Strum Me

by Allison, Ketley

  “Ah. It all makes sense now. You’re jeal—”

  “Don’t insult me. I’m afraid of history repeating itself. You’re vindictive Mason, and cruel when you want to be, and because I’m not doing what you want, I’m afraid you’re going to punish me for it.”

  “Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. There’s a contract.”

  “Paper has never stopped you. You’d happily set fire to our agreement in a hot second if it meant you could get the satisfaction of seeing me crumble. So give me half of what I’m owed. Right now. I promise I’ll stay on for the next five weeks, but I demand some kind of assurance. Tangible proof that you’re not going to Mason me the way you did in high school.”

  “Mason you?”

  “Yes. Leave me high and dry. Kick me off the tour because you’re bored. Because you’re an asshole.” Her voice takes on a beggar’s edge that I don’t think she notices. “Please, Mase. Give me this failsafe. Then you can find any girl you want and sleep with them all day long for all I care.”

  Balls of coal smolder in my belly, awaiting their fire. Mack flings these words, sneering, her entire body language indicating she can’t stand the sight of me. I’m ready to prove her wrong.

  “Fine. You can have the money.”

  Her brows pinch together. “Thank you.”

  “On one condition.”

  Her forehead smooths, like she was expecting a catch all along.

  I invade her personal space, and this time, she doesn’t back away. Her gaze glitters with challenge.

  “I hate this,” I say, so close to her lips, my voice becomes a rasp. “It pisses me off you have such a concrete view of me. But you know what? Every bit of me wants to prove you fucking right.”

  She snorts. “Typical. If someone thinks you’re a dick, you might as well spray your dickness all over them, right? Why bother trying to change their minds?”

  This is the moment. The time I’ve been craving, when I unleash my most lethal smile.

  “You can have the money,” I say, “If you give me Jane.”

  Mack falters. Her legs lose their stiffness and she presses against the stair’s railing as if she meant to all along. She says carefully, “I don’t follow.”

  “Don’t play dumb, Mack. It’s not in your DNA. You come to my room tonight, and you come as Jane Landers. And I get to do with you as I please.”

  Her mouth works. Mack’s eyes flit back and forth, everywhere but at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s the best damn idea I’ve had since signing you on to this tour. I’ll be the asshole you’ve never shaken off, and you be the hooker you keep telling me you love embodying. Let our alter egos rule.” I smile. “And let us fuck. You’re gonna work for your advance.”

  Green fire explodes in her eyes. “How dare you.”

  I laugh, but with a warning. “You want half the cash upfront? You do your job, and you do it well.” I tip her chin up with my finger. “After all, you keep telling me how much you covet this job, how you’ll never leave it. And you’ve absolutely fucked clients a lot less appealing than me. So show me, Mack. Show me what it’s like to fuck without feeling, since it’s only ever been one-sided for me. Give me the best fucking client experience you’ve ever come up with.”

  “If you do this…” she whispers fiercely. “If you do this, I’ll hate you. During the gap in time where I didn’t see you for ten years, I’ve been nothing but coolly indifferent toward you. I’d see you on TV or online and think nothing, because that’s how I decided to view you after high school. But now?” Mack angles so our faces come closer, like two tigers in a cage. “I’ll do it, but I’ll despise you for it. And I won’t ever forget the way you used me and my body to prove a fucking point.”

  I bow so our foreheads almost touch, then say, quietly and simply, “Good.”

  I drink up her silence, then storm off, my boots clanging against the metal as I take the stairs and throw open the emergency exit.

  Mack’s been goading me since the night I found her in a luxury hotel lobby. I’m tired of fighting it. So I’ll give her what she wants.

  What she constantly dares.

  She wants to see the old Mason so bad? Well, he’s more than happy to greet her.

  21

  McKenna

  High School

  Senior Year

  I pull back the deadbolt and stare at a freshly bruised face.

