Page 42 of Take What Hurts

Mackenzie smiled to herself and found her eyes drifting closed with exhaustion, Elliott’s beautiful face and her steady breath a lullaby made for Mackenzie.

TWENTY-ONE

ELLIOTT

Elliott woke with a start, a warm body against her. Arm tingling and numb, she looked down to find Mackenzie’s sleeping face nestled in the crook of her elbow. She shivered with the touch of Mackenzie’s hand on the bare skin of her neck and smiled, Mackenzie’s quiet snoring wrapping around her like the warmest, coziest blanket, and she allowed her eyes to drift closed against the afternoon sun streaming in through the sheer curtains.

Just as the drowsiness tugged at the edges of her brain, the banging started on Mackenzie’s front door. Mackenzie shot up, wide-eyed, her forehead narrowly missing the bridge of Elliott’s nose. “Hey, woah, it’s okay.” Elliott couldn’t stop herself from running her fingers through Mackenzie’s sleep-mussed hair. “It’s just someone at your door.”

Mackenzie flinched as the banging started again, and Elliott frowned at the door as a woman’s muffled voice followed. “Mackenzie. Open this door right now.”

And Elliott watched, an inkling of worry sliding down her spine as the blood drained from Mackenzie’s face and she froze. “Hey.” Elliott said it like she was speaking with a spooked animal and gently ran her fingers over Mackenzie’s cheek. “Is everything okay?” She shot a look at the door. “Who is that?”

“It’s, um—” Mackenzie cut herself off and jumped off the couch. Elliott’s eyes followed her as she paced back and forth, ignoring the renewed banging on the door.

“Mackenzie,” Elliott repeated, “who is that?”

Wringing her hands in front of her, Mackenzie stopped and eyed Elliott cautiously. Like Elliott was a flight risk. “It’s my mother.”

Elliott nodded slowly. “Medusa?”

Mackenzie’s eyes widened, and she barked out a laugh. “How do…? You know? It doesn’t matter. Not her real name, but yes. Her.”

More banging on the door. “She’s persistent,” Elliott muttered.

Moving back to the sofa, Mackenzie perched on the edge and turned to face Elliott. The hand she rested on Elliott’s knee burned through her sweatpants, and all Elliott could think was that she wanted to take Mackenzie to her bedroom and well and truly take her mind off her mother at the door. But this wasn’t the moment.

“I would tell you to go, but…” Mackenzie trailed off with a shrug and a distinct look of despair.

Elliott glanced at the only way out of the apartment that led to the street: the door Mackenzie’s mother was not at all patiently banging down. Being on the tenth floor, it’s not like she could rappel down the side of the fucking building. Elliott frowned. “Do you, um. Not want me here?”

“It’s not that.” Mackenzie paused and, eyes flicking to the ceiling, took a fortifying breath. “Just—you’ll see.”

“Oh.”

Mackenzie gave her a tight smile, and Elliott watched her steel herself as she moved toward the door. Slowly, feet dragging like a woman condemned. Elliott wasn’t sure how to sit or what to do. She’d never met the parent of someone she liked in this way before. But she always imagined she’d try and make a good impression if she ever had the chance. She bolted up from the sofa and stood in front of the mirror hanging over a cute teak credenza by Mackenzie’s dining table and attempted to fix the hair sticking up at the back of her head. She figured she was fighting a losing battle, though. Without a shower, it wasn’t going to flatten itself out.

She ran her eyes over her reflection and hoped, with a soft snort of derision, that the woman Mackenzie’s phone referred to as Medusa would buy more into her personality than how she was dressed on a lazy Sunday afternoon. After she’d been cuddling with her daughter. After having blatantly made out with her on a chairlift. Yeah. This was going to go well.

Mackenzie pulled the door open as her mother started another round of banging, and Elliott caught her first glance of the most terrifying woman she’d ever seen. Dressed to the fucking nines in six-inch heels and a pencil skirt, white-blond hair cut sharp enough to slice through a throat, Mackenzie’s mother stalked into the room with nothing more than a sideways glance at Elliott. In that split second, Elliott squirmed at the way the woman’s ice-blue eyes ran up and down Elliott’s body in assessment before they blazed with contempt and darted away. Elliott swallowed, leaning on the credenza, wishing to be able to simply blend into it.

“Why have I not received last week’s funds? You understand our agreement, no?”

And Elliott stared in abject confusion as Mackenzie seemed to fold in on herself, bringing her hands together, fingers twisting frantically at the simple platinum ring on her right hand. It was akin to an unmasking: the strong confidence evaporating and taking the air in the room with it, leaving Elliott breathless. “I’m sorry, Mom. I was tight on the mortgage last week, but I’ll get it to you tomorrow.”

Money? They were talking about money. Mackenzie was giving her mother… money? The question of why swirled in Elliott’s brain, and she waited for further explanation. It never came.

Instead, her mother spun on her heel and strode to the dining table. Elliott watched her eyes drift to the open file on the table, eyebrow quirking upward toward her hairline as she moved it aside. Elliott knew it was the file for their matter, because Elliott had clocked it first thing that morning and had resolutely refused to look at it since.

Mackenzie’s mother set her Birkin bag on the table with a thud and narrowed her eyes at Mackenzie, who hadn’t moved from where she had closed the front door. “Big client you have there.” Mackenzie’s eyes flicked to the file on the table, and her face drained of color. She pursed her lips. “I wasn’t aware Anna meddled with anyone charging under one thousand dollars an hour. I don’t know if you’re aware”—and she paused for effect, smirking like the cat who caught the canary—“but Anna and I are well acquainted. Not that I would ever disclose my connection to you in front of anyone respectable.” Her shrill laugh grated against Elliott’s spine, and she shivered with the sound. Baring her teeth, Medusa drilled Mackenzie with a look that caused goose bumps to erupt all over Elliott’s body. “I look forward to the next meeting of the Entrepreneurs Association, where I will ensure I receive a full report from her on your”—she dragged her eyes over Mackenzie’s stiff form—“performance.”

Mackenzie remained silent, and the trembling in her hands didn’t escape Elliott. “Nothing to say? Well, in that case, back to the question of funds and why you were short. Presumably you went skiing? Out for dinner?” Her manicured brows raised in question. She barreled on with barely a pause, and Mackenzie managed to shrink further into herself, her cheeks pinking in answer. “Listen to me”—her mother stalked closer—“those payments aren’t negotiable. They are not secondary to your every whim or desire. You pay them, or I start charging interest. Are we clear?”

Elliott couldn’t decide whether she was more confused or enraged. What the fuck was happening? And Mackenzie stood there and took it. Elliott opened her mouth, but Mackenzie caught it and, eyes wide, gave a small shake of her head. It was enough. Her mother caught it and slowly turned to address Elliott.

Mackenzie and her mother couldn’t have looked more alike. Except where everything about Mackenzie, from the shade of her eyes and the tone in her honey-blond hair, emanated warmth, everything about her mother was a shade colder. Like she’d been doused in dry ice and had come out of it as the embodiment of cold detachment. She looked at Elliott down her nose and raised a manicured brow. “Ah yes. Who are you?”

Elliott drew herself up to her full and considerable height. “Elliott Jackson. I’m a friend of Mackenzie’s. And you are?”