Page 53 of Take What Hurts

“That was—” Mackenzie paused, a soft smile forming as she gave her head a small shake. “Well. You were—are—incredible.”

Elliott pushed out a quiet laugh, her thumb tracing the tiny scar under Mackenzie’s left eye—which she’d learned Mackenzie had gotten when she was five and a kid at school had pushed her and she’d fallen face first into the corner of a desk—her other hand stroking the soft hair at the edge of her hairline. “My sweet girl,” Elliott murmured, pressing a soft kiss to Mackenzie’s forehead, Mackenzie’s eyes closing softly with the touch. “I think I want to do this with you for a long time. Is that okay for me to say?” She frowned with the pang of worry that lanced her veins.

Mackenzie only smiled and ran a finger over the space between her eyebrows. “You get this little crease right here,” she said, tracing her finger over the space again, “when you get worried or when you’re thinking.” Elliott’s eyes studied her face, trying to read whether, despite how softly Mackenzie was looking at her, the worst was coming. But Mackenzie’s smile only grew, teeth beaming bright and white behind her kiss-bruised lips. “Of course it’s okay for you to say. Because I think I want that too.”

A rapid, uncontrollable smile pulled Elliott’s face apart. She tugged Mackenzie against her and held her tight, heart thrumming with joy and something else that was too soon and too scary and too much, but that she knew would be trying to escape her body every day until the day she finally let it.

TWENTY-NINE

MACKENZIE

On the drive to the pass, Elliott had been quiet, and Mackenzie had decided to let her be. Over the last three weeks, she’d learned Elliott needed time to process. She needed time to sit with new information and fidget and understand it before she could reconcile it with how she felt. In the silence that was so polar opposite to the one that had plagued the drive to Heston the night before, she took a minute to text Frankie with an update on her situation and received, obviously, an overwhelming number of messages in response. Such was the nature of their friendship. Mackenzie heart reacted to them—their way of communicating that they’d talk properly later.

Over the sound of a soft playlist, Mackenzie watched Elliott chew on her bottom lip and pick at a stitch on the steering wheel, and Mackenzie—well—Mackenzie couldn’t stop the way the edges of her mouth pulled upward in a smile. Because it was so Elliott. The fidgeting and the constant movement. It was both a comfort and something that tugged at the edges of her heart and made her want to soothe and help. So she reached out a hand and lightly placed it high up on Elliott’s bouncing thigh, elation blossoming in her stomach both at the fact that she could do that now and at the way it brought a toothy grin to Elliott’s lips. Elliott took a hand off the steering wheel and intertwined her fingers with Mackenzie’s.

Unable to look away, Mackenzie squeezed Elliott’s fingers as all that love rose inside the cavern in her chest and inched it closed some more. It was warm and impossibly tender, and Mackenzie let it well and well and envelop the parts of her that were most broken. Because despite everything Elliott had witnessed—how readily she had cowered when faced with her mother; how she’d learned Mackenzie had been entirely unwanted by her ex-wife, tossed aside and replaced without hesitation; how distinctly not composed or put together Mackenzie was outside the structure and routine and predictability of work—it hadn’t made an iota of difference. Elliott wanted her. Respected her. Understood why.

It was an unburdening. An acceptance she’d craved without even knowing it.

Finally, Elliott must have felt Mackenzie’s eyes boring into her very soul, because she glanced at her sideways and breathed out a quiet laugh of exasperation. “What?”

Mackenzie simply gave her head a small shake. “Nothing.” Cheeks beginning to ache with pleasure, she continued, “You’re just nice to look at.”

Elliott’s mouth pulled up in a sloping grin. “You’re not so bad yourself.” With a wink, she returned her eyes to the road, and Mackenzie swooned. Because the way they’d had each other the previous evening had played in Mackenzie’s head on a loop. Visions of Elliott on top of her, inside her, her warm tongue teasing, laving at Mackenzie, and then Elliott taking Mackenzie’s direction, straddling Mackenzie’s face, riding her until she came apart in her mouth, on her tongue. In the car, she flushed hot with the memory. Her hand squeezed Elliott’s thigh of its own accord—driven by the ferocious clenching in her core—and she squirmed in panties that hadn’t been dry since she’d kissed Elliott that morning.

Once at Stevens Pass, they still didn’t talk about their night together. What they did was revel in the soft touches they gave each other every chairlift ride, take cover in the deepest parts of deserted tree-lined runs and kiss gently and then desperately among their delicate needles, pulling at each other’s clothes until they were inside each other and moaning their pleasure into hot, wet mouths. Mackenzie rode Elliott and came apart around her, head thrown back and hands in her hair, when Elliott reverently called her beautiful and whispered “baby” in her ear and asked her to come for her. And when they were done, Elliott had given Mackenzie the same look of unadulterated longing she had earlier that morning when she’d tentatively declared that she’d like to do this for a long time.

