I knew it would take a kick ass hot man to be able to keep up with man hater Pandora. Watching her in the other books diss everything with love, I knew something bad had to have happened to her in her past.
Enter Mackenna, a bad ass rocker. A guy who left her years earlier after promising her the world. What made him up and leave her and did he deserve her forgiveness?
I loved them together, how they pushed each other like nobody else could....
If you love this series like me, you'll love this one too....can't wait for book 6.
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Ripped (Volume 5) Paperback – Dec 9 2014
by
Katy Evans
(Author)
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The fifth book in the New York Times new adult series that began with Real. When an angry, heartbroken girl is forced to be near her rocker ex-boyfriend, only time will tell if the fire between them will consume them both.
Pandora, the gothic friend of Brooke (Real, Mine, Remy) and Melanie (Rogue), thought that getting her heart broken by her bad boy rocker ex could only happen once. But now, he’s back in town with the biggest concert of the year. Pandora hates him so much that she gets Melanie to come with her and play a prank on him at his gig. But when they’re caught by security, and her ex himself is summoned, Pandora is not prepared for the feelings that seeing him again—beautiful and in the flesh—awaken in her. She’s also wholly unprepared for the conditions his manager sets in order for her and Melanie to be released; especially since these conditions only allow Melanie to return home, while at the same time, they put Pandora in perilously close contact with her ex again. The torturous physical closeness between them reignites the passion they once shared, and soon no matter how much she wants to hate him, it’s clear she’s still hung up on him. And worse: he knows it too.
Pandora, the gothic friend of Brooke (Real, Mine, Remy) and Melanie (Rogue), thought that getting her heart broken by her bad boy rocker ex could only happen once. But now, he’s back in town with the biggest concert of the year. Pandora hates him so much that she gets Melanie to come with her and play a prank on him at his gig. But when they’re caught by security, and her ex himself is summoned, Pandora is not prepared for the feelings that seeing him again—beautiful and in the flesh—awaken in her. She’s also wholly unprepared for the conditions his manager sets in order for her and Melanie to be released; especially since these conditions only allow Melanie to return home, while at the same time, they put Pandora in perilously close contact with her ex again. The torturous physical closeness between them reignites the passion they once shared, and soon no matter how much she wants to hate him, it’s clear she’s still hung up on him. And worse: he knows it too.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateDec 9 2014
- Dimensions13.97 x 2.54 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-101476755620
- ISBN-13978-1476755625
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About the Author
Katy Evans lives with her husband and their two children plus three lazy dogs in south Texas. Some of her favorite pastimes are hiking, reading, baking, and spending time with her friends and family. She is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Manwhore, Manwhore +1, Ms. Manwhore, and The REAL series: REAL, MINE, REMY, ROGUE, RIPPED, and LEGEND. For more information on Katy Evans visit her website KatyEvans.net, and follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @AuthorKatyEvans.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Ripped ONE SECRETS Pandora
I’m the only person in my apartment building that still gets a newspaper. It sits on my doorstep this morning, and I love the way it smells. I love the crackling noise when I drop into my dining room chair and slap the sucker open. This sound, this smell . . . they remind me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper with my dad, his cologne scent engulfing me. By the time I was seventeen, he was gone. As was his morning rumple of my hair and his cologne—but not the smell of the paper. It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper. Until now . . .
Now . . . when the headline of the entertainment section stares back at me, mocking me.
Mackenna Jones Is Back in Town! the headline says, and just reading that feels like a punch in the gut.
I squeeze my eyes shut and open them, my stomach trembling uncontrollably.
Mackenna Jones is back in town!
Fuck, I really need to stop reading that.
Mackenna Jones is back in town!
God. Still reads the same.
Mackenna.
The name curls around me like smoke in my insides, and butterflies I didn’t even know I still carried crash into the walls of my belly. I thought it impossible that a single one of these butterflies had survived Mackenna Jones.
He’s coming to town, Pandora. What are you going to do about it?
The thought of him being in the same state makes me scowl bleakly. “Seriously, asshole? You had to come here?”
I begin reading the article about Crack Bikini, how the band has revolutionized music. How even Obama has openly said this band is responsible for turning young kids back to the music of the masters—Mozart, Beethoven. But it doesn’t end there. It’s just getting started turning up the schmooze. The reporter keeps going on and on about how this tour has sold out Madison Square Garden faster than Justin Bieber’s first show, and how it will be the concert of the year, if not the decade.
Briefly, the band’s breakout song flits through my head. For a time, this song played on every radio station in the country, and it made me loathe music with a passion—hell, the mere thought of it angers me all over again.
My hands shake as I set down the newspaper, fold it, and try to move on to another section. I live with my mother and my cousin, and I’ve always had an appreciation for my quiet time on Saturdays, when Magnolia has ballet and my mother has errands. But now, my precious Saturday—time I get our apartment to myself—has officially been ruined. Not only my Saturday, this just ruins my entire fucking year.
Mackenna. In Seattle.
My hands tremble as I go back to the entertainment section and slowly scan for the date of the concert. I find myself clicking open Internet Explorer on my phone and navigating straight to Ticketmaster. Yep, the show is already sold out. So I head to eBay, where I discover the staggering prices the best tickets command.
I don’t know why, but for a moment, I imagine myself in one of those pricey seats, calling him the world’s greatest asshole from up close so he can hear through all the noise he and his band members make.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Or maybe I do know. A cold chill is settling in my body. The show is sold out. The tickets cost a fortune. But no. I won’t miss this opportunity. It’s been almost six years since I last saw him. Almost six years since seeing that hard, perfect man-butt as he jumped into his jeans.
The first time he took me, I could almost see my V card nicely tucked into his back pocket. He told me he loved me and asked me to tell him that I loved him. He was still inside me when he asked if I wanted him to be with me. I cried instead—because something is wrong with me, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t say it back. But I know that he knew.
He kissed me harder than ever when I started to cry, and our kiss tasted of my tears. At the time, I thought it all so painful and raw, the way he kissed me. So beautiful. I trembled as he held me. I couldn’t seem to piece myself back together after breaking for him the way I did during my orgasms. I could hear his breath mingle with my breath as he soothed a hand down my spine, telling me over and over that he loved me.
And that wasn’t the only time he took me. For days and weeks and months, we made hot, fevered love. I was seventeen and he was my everything, and when he took me, I thought he wanted everything I had to give. He left anyway. Bastard.
Mackenna was a secret, you see. He was the closest I’ve ever been to a person in my life—but he was a secret nobody could find out about. Especially not my mother. He knew it. I knew it. But we always managed to see each other anyway. We lied, hid, stole out of our homes and into the night, meeting at the docks and hijacking some unsuspecting family’s yacht until sunrise. We didn’t care who our families were, or what was “best” for us.
As far as I was concerned, he was it for me, and I for him.
He was my best friend too.
My world broke when I heard he left Seattle.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
The last thing he’d said to me was that he loved me.
Now. I. Hate. Love.
I thought that with his absence, the wound would heal. But the wound is still there. It’s festered and bubbled up and grown.
I gave the motherfucker everything that was in my young, stupid heart to give, and he ruined me.
Well, fuck him.
Next week he’s in Seattle. He and his mashers are in town and everyone is going. I call them mashers because there’s no other group like them. They mash their songs to someone else’s—to real music. Bach, Chopin, the masters. The result is a rock band symphony that runs through your body and curls your toes. And if you add in his vocals . . .
Hell, I don’t even want to talk about his vocals.
People choose to fall in love because it makes them feel good. Love makes them feel protected, safe. Not me. I choose hate. It makes me feel good. Protected and safe. Hating him is all that keeps me sane. Hating him means what he did to me doesn’t matter. I can still feel something. I am not yet dead, because I can feel this hate corroding me. He’s ruined me for other men. Stopped me from being the woman I could have been. He’s broken every dream of a future with him I had. He was my first love and my first everything, including my first heartbreak.
