh.

  “Well, you’re what I want. I want to give you normal.”

  “Riding on a bike? In a Lamborghini? That’s not normal either,” she cries, and although her eyes are red and a little wet, she still fights to keep from letting those tears out.

  Frustration starts knotting up my insides, and I grab her shoulders to give her a little shake. “Fuck, Pink. Are we going to fight about this? Huh?” I chuck her chin up. “All right, fine. I concede. You’re not normal. I’m not normal. But I want to give us our kind of normal—which might be weird and fucked up, but it works for us.”

  “I . . .” She glances at me, then closes her eyes and whispers, “You’re tempting me in the worst way.”

  I take her palm and set the ring inside, closing her fingers around the precious metal, the value of which means nothing compared to her, and then I stare into her face and wait. My heart’s a wild beast pounding in my rib cage. She’s stunning—all white skin with dark-painted lips, eyes like dark pools of night, glossy dark hair with its adorable pink streak. Her little breasts, her little ass, her long legs, and those long, pointy boots . . .

  I like it all.

  I want it all.

  “But you still won’t say yes?” I press.

  Say.

  Yes.

  Baby, say YES.

  She won’t answer, so I drop my voice to its lowest tone—the one I use when singing ballads.

  “Come because I ask you to, not because they pay you to. Come if you ever loved me. If you can ever love me. Come see me, Pink. Come hear me sing at Madison Square Garden.”

  Her eyes soften with emotion, an emotion I can feel pooling in my gut.

  “I thought you didn’t like knowing I was out there watching you sing.”

  “That might be because I’d never had something I wanted you to hear me sing before,” I admit then brush a kiss, first to her forehead and then to the top of her ear. “If you do decide to come, let Lionel know. He’ll seat you.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” she hedges, but she’s got her fist closed tight around my ring. “You think I’ll show up, you’ll sing to me, and we’ll live happily ever after?”

  “That’s what I’m going for.” I smile at her softly, torn between shaking her, begging her, and flat out ordering her to do as I say. “Fuck, Pink, just say you’ll come.”

  “Say you’ll let me go home on my own. Your band needs you.”

  I hesitate. She seems desperate to get rid of me right now. I’m not sure if she’ll come. But if she doesn�
��t . . .

  Just go after her, dude.

  “If I agree, you’ll come?” I say, trying to get something of an agreement out of her.

  “Yes,” she says, looking at me and opening her palm as if she thinks I want the ring back. I close her fingers around it again.

  “Keep this. It belonged to the first woman I loved, so it makes sense it should stay with the last.”

  “Kenna!” she cries, but before she can make a thousand and one excuses as to why she can’t make it to my concert—excuses about why she still can’t open up—I head out of there, hoping that ring never finds its way back to me.

  Like it did once before.

  TWENTY

  PANDORA’S BOX

  Pandora

  Usually at this stage of a journey—sitting on a hard plastic chair at the gate, waiting for the call to board the flight—my palms are sweaty, my heart is racing, and my stomach churns like I’m about to puke. But this time my attention is elsewhere, my eyes focused entirely on the little diamond. . . .

  I can’t stop staring at the little diamond, in those sleek little legs, high up in the air and begging for attention. It’s priceless to Mackenna, and I know that no diamond in the world means more to him than this one. No diamond in the world means more to me than this one—because it was his mother’s. And he loved her with everything in him.

  Like I love my mother too.

  My mother . . .

  I think of her as I grip the armrest and hold on tight as the plane takes off.

  Even with my clonazepam, the adrenaline rushes around my body so fast that I can’t sleep. The pill allows me to relax briefly, but this time around, that’s about it. I’m still too hyper, my brain too wired, my heart too busy feeling . . . stuff.

  My mother had the perfect setup for a pain-free marriage until we realized . . . she didn’t. She’s wanted what’s best for me. She was there on January 22.

  There when the pain started.

  There when my water broke.

  There when I had the baby.

  And there . . . when they took the baby away from where I lay on the birthing bed, never more alone.

  No matter how much my mom hurt at the thought of me getting pregnant, she couldn’t bear to see me go through an abortion. She’s . . . human. But if she kept me away from Mackenna . . .

  “Oh, is that an engagement ring?” the woman in the seat next to me asks. She looks about my mother’s age, except she’s far warmer and chattier.

  I smile at her, and before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m extending my hand like some idiot ready for the altar. “It’s a . . . promise ring.”

  Oh god, why did I take it? He doesn’t know what he’s doing, giving it to me again. He doesn’t know who I am anymore, who I became after him. That we had a girl. Could have been a family. And yet I’m so fixated on him that I slipped on the ring again, and I’ve been turning it around on my finger ever since. Looking at it, lifting it to my lips, closing my eyes and kissing it, because I missed it like I missed him. His eyes, his smiles . . . the way we were happy.

  “Ahh, a promise ring,” the woman says, sighing when I return my hand to my lap. “Love is a wonderful thing,” she tells me, gripping my arm with a little squeeze and a secret smile.

  I smile at her and say no more. God, I’m just so fucking dazed. Dazed, excited, hopeful, and as frightened as Magnolia is of the monsters in her closet. I’m frightened of the monsters in mine! I’m having real trouble coming to terms with this new, wonderfully scary situation where Mackenna and I may have a shot. We have a chance. God, even the word “we” is weird! He walked away, made me ache, but now he wants me back. And though I act like I won’t be back—and question whether I can ever really be back with him—did he ever really lose me?