  It’s the same eye and more of his cheek this time. What was slowly becoming the puce-yellow color of healing is back to an angry, swollen purple, and the white of his eye half-bloodshot.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Mason, but it’s with a resigned tone, a what more could you possibly think to do to me kind of question.

  Mason shoves his hands into his pockets. He wears no jacket, using an open, denim button-down shirt to cover his stained white tee instead. It’s cold today—May supposedly harboring spring somewhere, but New York’s decided to delay any kind of blooming flower bouquet in favor of icy pricks of snow blasting into people’s bodies instead.

  Kind of how like I feel upon seeing Mason on the doorstep to my home.

  “I, uh, was wondering if tutoring was still on the table,” he said.

  I glance down at his feet. Dirty, battered, used-to-be-white sneakers stand on my stoop, one with a grayed-over lace untied.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  I keep my focus on his shoes when I say, “Waiting for you to shuffle your feet. Or shift in some way with a bashful apology. Maybe have your cheeks redden not from a bruise for once, but from embarrassment over how you’ve treated me.” I shrug. “Anything, really, to show me why you think you deserve any kind of help from the girl you’ve repeatedly bullied.”

  He exhales with an impatient puff. “Look, Big M—”

  “Not the start of getting back in my good graces, you jerk.”

  “Okay. Fine. Mack. Just Mack, then.” Mason levels his shoulders. “I’m tired of being here. In this town. Last night with my pops was the last straw, I mean—if I don’t pass my classes, I’m stuck repeating senior year, while the rest of my guys, they move on. Rex is moving into the city, Wyn’s going with him. Easton got accepted into a college out of state. He swears he’ll come back to practice, but … I know they’re moving on. And our band is the one thing I have. The one thing. They can go off and build their lives, but where will I be at?”

  The question’s rhetorical, but I say anyway, “Still in the craphole you’ve created for yourself, most likely.”

  A muscle ticks in Mason’s healthy cheek. He purses his lips, then winces as it tightens the bruised side of his face. “Alright. I deserve that.”

  “You deserve a whole lot more.” I lean against the door frame and cross my arms. “And worse. Much worse.”

  In truth, these are the most words I’ve ever heard Mason speak. The most I’ve heard him confess. But I can’t let his tough life and the angry shell he’s formed around himself get to me.

  “Where’s the trap?” I ask.

  “The what?”

  I peer around the doorframe, searching the sidewalk below and the road beyond that. Waiting for a red Volvo SUV to come screeching around the corner with a carton of eggs to toss at my face. Or pig’s blood.

  In doing so, I glaze over Mason, who I’m trying not to linger on too long, but my stupid conscience notes his shivers, the concave hollows in his cheeks. The messed up, tangled chestnut hair. And the bruises on his neck. I wonder when he last ate.

  “This is a set-up, right?” I say, making sure there’s no indication in my voice that this battered boy is getting to me. “Amy’ll be here any second with her cohorts, and I’ll be kidnapped again, and this time they’ll strip me in the streets of my neighborhood. Mrs. Dawes next door is ninety. It’d probably kill her if she saw my boobs in public.”

  The mention of my breasts on public view sharpens Mason’s eyes, but not with shame. They go dark with passion as they rake down
my neck and land on my pink cashmere sweater, my nipples safely housed behind the material, but dammit, not impervious to his attention.

  “No.” Mason shakes his head, hands still in his pockets. “There’s no trick, B—Mack. It’s just me. Asking you for help, even though I don’t deserve shit from you. I’ve bottomed-out, but I still want to get out of here. I need to leave my home. I can’t turn into my brother. Or my pops. I can’t…” He hisses through his teeth, a hand coming up to dig into his hairline and push it back. He stares up at my house, his jaw working, then comes back to me. “This is my last, desperate move. I get it if you slam the door in my face. I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet. But I got nothing left in me. I got no one else who’d be willing to … and I’m—I’m s…”

  Good lord. He can’t even get out an apology without choking on his own spit.

  At last, he gets it out, and it leaves the flush on his cheeks I’m looking for. “I apologize for everything. I’ll leave you alone from now on, okay?”