Even after he left, all I’ve been aware of is him, and what he left me with, and what he took from me.
The tickets are expensive. I spend most of what I make helping my mom care for Magnolia. But three little clicks on eBay is all it would take. Three little clicks and I can go up that last notch of debt on my credit card and see this asshole again, in the flesh.
Totally worth it, I decide, and go online and buy two of the most expensive tickets eBay has to offer.
Opening my calendar, I find the day and mark it with an X.
Get ready, asshole. Your Seattle concert won’t be considered a success. Not if I can help it.
? ? ?
I DIDN’T USED to like black so much. I liked red, and I liked blue, and somehow really liked yellow. Hot pink and purple were good too. But then colors began making fun of me. They felt too happy. Too sweet. Black was safe and neutral. It didn’t remind me of things that made me sad. It didn’t try to be anything other than black. Right after Dad died, I stopped trying to be anything other than what I really was. I stopped trying to fit in. Trying wore me out, and it only made me more aware that I didn’t belong.
I became black and black embraced me. Tonight I blend with all things sinful and dark. It’s a dark day, and mine is a dark life. Even the sky is cloudy because Mackenna is in town. In fact, there’s a thunderstorm. The stands are wet. The fans are wet. Everyone except the band, who’s ensconced backstage until the rain stops, will be solidly on NyQuil soon.
When the rain finally stops, Melanie and I hear the announcement that the SHOW IS ABOUT TO START. And there will be NO OPENING ACTS DUE TO THE DELAY. Just like that, the shot of vodka I had drunk in a toast to my courage leaves my system, and knees that had felt like they were made of steel minutes ago start feeling like jellyfish.
“Stop looking like you have a gun in your bag. You’re going to get us searched, you dodo!” Melanie tells me.
“Shh! I got this, be quiet,” I scold her as we head back to our seats.
Reaching nervously around my neck, I pull the hood of my poncho over my wet head and tug Melanie behind me as we wind through the crowd to our seats at the front of the stadium. She looks even fatter than I do. Turns out this rain was a blessing—Melanie and I don’t appear nearly as voluminous as we really are, loaded with goods under our ponchos. Goods for the band members. One in particular.
Even when my hair is hanging wet down the sides of my face, I think I look good. Intimidating. Black nails, black lipstick, black poncho, black hair—well, my hair is mostly black except for a stupid pink streak Melanie dared me to dye one drunken night, and I can never refuse a dare. Still, I’m going for my usual Angelina Jolie look, and my black high-heeled boots scream, “Men, come near me only if you want to end up without nuts!”
Melanie, on the other hand, looks as happy as a Barbie.
Her boyfriend probably just fucked her brains out.
Lord, why do my friends get the horniest boyfriends?
“I can’t believe we haven’t reached our seats yet! We’re way up front, we’ll be like breathing them,” she tells me with a big grin.
Um, yeah, breathing Mackenna is the last thing I want or need. But the stage keeps getting closer and closer, looming larger as we approach. It almost feels like every step closer to our seats, a year of my life drops away. Until I can clearly remember the way my stomach flipped inside my body as he looked directly at me with those icy gray eyes and watched me take his cock inside me. Motherfucker.
“I still can’t decide,” Melanie says as we finally sit down, “if I want to get married in a traditional white gown with a big red flower attached to the train, or a simpler pink dress. I’ve got both on hold until Monday. Maybe I should let Greyson see . . .”
She trails off when an awed silence falls over the crowd. One bright light from above narrows and fixes straight at the center of the stage. My heartbeat starts racing against my will. Furious, I breathe in through my nose for five seconds, hold it for five, and let it go for five—some shit I learned in Anger Management.
The light remains focused on the empty center of the stage, and violins start playing in the background. Just when the violins seem to take control of the rhythm of your breathing, the drums start joining in to take over your heart. Ugh, bastards. It’s like the music is overtaking me. The music builds, builds, and builds to a crescendo until the lights shut down.
Gasps erupt from the crowd as complete darkness descends.
In the shadows, he walks out.
I know it’s Mackenna Jones.
His swagger. His shoulders swinging, his hips rolling, and his long, thick, muscled legs. Hands at his sides, a microphone strapped to his ear and discreetly curled around his rocklike jaw, he approaches the public, and us. His chest is bare. He’s wearing black leather pants. And his hair is bright fuchsia today, spiky and standing high. It’s a shock to see that color against his tan skin. The smooth muscles of his torso glisten, as do the dark little bricks of his abs.
Through the light of the moon, I can see every bit of the six feet of him, and he’s so hot I think my clothes just dried. I try to find something to hate in the way he looks, but there’s nothing. I can’t even say I hate that little gleam in his eye, which screams, Bad boy, bad boy, I’m a fucking bad boy and I’m going to fuck with your life.
I liked it.
I used to like it so much.
Until he did what bad boys actually do, and it turned out that his being a bad boy has been the least fun I’ve ever experienced in my life.
A dim light flickers over him. The orchestra in the background begins playing. The light intensifies as he grabs the pink wig on his head and throws it into the stands, yelling, “Hel-fucking-lo, Seattle!”
Seattle screams in return, and he laughs this outrageously sexy chuckle as a group of girls try to leap out of the pit onto the stage, fighting like hellcats for the wig he just threw.
I’m not looking at the catfight; I’m looking at him. The fucking asshole who shouldn’t even deserve to live, much less look like he does. I can’t help but notice the dark, sexy buzz cut curving around the beautiful shape of his head. This only makes his lips stand out more and his nose stand out more and his eyes stand out more . . . the guy is not hot—he’s supernova. He’s got full, beautiful lips and a sleek nose that flares naturally with each breath—then there’s his smile, which makes me angry enough to boil a horse. Hurt and betrayal coil and churn inside me as he flashes that smile at everyone.
“Looks like we have a feisty crowd tonight. Excellent. Excellent,” he rumbles as he walks from side to side on the stage, scanning the crowd. Mel and I are so close, he’d need only look down to see me. But he’s too almighty to look down—and I can do nothing but keep looking up, even if I can no longer see his face because of the big bulge of his cock.
I swear I haven’t had sex in so long, I’ve been revirginized. I can’t even remember what feeling good feels like. I haven’t wanted to. I like feeling fucking bad. So I look up now, and I see him, and the memory of that big, thick cock slides and ripples through me.
I dislike the tingly insecurity it gives me. I dislike it a lot.
He sweeps the crowd with one long, long stare. “You all want some music tonight, huh?!” he asks in a low voice, the question as intimate as if he’d whispered it to each of us.
“KENNA!!” Women are sobbing beside us.
“Then let’s hit it!” He lifts one fist in the air, and a drum beats in the background. He starts pumping his fist high, the drum following an identical answering sound. He rolls his hips and lifts his head to the cloudy sky, making a slow humming noise from deep in his throat that sounds like . . . sex.
While the orchestra noise begins building again, the symphony gathers momentum. From slow and melodic, it heads toward something noisier and crazier. My pulse is somewhere in the stratosphere by the time the rhythm feels absolutely wild, when suddenly two men pop up on a platform from under the stage, striking their electric guitars to an explosion of lights that simulate fireworks. They’re the other two lead members—Jax and Lexington. Daddy’s boys, and identical twins. They got the funding for their first performance from their own Daddy Warbucks, and now the three leads need nothing from anybody.
Mackenna starts singing in a voice that is low and raspy and sexy as fuck. I hate him. How fluid his muscular body is. How it oozes testosterone. How dancers join the three men onstage, dressed in formal black-and-white men’s suits. I even hate the way they tear off their suits to reveal their black-painted skin that makes them look sleek as panthers.