  How can you stop belonging to someone who has ravaged you like he did me?

  How can your first and only love sweep through you like a tornado and not leave his mark?

  And now my body’s acting ridiculous. My heart, my lungs—even my brain. I feel like I did when I was seventeen and ready to run away with him, the critters wiggling in my insides when I remember the heated kiss he gave me a mere few hours ago before I boarded the plane. I’ll see you in New York? he asked, kissing me again as if he couldn’t help himself.

  I said yes, but was that the truth?

  Or did I lie?

  You’re a fucking liar, Pandora. You can’t have a future without telling him what you did, what happened after he left. You have to tell him. You blamed Kenna . . . but you see now it wasn’t his fault . . . it was all you . . .

  God, I wish our mistakes never had to see the light of day. Like little monsters, they could always remain in the closet. But if I let my monster out of the closet, it won’t just haunt me; it will haunt us.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  BACK IN SEATTLE, I hail a cab and head home, my brain turning over my options slowly, the clonazepam dulling my speed. Right in front of me is the opportunity for a new start. A second chance. Why not? Anyone with just a little bit of self-love, anyone who loved Mackenna even a third of the way I love him, would give herself the chance.

  Why not? a part of me screams.

  I know why not, but I don’t want to hear it. In fact, I’m almost ready to pack again for a whole damn year. I have almost managed to convince myself we can pick up right where we left off, at a time when I was ready to head off into the sunset with him. I’m already thinking of how his eyes will light up like the moon his inner wolf howls at when he sees that I’ve returned. I can almost taste the desperation in his kiss when I plant a good one on him. Because that’s the kind of kiss that I’m going to give him when I see him again. The kind that makes a man stop asking questions and think of nothing but the woman in his arms—the woman luckily being me—and we can pick up right where we left off. Him and me. In love, all over again.

  I’m already excited, letting the dreamer in me be dazzled by the promise ring on my finger.

  She’s in her office with the door ajar, sitting behind a huge desk that almost seems built to keep a perennial wall between the world and her. “Pandora,” she says, and gives a light smile. But there’s no emotion. Her voice doesn’t waver very much.

  Do I speak like that?

  I almost shudder at the thought and hug myself, and that’s the very moment when her eyes—dark like mine—flick to the ring on my finger. Her expression is overwhelmed by a fear I’ve never seen on her face before, and for the first time in ages, I hear a crack in her voice.

  “He told you, didn’t he?” she suddenly whispers, lifting her eyes to mine. She looks terrified.

  I’m too stunned to answer, too dulled by my favorite pill.

  My mother clears her throat, but her eyes remain wide and almost rabid for information as she gestures to the promise ring on my finger. Even though she remains in her seat, her gaze searches my face for clues, and several things strike me in unison:

  It’s true.

  “Why are you wearing that ring? I thought you were over that boy.”

  I’m still very confused, but the adrenaline in my body is mounting fast, clearing my brain by the second.

  “Over who?” I ask with deliberate slowness, narrowing my eyes.

  “Don’t play silly. Mackenna Jones.”

  “Yes. I was with him.” I extend my hand so she can look at it, and while she looks I look at how valiantly she struggles to keep her expression composed.

  “And he told you. Of course. Now that his father’s out, why hide the truth?” Her eyes flick up to mine. Cautious. Curious. Still with evident dread.

  “What is it that you think he told me?”

  An intense sinking sensation thuds within me while I wait.

  I remember her in flashes.

  A flash of her warning me to stay away from him.

  A flash of her telling me, He’ll hurt you. He wants revenge. He’ll be just like your father, just watch. Stay away.

  Flashes of memories
assail me, especially the one where I sat staring out of my bedroom window and she came to stand at my back after we came home from the park, and without even asking what was wrong, she whispered, “It’s for the best.”

  “You told him to stay away from me,” I suddenly whisper when she doesn’t dare. I remember Mackenna’s anger at me and the hurt in his eyes when he saw me again, and it all comes together like a puzzle.

  A puzzle that wrecked me. Wrecked Kenna.

  And was devised and designed by my mother.

  “What did you do? How did you make him?” My pain is so raw, my voice is just a whisper.

  I know. But I need to know everything, I need to hear it from her. My own family.

  My mother rubs her temples and inhales deeply, and when I open my mouth to yell at her, she cuts me off. “His dad was in trouble. Big trouble. He was facing many, many years in jail, as you recall. So I offered to cut him a deal. To lower the sentence if he stayed away from you.”

  “You did that to him?” I whisper. “You did that to me?”

  “He was no good for you, Pandora! He had nothing to offer you but heartache. I thought it was for the best, so when I noticed that ring on your finger, I realized he would take you away. I advised him to walk away unless he wanted his dad to spend the rest of his days in prison.”

  “And you made me think he didn’t want me all these years!”

  “He thought he wanted you, but you were both too young to know what was best for you. Do you think you could’ve been happy leading the life some silly rocker lives?”

  “Six years, Mother. Six!” I cry.

  She stares at me, everything about her motionless.

  And emotionless.

  “We have a daughter,” I whisper.

  My mother almost flinches. Almost.

  “A daughter that we will never get to see.”

  My heart is breaking even as I say it out loud.

  “Pandora,” she says, reaching across her desk as if to take my hand. I leap back, and she stands and starts coming around. “You were alone. You couldn’t do it. You gave that baby its best chance.”

  “No. Her best chance was with me—with me and her dad. But you made sure he walked away from me hating that I didn’t have the guts to even tell him to his face that we were over.”