  “Why, thank you, Mason, for promising to leave me alone for the next month, despite years of making my life hell.”

  “You don’t know what Hell is—” he bites his tongue, yet he can’t temper the angry flash over his features. “What do you want? For me to get down on my knees? Publicly beg for your services? Fine, Mack. Anything. I really want this. I swear.”

  Every strong bone in my body tells me to advise him to go find Miss Lucas for help, then slam the door in his face like he predicted. But the one organ I have that’s fighting back, the red-blooded beats of compassion, thump-thump, thump-thump, urges me to open the door wider for Mason to step in.

  It’s what my mom would’ve done. Despite a person’s past or their history, she was always willing to help if they needed it.

  “Tell no one about this,” I say, then step aside.

  Mason raises his head at the gesture.

  He doesn’t say thank you. I don’t expect him to, since in the four years of knowing who he is, I’ve never witnessed Mason Payne grovel before anyone.

  “There’s a staircase to the basement at the end of the hallway,” I say. “Go down there and wait. I’ll grab some of my books.”

  He nods, his expression blank, but his attention darting everywhere. Mason takes in the expansive foyer, the dust-free mahogany finishes, the marbled floors. He cocks his head at the dangling, Swarovski chandelier, an addition of my stepmom’s, but keeps his mouth shut as he follows my instruction and strides down the first hallway.

  I’m right behind Mason when I hear my dad say, “Hey, sweetie,” as he’s coming down the main staircase.

  I shove Mason through the door to the basement before my dad notices him. Mason grunts at the move, but stays quiet when I shut the heavy wood and spin to face my dad.

  “Who was at the door?” Dad asks as he fixes his watch around his wrist.

  “Oh. Delivery guy. Wrong house.”

  “Ah. Mrs. Dawes ordering accidental Chinese food on her phone again?”

  “Probably,” I say, while tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Where are you off to?”

  “Some function or another. Debbie’s joining me,” he says as I follow him into the kitchen, referring to my stepmom. “We’ll be out rather late. You’ll be okay? Order pizza for dinner?”

  It’s the third “function” they’ve been to this week.

  “I was hoping I could cook you dinner tonight, actually,” I say, disappointment swirling. “Since I haven’t seen you for more than ten minutes this week. You know, like we used to? When it was just you and me for a time?”

  “Ah, sweets.” He kisses the top of my head, then moves to a hanging, silver pot and straightens his tie through the reflection. “This is a big meeting I can’t miss. A negotiation of a whole lotta funds. I have to be there. Especially if my girl’s going to Yale.” He looks over and winks.

  My dad is handsome, as most single, middle-aged women and the few friends I have will tell me. He’s the silver fox everyone speaks of—tall, full head of salted hair, chiseled features and a flat stomach despite all his company events featuring open bars.

  But to this day, I still see a saddened, down-trodden man who’d come into the den in the evenings and open up Scrabble so we could both get our minds off our newly widowed, motherless status.

  Or I used to, anyway.

  Scrunching my lips to one side, I nod. “Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning before school.”

  “No can do, sweetie.” Dad comes over and squeezes my shoulders. “I’m taking Debbie on a quick trip for a long weekend to St. Lucia. To thank her for all her efforts in helping me land this deal. It’s a big one, honey. It’ll keep us in this house and make sure you can go to the Ivy League. Really, she’s working the room for us as a family.”

  My upper lip goes stiff, but I say nothing as he pats my shoulders, kisses my head, then departs in a wave of cologne as familiar to me as childhood memories. Debbie, for all her giggles and manicures and perfect visage, is no carbon copy of my mother, and never will be.

  She knows I know it, therefore, we don’t get along well.

  On a sigh, I thump up the stairs to my room, choose a few assigned novels for English class and my notes and laptop, and move downstairs, where there’s someone in this expansive, hollow home that actually waits for me.

  Whether he’s lying in wait or waiting for my help, that’s yet to be determined.