Melanie is so enraptured; her lips are parted and she’s gaping. I swear, the electric, primal, and animal way these three men move up onstage is something to behold; the three are being irreverent with their bodies but reverent to their music.
My body is in an uproar. I have purposely not been a music girl for years. Mainly to avoid listening to any song of his by mistake. But now his voice is on every fucking speaker. It reverberates in my bones, awakening some strange pain inside me along with an extra truckload of anger.
The concert continues like some form of exquisite torture. The band prolonging not only my torment but the torment of every spectator waiting anxiously to hear their most recognized song. And then . . . it happens.
Finally, Mackenna starts singing “Pandora’s Kiss,” the breakout song that topped the Billboard charts and hit #1 on iTunes for weeks:
Those harlot’s lips
To taste and torment me
Those little tricks
That tease and torture me,
Ooooooooh, oh, oh, OH
I shouldn’t have opened you up, Pandora
Ooooooooh, OH, OH, OOOH
You should’ve remained in my closet, Pandora
A secret I will forever deny
A love that would one day die
Ooooh, OH, OH, OH
I should’ve never kissed . . . those harlot’s lips . . . Pandora
Rage bubbles up inside me full force.
“Now?” Melanie keeps asking me.
I. Loathe. Him.
“Now?” she asks again.
I loathe him. He’s the only boy I’ve ever kissed. He took kisses that meant everything to me and turned them into a joke of a fucking song. A song that turns me into some sort of Eve, torturing and teasing him to sin. He is the sin. He is the penitence, the hell, and the devil, all in one.
I reach into my bag, nicely tucked under my poncho, and grab the first thing I find.
“Now,” I whisper.
Before Mackenna knows what hit him, Melanie and I have sent three tomatoes and a couple of eggs flying through the air.
The orchestra music isn’t enough to drown out his muttered “fuck,” audible through the microphone.
His jaw clamps and he yanks the mic down over his chin as he jerks his eyes around to find the source of the attack. I feel delirious when I see the genuine anger on his face. I squeal, “The rest!” and grab the remaining things we brought and just keep throwing. Not only at him, but at anyone who tries to get in the way—like the stupid dancers who rush to protect him. One of them makes a whimpering noise as an egg hits her face, and Mackenna jerks her back by the arm so he can take the hits himself, his furious eyes trying to find us in the crowd.
Then I hear Melanie shout, “Hey! LET GO, asshole!”
My arms are yanked behind me, and I’m suddenly shoved and pulled out of my place and down the aisle.
“Let go of us!” Melanie cries, struggling as two burly guards drag us away. “If you don’t let go of me right now, my boyfriend’s going to find your home and kill you in your sleep!”
The guard yanks me back harder, and I catch my breath as pain rushes up my arm.
“Asshole,” I hiss, but I don’t even bother to struggle. Melanie’s getting nowhere and I know it.
“She knows them! She knows the band! Who do you think he was singing about just now, asshole?” Melanie kicks into the air. “She’s Pandora! Let us fucking go.”
“You know Mr. Jones?” one guard asks me.
“Mr. Jones!” I scoff. “Seriously! If Mackenna’s a mister, I’m a unicorn!”
They seem to chuckle among themselves as they lead us past more security, around the stage, and to a small room in the back. One guy starts speaking into a radio as he unlocks the door.
Melanie struggles and tries to kick out, but the enormity of what could happen starts settling on me, and I grow quiet.
Holy. Shit. What have I done?
“You don’t have to look so happy, dickface. My boyfriend will find your home too and kill you next!” she tells the other guard.
They yank a door open and shove us inside. I stumble as I take a step, fighting for some dignity as I wiggle free of his grip. “Let go,” I grit, and he finally releases me.
The radio transmitter on his hip emits a sound. A voice says something I can’t make out, but it sounds a lot like cursing.
“Remove these,” one of the guards commands, pointing at our ponchos.
I pry the plastic off my body and Melanie does the same, then we watch helplessly as they strip us of the bags we’d hidden underneath the ponchos.
Melanie groans when they set our things on a table to the side. Cell phones. Two more tomatoes. Car keys.
“Wow. You guys can’t take a little joke now, can you?” Melanie asks them with a haughty little scowl.
I close my eyes and try to quell the panic rising in me.
Fuuuuck. What was I thinking?
I haven’t done anything this reckless in years.
And it felt good.
Also wrong. Very, very wrong.
But good. Great, in fact.
Hell, I can still picture the pissed, disbelieving look on Mackenna’s face. It gave me intense pleasure. Orgasmic pleasure. But now the intense feeling I’m experiencing is more along the lines of paralyzing fear.
What if the guards call him into the room to ask if he does, indeed, know me?
What if I have to stand here in this small stuffy room and look at him from thisclose!
I feel sick to my stomach. Later, Melanie’s going to want explanations. Big-time explanations, more than what I’ve told her so far. She’s going to have to tell Greyson what happened, and he’s going to want to know everything, because these stupid security guards messed with his girl. I don’t even know if I can explain to her the kind of past Mackenna and I share. January 22: the day I unfailingly get drunk and don’t bother to even see the light of day—I’d sworn to myself I’d never discuss that day. But Melanie and Greyson? They will want me to open my box of secrets. Of me and Mackenna Jones.
Hot, wet mouths melding . . .
Him, pushing into me, stretching me, taking me, loving me . . .
Promises.
Lies.
Loss.
Hatred.
The kind of hatred that’s only born of an intense, out-of-this-world love that went woefully wrong.
What am I going to say to him if I see him?
What am I going to do?
Please god, don’t punish me by making me look at him thisclose.
I pace and pray, pace and pray while Melanie studies her nails, the wall, and me, sighing with the bored confidence of someone who knows she’s getting out of here intact. If I see Mackenna, I really doubt it’ll be so easy. My stomach’s already in knots, and I’m having the most awful urge to vomit right now.
The concert seems to last forever. One of the guards comes and goes while the other opts to stand a few feet behind Melanie, standing all military-like, as if waiting for something.
Oh god, please let that something not be Mackenna.
I’m wearing off a layer of my boots’ soles when, a century later, the door swings open and a chubby man in a suit and tie steps in. My blood pools in my feet from my nervousness. Lionel “Leo” Palmer, the band manager. I saw his face and interview in this morning’s paper, but I have to say he looked much happier in that picture.
He glares at us—Melanie glaring back, me standing motionless—and his hands make meaty fists at his sides.
“Have you any idea what you just did?” he grits out, chubby cheeks blazing red. “How long we could keep you two cozy in a fucking lady prison? What kind of fucking fans are you?”
“We’re not fans,” Melanie says.
The door swings open and the twins, in all their male glory, join the melee. They look intimidating all the time, but now—with their blond hair, odd-color eyes, and perfectly pissed-off scowls—they’re a force to be reckoned with.
I can’t breathe.
“Who the fuck are these bitches?” the one with the snake tattoo demands.
“I’m getting to that, Jax,” Lionel says.
So the other one must be Lexington. He charges forward and looks at me, eyebrow piercing and all, then he looks at Melanie. He points his index finger, swinging it from her to me. “I hope you two have a lot of money, because one of our dancers is injured. If she’s screwed up for Madison Square Garden—”
“Don’t worry, Pandora, Greyson will take care of this,” Melanie says easily.
“Pandora,” Lionel repeats suddenly. He grows still, his eyes sliding back to me. “Your friend called you Pandora. Why?”
“Because it’s my name? Duh.”
I’m in the middle of rolling my eyes when the door swings open and a figure fills the space. I don’t think my heart is beating anymore. I feel like someone is strangling me and punching me on the inside.
Mackenna.
A few feet away.
In the same room as me.
Bigger and manlier than ever.
