“She coming?” I hear the muffled question.

“Obviously,” Mackenna rumbles. They laugh. I can still hear him under my ear. Between my legs, I tingle harder.

“Might not be such a good idea. The girls are plotting her murder.”

“Bah. This one could chew them up and spit them out,” Mackenna says.

I can’t figure out if he’s insulting me or not. Is he taking my side instead of his floozies’? Something inside me feels warm, but I quell it. It’s been too long since we were friends. Sure, we had a closet make-out, but that was crazy. Lunacy. An animal moment. Currently, I’m too weak to fight the pull of his hand. I can’t get up, but the fact that I’m right here doesn’t mean we’re okay.

I drift off again, thinking about his name. His name means “son of the handsome one.” I looked it up when I was young because everyone made fun of my name.

I’m familiar with Pandora and her mistake—letting all kinds of bad shit into the world when she opened the box. I’ve always been at war with my name. I’m angry at it because, right away, it makes me think I can never be really good. I’m a jinx. I cause bad shit and represent nothing lucky, I suppose. But him? He’s this rock god. Son of the handsome one. All my feelings return to my body in a flash when I realize he’s brushing his mouth over mine.

What’s he doing? Stop him!

My body seizes as my brain shouts the command, and I make an inventory check and hear plane motors. He’s tonguing me now. I feel his tongue in my body, a body that was last used by him. And his mouth was last used by me.

I want to get angry, but I’m too busy lying here, absorbing this kiss that’s almost like the kiss in all Magnolia’s fairy tales. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, she says, but the truth is, I do. Now Mackenna is the villain in my story and the reason I should’ve become a lesbian. If only my body had gone along with the plot.

But now he’s kissing me like he’s enjoying me. He probably got horny and decided I was handy. I stiffen at the thought and try to pull away, when a hand cradles the back of my head to prevent me. He whispers, “Shh. I’m just tasting you.” Languorously, he fits his lips harder to mine, his mouth moving.

“You need to drug your women to kiss them,” I slur as he continues rubbing his tongue to mine.

“Just the wild ones like you,” he gruffly teases.

I cannot process. I cannot control myself when he teases me—I’ve always liked it because it makes me smile, and I never smile. He tastes good, like whiskey and lazy, cocky male. I never thought lazy, cocky male could taste so good, or that being relaxed would make me savor lazy, cocky male even better than when I am on full alert. I can’t comprehend what’s going on. The things awakening in my body. The hole in my chest suddenly feeling full.

Protests form in my brain, but they don’t reach my tongue because his slick, warm, whiskey mouth is caressing it.

He’s toxic for me, and I can’t pull away. Instead, I’m rubbing my tongue against his slowly, savoring him. When I tell myself, Enough! and edge back, he follows me and croons, “Shh, relax your mouth, baby. Let me in.”

He shifts so I can feel it—the bulge between his legs. I suddenly want it feverishly, but to my despair, I hear snickering. Then I hear him ask the flight attendant for a blanket. I didn’t even realize they still had those, but I feel him cover me. The drug is still heavy in my system and I try to open my eyes, but before I can look into his face, his lips cover mine. “How could I forget for a moment what you tasted like . . . how addictive you are . . . ,” he whispers to me. He’s devouring me with lazy abandon. He cups one breast under the blanket. I don’t know what I’m doing.

Yes I do.

No I don’t.

Yes I do.

My mouth is moving faster, and his rhythm matches mine as he thumbs one nipple. Years of repressed longing seem to flood my body and energize my mouth. Nothing has ever tasted as good as him. Nothing.

The way he felt last night crashes over me, and suddenly I’m the one kissing him back with abandon. He groans. The sound reverberates inside me. “God, that’s right. Want me, Pink? Want this? Fuck the rest. Let’s have fun. Just you and me.”

His voice jerks me back to the present.

Fun?

The pain of losing him hits me full force.

Using all the force I can muster, I edge back, wiping my mouth angrily. He looks at me and blinks as if dazed from our kiss, and we both survey each other’s mouths. He looks openly ravenous, but I’m still trying to decide how I feel. Trying to find my usual anger.

“The cameras just caught that,” I say.