  Mason’s turned on the lights in the finished basement and he sits on the couch in front of an entire wall of shelving containing books I’ve had since I could read. Everything from Peter Rabbit, to Nora Roberts, to a neglected Scrabble board decorates the shelves. Being in its presence brings me immediate calm.

  This is my safe space. My hobbit hole, my secret library, my quiet solitude.

  If Mason screws it up I really will match his good eye to his bad one.

  “Here,” I say as I come up beside him, dumping a stack of books on his lap. He jolts, but covers it up with a frown. “Start at the top.”

  “Wait, I gotta read all these?”

  “I don’t have Cliff Notes for you, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can help as you take it chapter by chapter.”

  “Chap…” he trails off, staring at the five books on his lap in awe. “I’m gonna be here forever.”

  “It’s not a bad place to be,” I say quietly, taking a seat on the other side of the couch. At the sudden vulnerability in my voice, I cover it by smiling and saying, “This is where the genius happens.”

  Mason doesn’t like my smile. His stare narrows on my mouth and his brows pinch together. “Something happen up there with your pops?”

  “Nothing out of the norm.” I scratch a fake itch on my neck. “Can we start? We have a long night ahead of us. I should probably order the pizza now…”

  At the mention of food, Mason’s stomach lets out an audible grumble. He covers it by shifting and focusing major attention on cracking open Catcher in the Rye.

  I’m no second-time fool. I don’t say a word about his hunger and instead tap out an order on my phone. “I’m getting the toppings I want. Like pineapple. And olives.”

  Mason flicks a page. “Fine. I don’t care.”

  “Only pineapple and olives,” I say, tap-tapping away. “It’s how I like it.”

  “Good for you. Enjoy.”

  “Great.” I add an order of garlic-cheese sticks and another pizza, then place my phone on the coffee table. “Go back to the first page of the first chapter. You’re not even skimming the words, Mason.”

  “But I—”

  “Do it.”

  We work long into the night, Mason staying over and sleeping in the basement, next to my books, beside my precious artifacts. He ends up staying the next four days.

  When the pizzas come, I tell Mason there was a mistake, that the second pepperoni one was accidentally included in an automatic order I usually place when Dad’s around.

  Mason doesn’t question
it. He eats the whole pie, then belches as a thank you.

  22

  Mason

  Night falls with little fanfare.

  We didn’t have a concert this evening, instead taking an extra twenty-four hours to rest up in London and give our staff the day off after treating them to brunch. I spent the afternoon tuning my bass guitar, raiding the mini bar, avoiding the more elaborate ruses by fans to sneak up to our floor, and thinking of McKenna.

  No. Jane.

  Tonight, I ordered her to be the sex kitten she profits from, because I’m a curious man. Calling her the opposite of who she was in high school doesn’t come close to what she’s become. Where is the girl who kept caring, no matter how many spiked chains I threw her way? What happened to replace the sweet, married, 2.5 children, corporate woman I thought she’d become?

  And why the fuck do I care?

  There was a time I couldn’t prevent droplets of compassion from sinking into my blood upon being around her. No matter how hard I tried, and insulted, and fought, she stood her ground, and I respected that. But the dilution wasn’t enough to drown the hate of my childhood, my circumstances, my life. My black-ink hatred was fueled by other people’s distaste and judgment, the automatic brush-off of such a screwed up kid.

  Mack’s hatred of me satisfied my hunger most of all.

  These days, most of my working parts want her to keep hating me.

  I’m sipping on scotch in a complementary crystal glass, gazing out the window at the foreign skyline, when I hear a knock on the door.

  Turning, I check the clock. She’s fifteen minutes late, but I assume that’s deliberate. A show of power, what little she has of it.

  “Come in,” I say, and head to a sofa chair. I sit, crossing my leg at the ankle, and sip from my scotch in the gloom.

  The door creaks open, golden light spilling into my suite from the hallway and outlining a shadowed, curvaceous form. I’ve deliberately left the lights off in the room, relying on the backlit city and keen vision as my strongest senses.