He kicks the door shut behind him. He’s wearing aviators, so I can’t see his eyes, and ohmigod, I hate him with a passion. I came here to hurt him, but I’m so overcome by my anger, I can’t seem to do anything but stand here with my breath getting trapped in my lungs, my heart squeezing in my chest, my body trembling as all my suppressed anger bubbles up inside me.
He is tall and dark, and the remains of a red gooey liquid trickle down his chest.
But what a perfect chest, and then that thin trail of hair that leads the way from his navel to his dick. Tight leather pants mold to his bulging thighs. A bulging cock too. I swear girls might think he sticks a loaf of bread down his pants, but I can assure you that fucker is real. As huge as his fucking ego, and I remember it used to get as hard as his fucking head.
Not everyone can pull off a buzz cut, or a diamond stud earring, but he has a perfectly shaped head that makes you want to curl your hands around it and trace the curves with your lips. The diamond glints almost menacingly in his right ear, and when he takes off the sunglasses with an angry jerk, I see his brilliant, furious silver eyes, and I swear that it feels like coming home.
To a home that was wrecked, and burned, and there’s nothing left, but it’s still your home.
How fucked up is that?
God, please let him not be real. Let this be a nightmare. Let him be on the other corner of the world while I hate him safely from my corner in Seattle.
“She’s fucking Pandora?” Lionel asks Mackenna.
When Mackenna’s hard jaw only tightens, Lionel turns slowly around to study me. My brain is a tangle of confusion because Mackenna is staring straight at me like he can’t believe I’m standing here.
I can barely take his steely gaze. I thought this night would give me closure. That I could make him feel in front of his fans like I felt when he left: humiliated. Instead he stands there, every inch the rock god, even with tomato puree on his chest. He owns the room, carrying that unnamable X factor that nobody can pinpoint but that he has in spades, that tells you he owns this room and everyone in it.
And that fact only serves to piss me off further.
“Lionel,” he says in a low, warning tone.
Just one word makes Lionel ease back. Now nothing stops Mackenna from staring straight at me.
My face burns as I remember how I loved him. Deep, hard, completely.
Don’t think about that. You hate him now!
“Nice hair.” He shoves his glasses into the belt loops of his pants.
His voice, oh god.
His eyes run down the length of my hair, and Melanie offers, “I suggested she add a little spirit to her hair, so at least she looks happy.”
He doesn’t even look at Melanie. He looks at me in the most intense way, specifically the pink strand in my hair, waiting for me to answer. I loathe that pink strand, but not as much as I loathe him.
“Nice tights,” I return, and gesture to his leather pants. “How’d you get into them? From the top of a building and with a pound of butter?”
I refuse to let his chuckle move me, but I feel it run down my legs as he starts approaching. “No need to use butter anymore. These pants are a part of me.” He holds my gaze helplessly trapped. “Like you were a part of me once.”
He’s coming closer, and every step affects me. My cheeks burn. The gall of him to remind me. I’m so angry. Years of hurt simmer in me. Of loneliness and betrayal.
“Fuck you, Mackenna.”
“Already done, Pandora.” His eyes burn with equal fury as he takes a tomato from the table and surveys it with glinting gray eyes. “Is this for me too?”
“That’s right. All. Yours.”
His lips curl in derision as he tosses it up like a ball and easily catches it, all the while watching me.
“Your show is so bad, Melanie and I felt we had to give your fans some real entertainment.”
He runs his eyes across my face, studying me. “Yeah, by humiliating the fuck out of me.”
I can’t stand the way he looks at me, his eyes tracing the same path. My eyebrows, my nose, my lips, my chin, my cheekbones. He makes me wonder if I looked at the wrong mirror today, as if there’s something even remotely interesting to see. I swear nothing prepared me for having his eyes on me again. Nothing. I want to get out of here so fast, he won’t even see my butt as I go.
“Let me go, Mackenna.”
“All right, Dora. But first a parting gift.” Saying my least favorite nickname, he crushes the tomato in one fist, then lifts his hand, dropping little pieces of it over my head, watching me as I gasp and the juice spreads down my face and the side of my neck.
“There you go,” he croons, his smile wolfish as he works his fingers into my hair to make the juice seep deeper. When I struggle to pull free, he grips the back of my head and presses his nose to my ear, making me tense to stifle a shudder. “You just pissed off my entire fucking band. Do you realize the kind of charges we’re going to press?”
Yes, I do. My mother is a lawyer, so I have a pretty good idea.
So why did I think the fact that he deserved it gave me a free pass to be reckless tonight?
Fuck me.
He’s got me fucked.
And he’s so close. I’m strangely paralyzed as his lips move by my ear, causing an unwanted quiver down my legs. My nipples hurt all of a sudden and my body is in some strange contracting mode.
“Are you suicidal, or just looking to leave home? Because trust me, jail won’t be much of an improvement.”
“And your fucking face isn’t much improved with the egg facial I gave you.”
His friends, the twins, explode in laughter, but Mackenna doesn’t.
He surveys me with ill-concealed anger, and somehow I have an acute memory of the last time I looked into those slate gray eyes. His heavy stare and the touch of his tongue on mine zipping like white-hot lightning through my body. Him moving, his hands on my hips, holding me beneath him while I thrash. His groans telling me how much he likes being inside me.
It hurts. The sight of him hurts.
I didn’t expect it to.
As if my proximity has just triggered the same memories in his mind, he blatantly studies my body, his gaze lingering on my breasts, my mouth—a gaze hot and tactile and making me squirm—before he focuses back on my face as he speaks to the others.
“I’ll take care of the damages,” I hear him say, those eyes still on me, ruthless and calculating as if he’s just come to a decision. “And I’ll settle accounts with her directly.”
“Ha! You’re settling nothing with anybody here,” Melanie scoffs.
He lets out a cold male chuckle and pins his attention on her. “What’s your name, Barbie?”
“Melanie Meyers, asshole.”
“Leave her alone—” I start, but he cuts me off with a hand and tells the guards, “Escort Barbie to her car.”
“Dream on, pink wig. I won’t leave without Pandora!”
“This goth is seriously Pandora?” one of the twins finally asks. “Our Pandora? She was supposed to be a myth, dude.”
There’s a tense silence as every one of his team members looks at Mackenna. And I can’t help but notice with a prick in my chest that Mackenna looks none too pleased in a manner suggesting he’d hoped some eighteen-wheeler had run me over at some point, burying his secret.
He’s handed a towel, which he drags over his built chest as he shakes his head, raking his fingers through the beautiful buzz of hair on his scalp as he tries to get all the shit off his head. His silence and the thoughtful lines on his face render me beyond nervous and edgy.
Fuck, I don’t like that he’s taking control of things now.
I don’t like the effect he has on me.
The ways he could torture me.
The power he has over me, knowing how I’m privately afraid of my own mother—he’ll fucking know I will do anything to keep her from finding out.
As he’s about to speak again, Lionel says, “Kenna, a word.”
Mackenna heads over to him, the twins joining the little circle. The twins look like Vikings, and Mackenna a pirate who steals and deflowers girls like me. I can feel them watching us as they speak. Mackenna trails his eyes over my body as he listens. He doesn’t even seem to realize how blatantly he’s checking me out. Checking me from the top of my pink-streaked hair down to my badass boots.
Finally, he looks into my eyes, narrows his own, and shakes his head angrily. “No fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way,” Lionel counters.
Sighing over his front man’s stubbornness—which is a palpable thing, as big as an elephant in the room—Lionel ushers out the Vikings and the pirate, the door slamming shut behind a cursing Mackenna.
Melanie and I remain there for what feels like forever, exchanging a what-the-fuck glance.
The two guards stay in the room, watching us—watching me, especially—while little pieces of tomato slide down my face.
I want to punch something.
Something with gray eyes and a buzz cut.
