“Coop, it’s your serve,” Steph says expectantly.
“I’m out,” I tell the group, throwing up my hands. I seek out my brother’s eyes on the other side of the net.
“Evan” is all I have to say for him to jog to my side. When I nod in Mac’s direction, his expression darkens.
“Fuck,” he curses.
“I know.”
Trying to look like we’re not in too much of a hurry, we make our way over there to protests from our teams for walking off the game. Screw the game. My ass is about to be in deep shit if this goes sideways.
“How are we playing this?” Evan murmurs.
“Not sure. Follow my lead.” As we approach the water’s edge, it occurs to me that it might’ve been better if I’d pretended not to notice Kincaid and kept my distance, camouflaged myself in the group of volleyball players. But there’s no way in hell I’m leaving Mac hanging with that asshole around.
“There a problem here?” Putting my arm around Mac’s shoulder, I square up to Kincaid, who is conspicuously alone.
A moment of confusion crosses his face as he recognizes me. It was probably too much to hope he had forgotten all about me.
His eyes narrow as he does the math in his head.
“Hang on, this is the guy?” he demands, his head swiveling back to Mackenzie.
Mac shoots me a frustrated glare. She notices Evan lingering nearby and lets out a sigh. “Yes, this is the guy. And now we’re leaving. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, Pres.”
“Hang on a minute.” He sounds incensed as we start to walk away. “This is goddamn convenient. I know this loser.”
I feel Mac stiffen slightly. She stops, turning toward her ex. “What are you talking about?”
Kincaid meets my eyes with a pompous smirk. “She has no idea, does she?”
I have a split second to decide. Deep down, though, I know there’s no choice, at least not with Kincaid here providing an audience.
So I say, “Am I supposed to know you?”
No one plays dumb better than a kid who pulled the twin swap on damn near every algebra test in school.
“Yeah, nice try, bro.” He returns his attention to Mac. “Let me guess, this guy showed up right after you got to town? Some friendly townie you happened to run into on a night out with the girls. Stop me if this sounds familiar.”
A frown touches her lips. “Cooper, what is he talking about?”
The second she fixes her concerned green eyes at me, my mouth turns to sand. Acid rises in my stomach.
“No idea,” I lie.
I scare myself with how easily I can lie to her. How convincingly the words slide out of my mouth. Not the slightest flinch.
“Mackenzie, babe, listen to me.” Kincaid reaches out to touch her, and it takes a hell of an effort to not break his hand as I step between them. Mouth flattening, he drops his arm. “The weekend before school started, this guy picked a fight with me in a bar and I got him fired on the spot. Remember? I had a black eye when I helped you move into the dorm?”
“You told me you got it playing basketball,” she accuses with no small amount of venom in her voice.
“Yeah, okay, I lied.” He concedes the point grudgingly, hurrying to make his case as Mac’s crossed arms and lack of eye contact say he’s losing her interest quickly. “But I’m not lying now.”
“How am I supposed to tell the difference?” Nobody matches up to Mac in a battle of attrition. She’d argue all day about the number of clouds in the sky just to be right.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He’s losing his patience, tossing his hands in the air. “He’s only fucking you to get back at me.”
“Alright, that’s enough.” If I can’t put his face in the sand and end this here, I’m not sticking around to let him blow up my life. “You need to get outta here, man. Leave her alone.”
“Mackenzie, come on,” he pleads. “You’re not seriously falling for his BS, right? I know you’re young, but you can’t be this stupid.”
That does it. The thick accents of condescension trigger Mac’s last nerve, and her expression grows stormy.
“The dumbest thing I ever did was dating you for so long,” she retorts. “Fortunately, that’s not a decision I have to live with.”
She tears off toward our group, brushing past Evan. As the two of us fall in line behind her, I have a vivid flashback to the many times we got marched to the principal’s office by our teachers. I feel rather than see Evan asking me if we’re good, but I don’t have an answer until we reach our patch of sand and Mac spins on me.
“Out with it,” she orders.
“With what?”
Even as I stonewall her, I wonder if this is the moment I should come clean. Admit I had less than honorable intentions at first, but that things changed after we met.
She’d understand. Maybe even get a kick out of it. We’d have a good laugh and it’d become a funny story we tell at parties.
Or she’d never talk to me again, until I come home one day to my house on fire and a sign stuck in the ground with We should see other people written on it in ash.
“Don’t mess with me.” Mac sticks a finger in my chest. “What was he talking about? You two know each other?”
Once again, we have an audience, and once again, feeling our friends’ eyes on us, my courage abandons me. If I tell her the truth in private, there’s a chance I’ll lose her. If I tell her the truth in front of a dozen other people, losing her is a guarantee. She’d be humiliated in front of everyone. She’d never forgive me.
This time, the lies burn my tongue. “Everything I know about him I heard around town, or from you. Couldn’t have picked that guy out of a lineup.”
She becomes eerily still, barely breathing as she stares at me.
Panic churns in my gut, but on the outside I maintain a neutral expression. I stick to my story. I learned a long time ago, those who get caught are the ones who break. The key to a successful lie is to believe it. Then deny, deny, deny.
“Was there a fight?” Mac cocks her head as if she’s trapped me.
“Mac, they could fill football stadiums with the number of idiots who get drunk and start shit. If he was one of them, I honestly wouldn’t remember.”
Visibly frustrated, she turns to Evan. “Did Cooper really get fired?”