Now, the ski day done, they walked hand in hand through Elliott’s hometown, and Mackenzie was struck by the certainty that she would like to do this with Elliott for more than just a “long time.” Learn every part of her. Every nuance that lived in that beautiful, tortured brain. Build a life with⁠—

“Oh man,” Elliott breathed, tearing Mackenzie out of her daydream. She had brought them to a stop abruptly in front of a cute A-frame cottage settled among tall pines and lush foliage. Painted white, with a blue roof and a for sale sign out front, it was cute as a button, and Elliott was staring at it like it was the second coming of Christ.

Mackenzie stepped in close to Elliott and ran her other hand down her arm. “You like the house?”

“Like it?” Elliott laughed. “Mackenzie, I love this house. Ask my mom.” She rubbed her free hand through the back of her hair and blushed a pleasant shade of pink. “When I was little, I would make Mom drive past this house every day. I always told her I wanted to live in this house. And now it’s for sale.”

Mackenzie stared up at Elliott in what she could only describe as wonder. Who was this human being who had things like favorite houses in her hometown? “You are, quite possibly,” Mackenzie said, running a thumb over the blush that still colored Elliott’s cheek, “the cutest person there is.” Then a feeling she couldn’t quite name prickled at the nape of her neck. “Would you—uh. Do you have a plan to move back here?”

Elliott shrugged. “I mean—” Her eyebrows knitted together in thought. “I don’t enjoy Seattle, and my mom and dad aren’t getting any younger, and, well—” She pushed out a sigh, and Mackenzie watched the scrape of her fingers over the raw skin on her right thumb.

Mackenzie turned Elliott and wrapped her arms around her waist, pulling her tight against her. “Elliott, you don’t need to explain it to me.” She felt the smile creep over her face. “If you moved back here—hypothetically, I mean—what would you do? Like for work, I mean.”

Elliott placed the palm of her hand gently on Mackenzie’s cheek and breathed out a laugh. “I don’t even know. Maybe get in with one of the small practices in town. Or, for a while I thought it might be cool to start my own practice.” She shrugged. “I like practicing law. I just don’t like divorce law. Or”—she ran her fingers down Mackenzie’s braid—“I don’t like big divorce law.” She shook her head. “The clients⁠—”

Mackenzie laughed. “Say no more. I get it. It’s a lot, and—” She cut herself off with a shrug, grimacing. “It’s getting worse, I think. For me, I mean. There’s always too much, and I feel a bit—” She paused. “I don’t know. Like I’ve been trying for years to get to this place with it, and it just feels—” She sighed. “I think—dirty. Dirty is the word I’d use. Like, I want to make partner, but more and more—and particularly with this Jenkins file—it feels like I have to compromise on what I feel is appropriate to get it, you know?” She barked out a mirthless laugh. “And I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that. Or if I’d be happy with myself if I made partner that way. It’s disillusioning. So I get it.” Her hands made their way under Elliott’s shirt to the bare skin of her back and played with the baby hairs that Mackenzie imagined grazed the waistline of Elliott’s chinos. “I love that dream for you.”

She watched as Elliott’s mouth turned down at the edges and her eyes, previously bright with a spark of passion she’d only seen when Elliott was with her, dulled. “Hey.” Mackenzie frowned, hand stilling on Elliott’s back. “What happened? What’s wrong?” Elliott’s eyes dropped to their feet, only inches apart from each other’s. Mackenzie tilted Elliott’s chin back up with a finger. “Please talk to me,” she whispered.

Elliott opened and closed her mouth twice before she leveled Mackenzie with a tentative stare. “You’re in Seattle.”

“That doesn’t⁠—”

Elliott’s eyes flew open, as wide as they could get, and she cupped both Mackenzie’s cheeks in her warm hands. “No,” she said, and Mackenzie took a sharp breath, her heart pounding against her ribs. “Please don’t say that,” Elliott continued.

“Say what?” It was barely a whisper, and Mackenzie leaned in until Elliott’s sweet breath fluttered over her lips.

“That it doesn’t matter.” The pads of Elliott’s thumbs were rhythmic on the skin of Mackenzie’s cheeks. “I mean, say it if that’s what you mean, and—” She paused, the air between them thick. “Look, I know we haven’t talked about last ni⁠—”

Mackenzie brought a thumb gently to Elliott’s lips and ran the pad over the supple skin there, silencing her. As she studied the strong plane of Elliott’s nose and the whiskey depth to her eyes, the cavern in her chest finally closed over.