Mackenna returns and grabs the towel again, the rest of the guys shuffling in behind him. “Just let her apologize to us and clean up her mess, then she can go.” He lifts the towel in the air and signals at me to come over, curling his finger in a mocking way.
“Fuck. You,” I breathe, suddenly seething.
“Mackenna,” one of the guys groans, laughing in an Are you fucking kidding me? She’s got you this worked up? way.
“You two look like nice girls. Well, at least one of you does.” Lionel smiles benignly at Melanie, then takes in my Angelina Jolie attire before scowling and adding, “Look, we can put you both in jail. Even a day can haunt you. Is that what you want?”
“Pan, don’t even listen. Grey will make sure—”
“No, Melanie, this is my problem.” I shake my head stubbornly. It’s not like her boyfriend and I get along that well anyway. Hell, I’m not on good terms with any man, so fuck that. I don’t need rescuing. I’d rather stew in jail for a couple of nights. At least before my mother officially kills me.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” the twin with the tattoo says—Jax, I think. “Just tell her the deets, Leo.”
“No, thanks,” I interrupt before they can even say what they want. “I’d rather do jail time than do him.”
A muscle works angrily in the back of Mackenna’s jaw as he slowly crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s assuming you could turn me on.”
“Kenna, shut up,” Lionel growls, then he turns to me again. “We’re currently filming for the Crack Bikini movie. Did you know?”
“The whole world knows. I’m just glad you’re not filming now.”
“We were filming during your little shenanigan.” He gestures at Mackenna’s ripped chest. “We’re wrapping up at Madison Square Garden, and now that your existence has been revealed . . .” He looks accusingly at Mackenna, then at me. “Now that we know that there is, in fact, a human Pandora whom our lead may have based his lyrics on, we want you in the movie.”
“She’s not going within an inch of those cameras,” Mackenna grits out as he charges toward the door.
“Jones, listen to me. This is brilliant. People will eat this up with a fucking spoon!”
Mackenna angrily swings the door open. “I’m not interested, so you might as well leave her out of this.”
“Like you left me out of your stupid song, huh, jackass?” I suddenly explode. “And I’m not interested either!”
“I’ll pay you enough to interest you,” Lionel calmly tells me.
Mackenna stops at the threshold, and that glittering serial-killer look in his eyes makes me want to agree just to spite him. God, I hate him. So much so that I feel spikes in my stomach from my rage. But it doesn’t feel like his glower is for me. It almost feels as if it’s for his manager.
Who continues on with building his case. “Look, you two can fight or not, I don’t care. All I care about is that at the final concert, when Crack Bikini performs, you two will be up there and you’ll kiss in tribute to our number one hit—‘Pandora’s Kiss.’?”
Mackenna laughs, the sound making me feel like someone just crawled over my fucking grave. All the little hairs on my arms are standing on end.
“Lionel, we’ve got this. We don’t need her. The fans want us, not her.” He points at me, then runs his hand all the way through his head to the back of his neck in sheer frustration. Then he storms out through the door, calling with deadly authority, “Leave her out of this or I promise someone will have hell to pay, Leo!”
I don’t know why, but I don’t like him having the last word.
I don’t like feeling as if he’s protecting me from the cameras.
I don’t like any of it, and before I know it, my voice stops him. “Ha! Like your promises ever mean anything, dickhead!” As I speak, I tear free the ring hanging from my necklace and chuck it at the open door.
Time stands utterly still.
Deathly slow, Mackenna steps back into the room to where the ring lies on the floor.
He looks at the small white-gold band with the sparkly diamond resting at his feet, and his expression changes from surprise to anger, then to something I don’t comprehend. He lifts it and looks at it for the longest moment of my life, then he lifts his head and stares at me with an expression that wrecks me on the inside. He clenches his jaw, turns around, and slams the door shut.
I’m trembling.
Battling with the urge to run after him and . . . and what?
I hate that I can still feel the warmth from his hand when he used to hold mine. I hate that the memory of his mouth on mine still wakes me in the middle of the night. I feel a dull ache at the loss of the ring I’ve been hiding under my tops, and I ache at the sound of his voice and the sight of his face, and I hate that I don’t know how to stop it.
When I press my lips to my talisman bracelet as I try to hold myself together, fighting for those in the room not to notice how easily Mackenna gets to me, Lionel steps forward and takes my arm. “Dear, you wanted his attention?” he asks me, both amused and confused.
“I don’t want his attention. I don’t want anything from him!”
“You’re getting a lot of him, whether you two want it or not.”
I yank my arm free. “I’m not for sale. There’s nothing you can say or do to convince me to do this.”
“How about . . .” He leans over and whispers a very long, very big number into my ear.
I’m the only person in my apartment building that still gets a newspaper. It sits on my doorstep this morning, and I love the way it smells. I love the crackling noise when I drop into my dining room chair and slap the sucker open. This sound, this smell . . . they remind me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper with my dad, his cologne scent engulfing me. By the time I was seventeen, he was gone. As was his morning rumple of my hair and his cologne—but not the smell of the paper. It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper. Until now . . .
Now . . . when the headline of the entertainment section stares back at me, mocking me.
Mackenna Jones Is Back in Town! the headline says, and just reading that feels like a punch in the gut.
I squeeze my eyes shut and open them, my stomach trembling uncontrollably.
Mackenna Jones is back in town!
Fuck, I really need to stop reading that.
Mackenna Jones is back in town!
God. Still reads the same.
Mackenna.
The name curls around me like smoke in my insides, and butterflies I didn’t even know I still carried crash into the walls of my belly. I thought it impossible that a single one of these butterflies had survived Mackenna Jones.
He’s coming to town, Pandora. What are you going to do about it?
The thought of him being in the same state makes me scowl bleakly. “Seriously, asshole? You had to come here?”
I begin reading the article about Crack Bikini, how the band has revolutionized music. How even Obama has openly said this band is responsible for turning young kids back to the music of the masters—Mozart, Beethoven. But it doesn’t end there. It’s just getting started turning up the schmooze. The reporter keeps going on and on about how this tour has sold out Madison Square Garden faster than Justin Bieber’s first show, and how it will be the concert of the year, if not the decade.
Briefly, the band’s breakout song flits through my head. For a time, this song played on every radio station in the country, and it made me loathe music with a passion—hell, the mere thought of it angers me all over again.
My hands shake as I set down the newspaper, fold it, and try to move on to another section. I live with my mother and my cousin, and I’ve always had an appreciation for my quiet time on Saturdays, when Magnolia has ballet and my mother has errands. But now, my precious Saturday—time I get our apartment to myself—has officially been ruined. Not only my Saturday, this just ruins my entire fucking year.
Mackenna. In Seattle.
My hands tremble as I go back to the entertainment section and slowly scan for the date of the concert. I find myself clicking open Internet Explorer on my phone and navigating straight to Ticketmaster. Yep, the show is already sold out. So I head to eBay, where I discover the staggering prices the best tickets command.
I don’t know why, but for a moment, I imagine myself in one of those pricey seats, calling him the world’s greatest asshole from up close so he can hear through all the noise he and his band members make.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Or maybe I do know. A cold chill is settling in my body. The show is sold out. The tickets cost a fortune. But no. I won’t miss this opportunity. It’s been almost six years since I last saw him. Almost six years since seeing that hard, perfect man-butt as he jumped into his jeans.
The first time he took me, I could almost see my V card nicely tucked into his back pocket. He told me he loved me and asked me to tell him that I loved him. He was still inside me when he asked if I wanted him to be with me. I cried instead—because something is wrong with me, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t say it back. But I know that he knew.
He kissed me harder than ever when I started to cry, and our kiss tasted of my tears. At the time, I thought it all so painful and raw, the way he kissed me. So beautiful. I trembled as he held me. I couldn’t seem to piece myself back together after breaking for him the way I did during my orgasms. I could hear his breath mingle with my breath as he soothed a hand down my spine, telling me over and over that he loved me.