For a split second, I worry their new platonic romance might end me.
“He had a summer job at Steph’s bar.” With a shrug, Evan even has me convinced. Guess we’re still on the same side when it counts. “It was temporary.”
She looks past Evan to where Steph has resettled in her chair and picked up her book. “Steph?” Mac says. “Is that true?”
Without looking up from her book, Steph nods behind her thick black sunglasses. “It was a summer gig.”
Relief trickles into me, then dissolves when I notice Heidi edging closer to the group. There’s indecision in her expression.
Fuck.
I know that look. Mischief for mischief’s sake. Heidi’s the girl who’s never missed an opportunity to set a fire just to hear the screams. Add to this the fact that she’s been mad at me more often than not lately, and that she’s not a fan of this arrangement or Mac. But when our gazes briefly meet, I silently plead with her to give me this one thing.
“Seriously, guys, I’m starved,” she says with a bored whine. “Can we get the hell out of here already?”
By the skin of my teeth, I make it out alive.
Every day after that, I’m holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Looking over my shoulder for Kincaid to sneak up on us again. Mac seems to let the matter go, and Evan and I have been avoiding the subject by miles. But it was a close call. Too close. A reminder how fragile our relationship is and how easily it can all be ripped from my hands. That realization hits me harder than I thought possible. She’s under my skin and getting deeper.
The night of our run-in with Kincaid, after Mac had gone to bed, I ended up in my workshop sucking on a cigarette like a madman, hoping the nicotine would ease the guilt, the stress, the fear. Usually, I only smoke when I’m drinking, and even that isn’t a hard and fast rule. But lying to Mackenzie had wrecked me.
Evan found me there at one in the morning, nearly half a pack’s worth of cigarette butts in the ashtray on my worktable.
“I need to tell her the truth,” I’d said miserably.
He’d balked. “Are you fucked? What’s that gonna achieve, man? The plan was aborted. You’re with her because you like her.”
“But it started as a way to get back at Kincaid. Me and her, this whole relationship, was founded on bad intentions.”
In the end, Evan convinced me to stay quiet. Though who am I kidding, it didn’t take much convincing. The thought of losing Mackenzie rips my insides to shreds. I can’t lose her. And Evan was wrong—I’m not with her because I like her.
I’m in love with her.
And so I banish the guilt to the furthest recesses of my mind. I work hard to be the kind of man Mac needs, deserves. And then, one morning, we’re lying in bed and I take my first deep breath in almost a month. She’s barely awake when she rolls over and drapes her leg over my hip. An overwhelming sense of calm I’ve never known before envelopes me as she cuddles into my chest.
“Morning,” she whispers. “What time is it?”
“Dunno. Ten, maybe?”
“Ten?” She sits abruptly. “Shoot. Your uncle will be here soon. We gotta clean this place up.”
It’s cute she thinks Levi gives a shit.
She leaves me alone in bed to take a shower, reappearing ten minutes later with wet hair and a flushed face.
“Ugh. I can’t find my blue dress,” she grumbles from the closet, half of which now contains her clothes.
It’s been weeks since she came to stay with us, and yet nobody’s brought up the prospect of her moving out. I’m happy to ignore the subject. Sure, having another person in the house has been an adjustment. And maybe we’re still learning how to respect each other’s quirks. But she makes the place feel warm again, like a home rather than a house. She gives the place some life after years of bad memories and empty rooms.
She just fits.
“So wear something else. Or don’t and come back to bed.”
“It’s my take me seriously dress,” she calls from under what sounds like a mountain of hangers.
She’s got no reason to be nervous about meeting with Levi. He might look intimidating, but he’s the friendliest guy you’d ever meet. And yes, there’s a lot to be said for not mixing business with pleasure, but I’m choosing to look at this possible endeavor of them working on the hotel together from an optimistic perspective.
“How about this one?” She comes out modeling a green top that matches her eyes and a pair of navy pants that hug her ass in a way that is not helping my semi.
“You look great.”
Her answering smile. The way her head tilts and eyes shine. Those looks that are only for me. They get me right in the fucking chest.
I’ve absolutely lost my head over this chick.
“What?” she asks, lingering at the foot of the bed and wrapping her hair in a knot atop her head.
“Nothing.” All I can do is smile at her and hope I don’t screw this up. “I think I’m happy, is all.”
Mac comes over and plants a kiss on my cheek. “Me too.”
“Yeah? Even with, you know, your parents basically disowning you?”
Shrugging, she walks into the bathroom. I get dressed and watch her in the mirror as she puts on her makeup.
“I don’t love not being on speaking terms with them,” she admits. “But they’re the ones being stubborn. Choosing to live my own life is hardly grounds for excommunication.”
I’ve been worried that the longer this dispute with her parents rages on in silent conflict, the more she’ll come to regret her decision to leave school. To buy the hotel. To be with me. But so far, there’s been no sign of remorse on her part.
“They’re going to have to get over it eventually,” she says, turning to look at me. “I’m not stressing over it, you know? Rather not give them the satisfaction.”
I search her face for any traces of dishonesty and find none. As far as I can tell, she is happy. I’m trying not to let myself sink into that paranoid place. I have a way of spiraling with anticipation of catastrophe. But that’s always been the rhythm of my life. Things start looking too good and a house falls out of the sky.
This time, I’m hoping she’s broken the curse.