“Yeah, couldn’t be helped.” He eyes my mouth again, smirking in obvious satisfaction. “You were too tempting, Pink. You smell like fucking coconut, and I haven’t smelled that in years.”

I scowl. “You’re just a pervert posing as a rockstar to hide your love of bras.”

We land. I try to reach upward for my carry-on, but he takes care of it for me. His T-shirt lifts as he pulls our shit out of the top compartment, and I can see his abs and the tattoo on the inside of his arm. It says something I don’t understand.

“What does that tattoo mean?”

He quirks one eyebrow and says nothing as his eyes move to my mouth. “Says I’m a dickhead. You know, if that mouth doesn’t look well kissed, then my name is not Mackenna.”

I’m waiting for the indignation to come, but I’m still so relaxed, it doesn’t.

“Fuck you. You’re lying. What does it say?”

He smiles, because he clearly won’t tell me. Then he surprises me by leaning over and tipping my face with his curled thumb, his silver ring cold under my chin. “I may not have been good enough when we were seventeen,” he whispers, holding my eyes with a pair of wolfish ones that shine with an arresting intensity, “but trust me, I’m good enough now, Pink. I’m more than good enough.”

“You’re wrong,” I whisper angrily. “Money. Fame. That has nothing to do with it. You were good enough before, but you’re certainly not good enough now.”

“Look at you spitting fire like some angry little crow. How many fucking pills do you need to take to chill?”

“One, actually. You’re the antidote.”

I brush past him and out of the plane, feeling him amble behind me. I know he’s close when camera flashes at the arrival gate start exploding and girls start screaming, “Crack Bikini! Kenna! Lex! Jax!”

Lex and Jax were in some private school, and they met Mackenna when he moved. Supposedly the twins liked pissing off their rich dad, and nobody pissed off Dad more than a guy like Mackenna.

Mackenna Jones was rumored to have been on a suicide mission. He smoked whatever he felt like, drank, played loud music, made a mess, didn’t study. He also did extreme sports, and he beat people up. After his dad was convicted for drug trafficking, his uncle took him in, but he was no better. Judging by Mackenna’s lifestyle, it’ll be a miracle if he lives to his fifties.

Crack Bikini was present at a bar fight years ago, and a reporter at the time managed to capture a quote, a quote that has since become famous—or infamous.

“What is this? This a fight?” Mackenna reportedly asked.

“Yeah,” someone said. “Don’t know whose.”

Mackenna grinned, a little mayhem clearly making his heart happy. “Well, it’s mine now.” He whistled to the Vikings, and they jumped right in, not even caring who or what the fuck they were fighting for.

Now they’re older, but I’m not sure they’re that much more mature. That is, until a crying woman makes Mackenna stop in his tracks.

“Thank you. Thank you, oh, thank you,” she says, reaching out to him as though to touch a vision. I’m stunned when he pauses, confused, and takes her hand. “Nothing in my life has inspired me like your music, hearing your voice turns my day around . . .”

It’s almost too intimate to watch. I ease back as I hear him whisper something to her and sign the paper she extends. His eyes shine with sincerity. He’s not being an asshole, like he’s supposed to be. He looks . . . genuine. His smile is natural, his eyes are on her as he gives her some line that makes her beam and blush.

Again my walls tilt a little. Even the floor seems to tilt.

When he pries himself away from the crowd and heads toward me, he lifts one of his eyebrows.

“What? Nothing prickly to say?”

“No.” I walk silently next to him. His actions have touched places I never expected. I open my mouth and hear myself admitting, “It must be nice to make a difference in someone’s life.”

He stares straight ahead and keeps his voice low while the camera crew follows the entire band and the bodyguards struggle to keep the fans at bay. “It used to be what fed me . . .”

“But?”

“But it stopped filling me up and started draining me instead. Pretty soon you’re walking with a hole in your gut, singing songs you can’t hear anymore.”

I remain quiet, a strange hurt inside me. I want it to be easy to blame him for leaving me, but he had a dream to chase and I couldn’t expect to be his everything. I want to hate him because he hurt me, but he seems so human that I can’t do anything but stay quiet and absorb the way he’s making me feel right now.