And that wasn’t the only time he took me. For days and weeks and months, we made hot, fevered love. I was seventeen and he was my everything, and when he took me, I thought he wanted everything I had to give. He left anyway. Bastard.
Mackenna was a secret, you see. He was the closest I’ve ever been to a person in my life—but he was a secret nobody could find out about. Especially not my mother. He knew it. I knew it. But we always managed to see each other anyway. We lied, hid, stole out of our homes and into the night, meeting at the docks and hijacking some unsuspecting family’s yacht until sunrise. We didn’t care who our families were, or what was “best” for us.
As far as I was concerned, he was it for me, and I for him.
He was my best friend too.
My world broke when I heard he left Seattle.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
The last thing he’d said to me was that he loved me.
Now. I. Hate. Love.
I thought that with his absence, the wound would heal. But the wound is still there. It’s festered and bubbled up and grown.
I gave the motherfucker everything that was in my young, stupid heart to give, and he ruined me.
Well, fuck him.
Next week he’s in Seattle. He and his mashers are in town and everyone is going. I call them mashers because there’s no other group like them. They mash their songs to someone else’s—to real music. Bach, Chopin, the masters. The result is a rock band symphony that runs through your body and curls your toes. And if you add in his vocals . . .
Hell, I don’t even want to talk about his vocals.
People choose to fall in love because it makes them feel good. Love makes them feel protected, safe. Not me. I choose hate. It makes me feel good. Protected and safe. Hating him is all that keeps me sane. Hating him means what he did to me doesn’t matter. I can still feel something. I am not yet dead, because I can feel this hate corroding me. He’s ruined me for other men. Stopped me from being the woman I could have been. He’s broken every dream of a future with him I had. He was my first love and my first everything, including my first heartbreak.
Even after he left, all I’ve been aware of is him, and what he left me with, and what he took from me.
The tickets are expensive. I spend most of what I make helping my mom care for Magnolia. But three little clicks on eBay is all it would take. Three little clicks and I can go up that last notch of debt on my credit card and see this asshole again, in the flesh.
Totally worth it, I decide, and go online and buy two of the most expensive tickets eBay has to offer.
Opening my calendar, I find the day and mark it with an X.
Get ready, asshole. Your Seattle concert won’t be considered a success. Not if I can help it.
? ? ?
I DIDN’T USED to like black so much. I liked red, and I liked blue, and somehow really liked yellow. Hot pink and purple were good too. But then colors began making fun of me. They felt too happy. Too sweet. Black was safe and neutral. It didn’t remind me of things that made me sad. It didn’t try to be anything other than black. Right after Dad died, I stopped trying to be anything other than what I really was. I stopped trying to fit in. Trying wore me out, and it only made me more aware that I didn’t belong.
I became black and black embraced me. Tonight I blend with all things sinful and dark. It’s a dark day, and mine is a dark life. Even the sky is cloudy because Mackenna is in town. In fact, there’s a thunderstorm. The stands are wet. The fans are wet. Everyone except the band, who’s ensconced backstage until the rain stops, will be solidly on NyQuil soon.
When the rain finally stops, Melanie and I hear the announcement that the SHOW IS ABOUT TO START. And there will be NO OPENING ACTS DUE TO THE DELAY. Just like that, the shot of vodka I had drunk in a toast to my courage leaves my system, and knees that had felt like they were made of steel minutes ago start feeling like jellyfish.
“Stop looking like you have a gun in your bag. You’re going to get us searched, you dodo!” Melanie tells me.
“Shh! I got this, be quiet,” I scold her as we head back to our seats.
Reaching nervously around my neck, I pull the hood of my poncho over my wet head and tug Melanie behind me as we wind through the crowd to our seats at the front of the stadium. She looks even fatter than I do. Turns out this rain was a blessing—Melanie and I don’t appear nearly as voluminous as we really are, loaded with goods under our ponchos. Goods for the band members. One in particular.
Even when my hair is hanging wet down the sides of my face, I think I look good. Intimidating. Black nails, black lipstick, black poncho, black hair—well, my hair is mostly black except for a stupid pink streak Melanie dared me to dye one drunken night, and I can never refuse a dare. Still, I’m going for my usual Angelina Jolie look, and my black high-heeled boots scream, “Men, come near me only if you want to end up without nuts!”
Melanie, on the other hand, looks as happy as a Barbie.
Her boyfriend probably just fucked her brains out.
Lord, why do my friends get the horniest boyfriends?
“I can’t believe we haven’t reached our seats yet! We’re way up front, we’ll be like breathing them,” she tells me with a big grin.
Um, yeah, breathing Mackenna is the last thing I want or need. But the stage keeps getting closer and closer, looming larger as we approach. It almost feels like every step closer to our seats, a year of my life drops away. Until I can clearly remember the way my stomach flipped inside my body as he looked directly at me with those icy gray eyes and watched me take his cock inside me. Motherfucker.
“I still can’t decide,” Melanie says as we finally sit down, “if I want to get married in a traditional white gown with a big red flower attached to the train, or a simpler pink dress. I’ve got both on hold until Monday. Maybe I should let Greyson see . . .”
She trails off when an awed silence falls over the crowd. One bright light from above narrows and fixes straight at the center of the stage. My heartbeat starts racing against my will. Furious, I breathe in through my nose for five seconds, hold it for five, and let it go for five—some shit I learned in Anger Management.
The light remains focused on the empty center of the stage, and violins start playing in the background. Just when the violins seem to take control of the rhythm of your breathing, the drums start joining in to take over your heart. Ugh, bastards. It’s like the music is overtaking me. The music builds, builds, and builds to a crescendo until the lights shut down.
Gasps erupt from the crowd as complete darkness descends.
In the shadows, he walks out.
I know it’s Mackenna Jones.
His swagger. His shoulders swinging, his hips rolling, and his long, thick, muscled legs. Hands at his sides, a microphone strapped to his ear and discreetly curled around his rocklike jaw, he approaches the public, and us. His chest is bare. He’s wearing black leather pants. And his hair is bright fuchsia today, spiky and standing high. It’s a shock to see that color against his tan skin. The smooth muscles of his torso glisten, as do the dark little bricks of his abs.
Through the light of the moon, I can see every bit of the six feet of him, and he’s so hot I think my clothes just dried. I try to find something to hate in the way he looks, but there’s nothing. I can’t even say I hate that little gleam in his eye, which screams, Bad boy, bad boy, I’m a fucking bad boy and I’m going to fuck with your life.
I liked it.
I used to like it so much.
Until he did what bad boys actually do, and it turned out that his being a bad boy has been the least fun I’ve ever experienced in my life.
A dim light flickers over him. The orchestra in the background begins playing. The light intensifies as he grabs the pink wig on his head and throws it into the stands, yelling, “Hel-fucking-lo, Seattle!”
Seattle screams in return, and he laughs this outrageously sexy chuckle as a group of girls try to leap out of the pit onto the stage, fighting like hellcats for the wig he just threw.
I’m not looking at the catfight; I’m looking at him. The fucking asshole who shouldn’t even deserve to live, much less look like he does. I can’t help but notice the dark, sexy buzz cut curving around the beautiful shape of his head. This only makes his lips stand out more and his nose stand out more and his eyes stand out more . . . the guy is not hot—he’s supernova. He’s got full, beautiful lips and a sleek nose that flares naturally with each breath—then there’s his smile, which makes me angry enough to boil a horse. Hurt and betrayal coil and churn inside me as he flashes that smile at everyone.
“Looks like we have a feisty crowd tonight. Excellent. Excellent,” he rumbles as he walks from side to side on the stage, scanning the crowd. Mel and I are so close, he’d need only look down to see me. But he’s too almighty to look down—and I can do nothing but keep looking up, even if I can no longer see his face because of the big bulge of his cock.
