“Language,” she chides, but she laughs a little.

We end up talking a little bit. She’s not perfect, my mom. But she’s the only one who knows how much I’ve screwed up and hasn’t hightailed it out of my life.

She never lets me forget that.

Then I get to talk to Magnolia.

“I miss you, Panny, I have forty-seven things now.”

“Wait, let me guess! We’re going to dress like gorillas and bang our chests out on the sidewalks?”

“No! But that will be forty-eight!”

I smile with happiness, but the guilt I usually feel when I’m happy slowly creeps in.

I’ve fucked up. And Mackenna’s right, I’m mad mostly at myself.

“You’re my hero, Pan,” she then says, her voice dreamy as if I really am something special.

“You’re mine,” I whisper. She squeals, sends me kisses, and we hang up.

I stare at my bracelet, then tuck my phone into my back pocket and breathe deep. When I finally get out, the girls are at the guys’ booth, Tit exactly in my spot.

I don’t like the rush of possessiveness I feel when I see her busy talking with Mackenna. I don’t like how possessive I feel of his eyes and his smile and the hand he has spread out casually over the back of the seat . . . where I had been sitting. I have a spectacular urge to go and tell Tit to take her hand off Mackenna’s shoulder and park her ass somewhere else. Shit. I’m so over my limits of normal involvement here, I shake my head at myself and head over to the bar. Best to stay away from him.

Dealing with my mother always leaves me raw, and I don’t want Mackenna to improve on that.

“See that guy?”

I turn to the low baritone to my right, and a guy—thirty-something-ish, with a black cowboy hat and a huge-ass belt buckle—tips his head in a certain direction. When I follow the aim, my eyes land on you-know-who. You-know-who’s silver-laser-beam is staring straight at me from across the room. “You’re asking me if I see him? Does anyone not see him?” I counter.

“He your man?” the cowboy asks.

“In my nightmares, sometimes.”

But Cowboy isn’t appeased. “He sure looks like he thinks he is,” he drawls.

“Ignore him. He thinks he’s many things. God is one of them.”

“Bitches with him agree.” He points to the girls trying to catch Mackenna’s attention at the booth, but nothing seems to make those eyes go away—not even the frown I send his way before I give him a first-class view of my backside as I turn around to order myself a drink.

Why not?

Safer to let the tequila put me to sleep later rather than Mackenna.

“You nervous? Whatcha got there?” the cowboy asks, peering down at my bracelet, which I hadn’t realized I’d been playing with.

“Something that always reminds me how human I am when I look at it,” I say, brushing his hand off. “Don’t touch it, nobody gets to touch it but me.”

He rubs a hand down my back and trails it lower. “I think you’re hot despite your lips. I like red better. So you’re possessive about your accessories, what about the rest of you?”

He squeezes my ass.

Alarm skids through me. “Hey, we were being morose at the bar. What the hell happened to being plain old morose at the damn bar?”

He grins. “See that other guy?” He nods in the direction of Leo as he watches us from next to a big black camera. “He offered compensation if we made the night interesting for your crowd.”

“Is that so?” Leo. Ohmigod. What a douche bag.

I remove Cowboy’s hand from my ass and consider slapping him and having Leo put that in his precious movie. Cowboy squeezes my ass again. I’m getting ready to knee him in the balls when I hear Lex’s voice call out in a friendly way, “Hey, bud, you don’t want to lose that hand, trust me.”

In the opposite of a friendly way, the cowboy is suddenly pinned back on the bar with a jolt that sends a couple glasses rattling.

“You touch her again, I’m ripping your guts out through your throat.” Mackenna pushes him back against the bar even harder.

“Kenna!” Jax grabs his arms and tries to stop him.

“Fucking let go,” Kenna growls as he yanks his arms free.

I look at Leo in disbelief. He was setting up Mackenna for a show. Their precious manager would let a mass murderer in here if it would get him buzz for his precious movie. Wow. I really don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore. What am I doing? Magnolia is alone with my mother, my mother is suspicious, Mackenna is in my head, he’s in my fucking bed. He’s getting into a bar fight because of me, as if he’s my . . . boyfriend still. Like all those years. Oh god.

I stalk across the bar, when a familiar hand with bracelets and silver rings catches me by the elbow.

“Hey, come here, look at me,” Mackenna says, and he pulls me to his side. As much as I don’t want to, I tremble at the instant release of feeling warm and safe with his arm around me as he leads me to some sort of storage room, where we find peace and quiet.

“So,” he demands.

I scowl.

“What’s going on, baby?”

Seeing him visually checking me to see if I’m all right, I scowl harder.

“You planned to stay at the bar all night?” he asks.

“I was having fun, actually,” I bait.

“Oh yeah? That sure looked like fun for that motherfucker.” He cracks the knuckles of one hand, then the other, a violence I’ve never seen before roiling in his eyes. “Where did you run off to before?”