to the locket at my throat. Right now I really, really don’t want to lie to Noah. “I remember some things. I know your brother died because my father gave him experimental supplements that caused his heart to fail. But I don’t know what I did specifically to make you hate me, beyond the fact that I wear the surname Malloy. I know that doesn’t excuse your pain, but that’s the truth. I don’t fucking remember.”
Noah looks back at me then. The anguish in his eyes is so raw, so primal, it draws me toward him. The two of us are magnets drawn together by wrath. “My brother never would have taken those pills if it weren’t for you.”
I unlock the door and hold it open, not wide enough that he feels as though it’s an invitation, but enough that the two of us breathe the same air. I sense the tension coiling around him, wrapping his body in a cocoon of hostility that’s supposed to repel me but draws me like a Valley Girl to a designer shoe sale.
“I don’t know if you ever met him – he was four years older than us. Top of his class every year, star athlete with a shot at the Olympic team, but he wasn’t full of himself. He was the nicest fucking guy you could ever hope to meet, so much nicer than I could—” Noah stops himself. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows once, twice. “One day at school, Eli was out sick and you sat with me at lunch. You told me that your father was looking for athletes to trial a new performance-enhancing drug. All-natural, developed from an ancient remedy, won’t show up on a drug test. You set up a meeting with our families. You—”
A sound explodes between us, like the pop of a Champagne bottle being opened, only louder. Chips of concrete blast off the side of the house and rain down on me and Noah.
I don’t have time to form a question. Noah’s body slams into mine, pushing me to the ground as a rain of bullets hits the house behind my head.
45
Mackenzie
My back slams against the tiles. Noah kicks the front door shut. The security lock clicks in place, and the pop of the bullets reduces to a dull thwack as they hit the bulletproof door.
That’s right. My house has a bulletproof front door, bitches.
“What the fuck was that?” Noah breathes hard, his chest heaving against mine.
But I can’t focus, because Noah fucking Marlowe is on top of me, and I can feel every part of him press against every part of me. And I flash back to the party when our bodies mashed together and I squeezed him and that fucking beautiful moan he made—
“Gunshots,” I answer when I find my voice. “They’re gunshots.”
“I know that. I mean, why the fuck is some maniac shooting at your house?”
I have no idea. Well, I have some idea. If I’m right, it’s very, very bad. But I’m not ready to look at this situation intellectually while bullets still riddle my front door.
I grab Noah’s hand and drag him to his feet, then take off down the hall.
“Mackenzie, we have to—”
Queen Boudica saunters out of the kitchen, licking her lips. “Mew?” she asks. I fling her into my arms and toss her over my shoulder. She howls with outrage and scrambles for freedom, but no way am I letting her run around with an active shooter outside.
“Mackenzie, what are—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl. I drag Noah into the study and yank the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in a sharp downward motion. A bookcase swings outward, revealing a steel-lined room about the size of an elevator shaft. I leap inside. Noah stands there, mouth open. I fist his shirt and yank him in after me.
I slam my hand into the control panel, and the door swings shut, the locks engaging with an electronic hiss.
“Mew!” Queen Boudica cries.
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Panic room,” I gasp. Is it just me, or is it hard to breathe in here?
It’s probably something to do with having my chest pressed up against Noah. Queen Boudica squirms against my grip, her claws raking across my shoulder. I relax my hold so she can step onto the top of the control unit. She curls up there, whipping her tail across my face as if to inform me she’s pissed off.