I swear I haven’t had sex in so long, I’ve been revirginized. I can’t even remember what feeling good feels like. I haven’t wanted to. I like feeling fucking bad. So I look up now, and I see him, and the memory of that big, thick cock slides and ripples through me.
I dislike the tingly insecurity it gives me. I dislike it a lot.
He sweeps the crowd with one long, long stare. “You all want some music tonight, huh?!” he asks in a low voice, the question as intimate as if he’d whispered it to each of us.
“KENNA!!” Women are sobbing beside us.
“Then let’s hit it!” He lifts one fist in the air, and a drum beats in the background. He starts pumping his fist high, the drum following an identical answering sound. He rolls his hips and lifts his head to the cloudy sky, making a slow humming noise from deep in his throat that sounds like . . . sex.
While the orchestra noise begins building again, the symphony gathers momentum. From slow and melodic, it heads toward something noisier and crazier. My pulse is somewhere in the stratosphere by the time the rhythm feels absolutely wild, when suddenly two men pop up on a platform from under the stage, striking their electric guitars to an explosion of lights that simulate fireworks. They’re the other two lead members—Jax and Lexington. Daddy’s boys, and identical twins. They got the funding for their first performance from their own Daddy Warbucks, and now the three leads need nothing from anybody.
Mackenna starts singing in a voice that is low and raspy and sexy as fuck. I hate him. How fluid his muscular body is. How it oozes testosterone. How dancers join the three men onstage, dressed in formal black-and-white men’s suits. I even hate the way they tear off their suits to reveal their black-painted skin that makes them look sleek as panthers.
Melanie is so enraptured; her lips are parted and she’s gaping. I swear, the electric, primal, and animal way these three men move up onstage is something to behold; the three are being irreverent with their bodies but reverent to their music.
My body is in an uproar. I have purposely not been a music girl for years. Mainly to avoid listening to any song of his by mistake. But now his voice is on every fucking speaker. It reverberates in my bones, awakening some strange pain inside me along with an extra truckload of anger.
The concert continues like some form of exquisite torture. The band prolonging not only my torment but the torment of every spectator waiting anxiously to hear their most recognized song. And then . . . it happens.
Finally, Mackenna starts singing “Pandora’s Kiss,” the breakout song that topped the Billboard charts and hit #1 on iTunes for weeks:
Those harlot’s lips
To taste and torment me
Those little tricks
That tease and torture me,
Ooooooooh, oh, oh, OH
I shouldn’t have opened you up, Pandora
Ooooooooh, OH, OH, OOOH
You should’ve remained in my closet, Pandora
A secret I will forever deny
A love that would one day die
Ooooh, OH, OH, OH
I should’ve never kissed . . . those harlot’s lips . . . Pandora
Rage bubbles up inside me full force.
“Now?” Melanie keeps asking me.
I. Loathe. Him.
“Now?” she asks again.
I loathe him. He’s the only boy I’ve ever kissed. He took kisses that meant everything to me and turned them into a joke of a fucking song. A song that turns me into some sort of Eve, torturing and teasing him to sin. He is the sin. He is the penitence, the hell, and the devil, all in one.
I reach into my bag, nicely tucked under my poncho, and grab the first thing I find.
“Now,” I whisper.
Before Mackenna knows what hit him, Melanie and I have sent three tomatoes and a couple of eggs flying through the air.
The orchestra music isn’t enough to drown out his muttered “fuck,” audible through the microphone.
His jaw clamps and he yanks the mic down over his chin as he jerks his eyes around to find the source of the attack. I feel delirious when I see the genuine anger on his face. I squeal, “The rest!” and grab the remaining things we brought and just keep throwing. Not only at him, but at anyone who tries to get in the way—like the stupid dancers who rush to protect him. One of them makes a whimpering noise as an egg hits her face, and Mackenna jerks her back by the arm so he can take the hits himself, his furious eyes trying to find us in the crowd.
Then I hear Melanie shout, “Hey! LET GO, asshole!”
My arms are yanked behind me, and I’m suddenly shoved and pulled out of my place and down the aisle.
“Let go of us!” Melanie cries, struggling as two burly guards drag us away. “If you don’t let go of me right now, my boyfriend’s going to find your home and kill you in your sleep!”
The guard yanks me back harder, and I catch my breath as pain rushes up my arm.
“Asshole,” I hiss, but I don’t even bother to struggle. Melanie’s getting nowhere and I know it.
“She knows them! She knows the band! Who do you think he was singing about just now, asshole?” Melanie kicks into the air. “She’s Pandora! Let us fucking go.”
“You know Mr. Jones?” one guard asks me.
“Mr. Jones!” I scoff. “Seriously! If Mackenna’s a mister, I’m a unicorn!”
They seem to chuckle among themselves as they lead us past more security, around the stage, and to a small room in the back. One guy starts speaking into a radio as he unlocks the door.
Melanie struggles and tries to kick out, but the enormity of what could happen starts settling on me, and I grow quiet.
Holy. Shit. What have I done?
“You don’t have to look so happy, dickface. My boyfriend will find your home too and kill you next!” she tells the other guard.
They yank a door open and shove us inside. I stumble as I take a step, fighting for some dignity as I wiggle free of his grip. “Let go,” I grit, and he finally releases me.
The radio transmitter on his hip emits a sound. A voice says something I can’t make out, but it sounds a lot like cursing.
“Remove these,” one of the guards commands, pointing at our ponchos.
I pry the plastic off my body and Melanie does the same, then we watch helplessly as they strip us of the bags we’d hidden underneath the ponchos.
Melanie groans when they set our things on a table to the side. Cell phones. Two more tomatoes. Car keys.
“Wow. You guys can’t take a little joke now, can you?” Melanie asks them with a haughty little scowl.
I close my eyes and try to quell the panic rising in me.
Fuuuuck. What was I thinking?
I haven’t done anything this reckless in years.
And it felt good.
Also wrong. Very, very wrong.
But good. Great, in fact.
Hell, I can still picture the pissed, disbelieving look on Mackenna’s face. It gave me intense pleasure. Orgasmic pleasure. But now the intense feeling I’m experiencing is more along the lines of paralyzing fear.
What if the guards call him into the room to ask if he does, indeed, know me?
What if I have to stand here in this small stuffy room and look at him from thisclose!
I feel sick to my stomach. Later, Melanie’s going to want explanations. Big-time explanations, more than what I’ve told her so far. She’s going to have to tell Greyson what happened, and he’s going to want to know everything, because these stupid security guards messed with his girl. I don’t even know if I can explain to her the kind of past Mackenna and I share. January 22: the day I unfailingly get drunk and don’t bother to even see the light of day—I’d sworn to myself I’d never discuss that day. But Melanie and Greyson? They will want me to open my box of secrets. Of me and Mackenna Jones.
Hot, wet mouths melding . . .
Him, pushing into me, stretching me, taking me, loving me . . .
Promises.
Lies.
Loss.
Hatred.
The kind of hatred that’s only born of an intense, out-of-this-world love that went woefully wrong.
What am I going to say to him if I see him?
What am I going to do?
Please god, don’t punish me by making me look at him thisclose.
I pace and pray, pace and pray while Melanie studies her nails, the wall, and me, sighing with the bored confidence of someone who knows she’s getting out of here intact. If I see Mackenna, I really doubt it’ll be so easy. My stomach’s already in knots, and I’m having the most awful urge to vomit right now.
The concert seems to last forever. One of the guards comes and goes while the other opts to stand a few feet behind Melanie, standing all military-like, as if waiting for something.
Oh god, please let that something not be Mackenna.
I’m wearing off a layer of my boots’ soles when, a century later, the door swings open and a chubby man in a suit and tie steps in. My blood pools in my feet from my nervousness. Lionel “Leo” Palmer, the band manager. I saw his face and interview in this morning’s paper, but I have to say he looked much happier in that picture.
