Page 48 of Take What Hurts

Elliott eyed Mackenzie’s collapsing ankles warily. “Uh—there’s hot chocolate at the concession stand. Want to join me?”

Mackenzie rolled her eyes and sagged with relief, all but clinging to Elliott as she half carried her off the ice. “I thought you’d never ask. With whipped cream, please.”

Elliott scoffed. “Is there any other way?” She sat Mackenzie on the bench and removed her own skates before moving in the direction of the concession stand.

She returned with two hot chocolates piled high with whipped cream and peppermint sprinkles and handed one to a now skate-less Mackenzie, who smiled broadly, wrapping both hands around the cup. “Thanks.” She took a sip and hummed low in her throat with delight, and Elliott swallowed, dragging her eyes back to her own cup.

“Peppermint sprinkles?”

And Elliott was fucking powerless against the hushed surprise that colored Mackenzie’s tone, and when she turned to face her again, her blue eyes were like a fucking tractor beam, and Elliott sat there, suspended in time, watching Mackenzie’s eyes close with ecstasy.

“I love peppermint,” she moaned, then took another sip, her tongue darting out afterward to lick the whipped cream off her upper lip.

Elliott felt that lick as though it had been delivered directly to her clit, and she brought her own cup to her lips and took a too-big sip, the liquid scalding all the way down her throat. She coughed around the low chuckle that wheezed out of her. “Um—” she croaked out, then started again. “Yeah, I know. You always, uh… taste like peppermint.”

She lifted her eyes back to Mackenzie in time to see the mottled blush spreading up her neck, and Elliott’s smile—a proper one, devoid of ugly worry—crawled over her lips and into her cheeks. Despite herself, when Mackenzie shuffled minutely closer to her on the bench, Elliott leaned into the warmth like it would sustain her.

“I can’t decide if that’s creepy or”—when she lifted her eyes to Elliott’s, Elliott reveled in the dancing heat that had darkened them to midnight—“extremely sweet.”

Elliott watched Mackenzie’s eyes tick down to Elliott’s mouth, and Elliott couldn’t help herself. She let her arm wrap itself low on Mackenzie’s hips and closed the distance between them, gently pressing her lips to Mackenzie’s—all chocolate and whipped cream and peppermint and so soft.

When they broke apart, Mackenzie grinned and dropped her head to Elliott’s shoulder, the blond hair not covered by her knitted hat tickling at the skin on Elliott’s neck. But Elliott hadn’t missed the way Mackenzie’s eyes had darted around the rink furtively in the millisecond their lips broke apart, and Elliott stiffened with the way her brain spun into overdrive. They sat in silence, and Elliott stared unseeingly at those still on the ice as they circled their way around the rink. Elliott’s arm remained around Mackenzie—like it was frozen there—the smell of laundry and the freshness that was all Mackenzie squirming into her brain matter and settling in her blood. It was its own form of torture.

She ached with it. Ached in her teeth and her bones and her marrow. With an insatiable desire to tell Mackenzie what she wanted. What she possibly even needed at this point. That she wanted her—all of her. Not bits and pieces. Not whatever their situation would allow them to have at the time. No. All of her.

But she’d done this before—put herself out there and told another person what she wanted. And so she swallowed the urgent need to let the words fall out of her mouth without another thought, and she accepted, like she had when they’d first agreed on how it would be, that this was what she could have now and tried to trust that, eventually, they could have everything.

“You okay?” Mackenzie’s head had lifted off Elliott’s shoulder just enough that Elliott could see the glint of her blue eyes. Elliott forced her mouth into a smile, but even to her it felt tight. Like it was pulling at her skin.

“Yep, I’m good.” As Mackenzie’s mouth turned down in a frown, Elliott forced her eyes back onto the rink, staring at a spot in the bleachers on the other side.

Apparently reading, correctly, that this was not the time to push, Mackenzie sighed and changed tack. “Would you look at the two of them?” Elliott blinked herself out of the poisonous fog in her head and focused on the spot on the rink where Frankie and Hannah were collapsed in a heap, half on top of each other. Hannah’s scarf had become dislodged and had somehow caught itself in the zipper on Frankie’s coat. Hannah was scowling as she attempted to pull the threads out of the zipper. Frankie was laughing and, though Elliott was sure she was trying to be of help, appeared to only be making things worse.

Elliott snorted through another sip of her drink. “Well, they hate each other.”

She felt every part of Mackenzie’s body, pressed tightly against Elliott’s, quiver with suppressed laughter. “No danger of anyone mistaking that for compatibility, is there?”

TWENTY-SIX

MACKENZIE

Mackenzie straightened herself in her chair at the knock on her office door, frowning. “Come in!”

Anna strode into the room and dropped into the client seat, opposite Mackenzie.

“Anna, wh⁠—”

“I want to withdraw the offer. They’re taking too long.”

Mackenzie withheld the growl that threatened to escape, both at the surprise intrusion at 4:45 p.m. on a Friday and at the newest seesawing of Anna’s approach to her divorce. Mackenzie painfully managed to keep her face neutral. Think of the partnership. “I don’t recommend that approach. We did give them three weeks to consider the latest offer, and they still have another week.”

Anna folded her arms across her chest. “And?”

Mackenzie pursed her lips, tapping a blunt fingernail on the legal pad in front of her on the desk. The obtuseness was starting to grate. Mackenzie wasn’t certain whether Anna needed Mackenzie to explain everything to the nth degree or if she behaved this way because she had an inkling it made Mackenzie’s blood boil. After taking a steadying breath, Mackenzie explained: “Well, a court could draw the inference that the offer wasn’t made in good faith if it’s withdrawn before the consideration period has elapsed.”

Anna rolled her hand out in front of her, mouth gaping like she thought it was Mackenzie who was slow. “Okaaay?” She drew out the word, and anger rose and stuck in Mackenzie’s throat.

She swallowed around it and reclined in her chair. “It would look bad to a court. Like it was a throwaway offer you never intended to let them consider. That, combined with the text messages and the initial failure to make full and frank disclosure is unlikely to work in your favor. It’s inadvisable to withdraw the offer.”