He glares at us—Melanie glaring back, me standing motionless—and his hands make meaty fists at his sides.
“Have you any idea what you just did?” he grits out, chubby cheeks blazing red. “How long we could keep you two cozy in a fucking lady prison? What kind of fucking fans are you?”
“We’re not fans,” Melanie says.
The door swings open and the twins, in all their male glory, join the melee. They look intimidating all the time, but now—with their blond hair, odd-color eyes, and perfectly pissed-off scowls—they’re a force to be reckoned with.
I can’t breathe.
“Who the fuck are these bitches?” the one with the snake tattoo demands.
“I’m getting to that, Jax,” Lionel says.
So the other one must be Lexington. He charges forward and looks at me, eyebrow piercing and all, then he looks at Melanie. He points his index finger, swinging it from her to me. “I hope you two have a lot of money, because one of our dancers is injured. If she’s screwed up for Madison Square Garden—”
“Don’t worry, Pandora, Greyson will take care of this,” Melanie says easily.
“Pandora,” Lionel repeats suddenly. He grows still, his eyes sliding back to me. “Your friend called you Pandora. Why?”
“Because it’s my name? Duh.”
I’m in the middle of rolling my eyes when the door swings open and a figure fills the space. I don’t think my heart is beating anymore. I feel like someone is strangling me and punching me on the inside.
Mackenna.
A few feet away.
In the same room as me.
Bigger and manlier than ever.
He kicks the door shut behind him. He’s wearing aviators, so I can’t see his eyes, and ohmigod, I hate him with a passion. I came here to hurt him, but I’m so overcome by my anger, I can’t seem to do anything but stand here with my breath getting trapped in my lungs, my heart squeezing in my chest, my body trembling as all my suppressed anger bubbles up inside me.
He is tall and dark, and the remains of a red gooey liquid trickle down his chest.
But what a perfect chest, and then that thin trail of hair that leads the way from his navel to his dick. Tight leather pants mold to his bulging thighs. A bulging cock too. I swear girls might think he sticks a loaf of bread down his pants, but I can assure you that fucker is real. As huge as his fucking ego, and I remember it used to get as hard as his fucking head.
Not everyone can pull off a buzz cut, or a diamond stud earring, but he has a perfectly shaped head that makes you want to curl your hands around it and trace the curves with your lips. The diamond glints almost menacingly in his right ear, and when he takes off the sunglasses with an angry jerk, I see his brilliant, furious silver eyes, and I swear that it feels like coming home.
To a home that was wrecked, and burned, and there’s nothing left, but it’s still your home.
How fucked up is that?
God, please let him not be real. Let this be a nightmare. Let him be on the other corner of the world while I hate him safely from my corner in Seattle.
“She’s fucking Pandora?” Lionel asks Mackenna.
When Mackenna’s hard jaw only tightens, Lionel turns slowly around to study me. My brain is a tangle of confusion because Mackenna is staring straight at me like he can’t believe I’m standing here.
I can barely take his steely gaze. I thought this night would give me closure. That I could make him feel in front of his fans like I felt when he left: humiliated. Instead he stands there, every inch the rock god, even with tomato puree on his chest. He owns the room, carrying that unnamable X factor that nobody can pinpoint but that he has in spades, that tells you he owns this room and everyone in it.
And that fact only serves to piss me off further.
“Lionel,” he says in a low, warning tone.
Just one word makes Lionel ease back. Now nothing stops Mackenna from staring straight at me.
My face burns as I remember how I loved him. Deep, hard, completely.
Don’t think about that. You hate him now!
“Nice hair.” He shoves his glasses into the belt loops of his pants.
His voice, oh god.
His eyes run down the length of my hair, and Melanie offers, “I suggested she add a little spirit to her hair, so at least she looks happy.”
He doesn’t even look at Melanie. He looks at me in the most intense way, specifically the pink strand in my hair, waiting for me to answer. I loathe that pink strand, but not as much as I loathe him.
“Nice tights,” I return, and gesture to his leather pants. “How’d you get into them? From the top of a building and with a pound of butter?”
I refuse to let his chuckle move me, but I feel it run down my legs as he starts approaching. “No need to use butter anymore. These pants are a part of me.” He holds my gaze helplessly trapped. “Like you were a part of me once.”
He’s coming closer, and every step affects me. My cheeks burn. The gall of him to remind me. I’m so angry. Years of hurt simmer in me. Of loneliness and betrayal.
“Fuck you, Mackenna.”
“Already done, Pandora.” His eyes burn with equal fury as he takes a tomato from the table and surveys it with glinting gray eyes. “Is this for me too?”
“That’s right. All. Yours.”
His lips curl in derision as he tosses it up like a ball and easily catches it, all the while watching me.
“Your show is so bad, Melanie and I felt we had to give your fans some real entertainment.”
He runs his eyes across my face, studying me. “Yeah, by humiliating the fuck out of me.”
I can’t stand the way he looks at me, his eyes tracing the same path. My eyebrows, my nose, my lips, my chin, my cheekbones. He makes me wonder if I looked at the wrong mirror today, as if there’s something even remotely interesting to see. I swear nothing prepared me for having his eyes on me again. Nothing. I want to get out of here so fast, he won’t even see my butt as I go.
“Let me go, Mackenna.”
“All right, Dora. But first a parting gift.” Saying my least favorite nickname, he crushes the tomato in one fist, then lifts his hand, dropping little pieces of it over my head, watching me as I gasp and the juice spreads down my face and the side of my neck.
“There you go,” he croons, his smile wolfish as he works his fingers into my hair to make the juice seep deeper. When I struggle to pull free, he grips the back of my head and presses his nose to my ear, making me tense to stifle a shudder. “You just pissed off my entire fucking band. Do you realize the kind of charges we’re going to press?”
Yes, I do. My mother is a lawyer, so I have a pretty good idea.
So why did I think the fact that he deserved it gave me a free pass to be reckless tonight?
Fuck me.
He’s got me fucked.
And he’s so close. I’m strangely paralyzed as his lips move by my ear, causing an unwanted quiver down my legs. My nipples hurt all of a sudden and my body is in some strange contracting mode.
“Are you suicidal, or just looking to leave home? Because trust me, jail won’t be much of an improvement.”
“And your fucking face isn’t much improved with the egg facial I gave you.”
His friends, the twins, explode in laughter, but Mackenna doesn’t.
He surveys me with ill-concealed anger, and somehow I have an acute memory of the last time I looked into those slate gray eyes. His heavy stare and the touch of his tongue on mine zipping like white-hot lightning through my body. Him moving, his hands on my hips, holding me beneath him while I thrash. His groans telling me how much he likes being inside me.
It hurts. The sight of him hurts.
I didn’t expect it to.
As if my proximity has just triggered the same memories in his mind, he blatantly studies my body, his gaze lingering on my breasts, my mouth—a gaze hot and tactile and making me squirm—before he focuses back on my face as he speaks to the others.
“I’ll take care of the damages,” I hear him say, those eyes still on me, ruthless and calculating as if he’s just come to a decision. “And I’ll settle accounts with her directly.”
“Ha! You’re settling nothing with anybody here,” Melanie scoffs.
He lets out a cold male chuckle and pins his attention on her. “What’s your name, Barbie?”
“Melanie Meyers, asshole.”
“Leave her alone—” I start, but he cuts me off with a hand and tells the guards, “Escort Barbie to her car.”
“Dream on, pink wig. I won’t leave without Pandora!”
“This goth is seriously Pandora?” one of the twins finally asks. “Our Pandora? She was supposed to be a myth, dude.”
There’s a tense silence as every one of his team members looks at Mackenna. And I can’t help but notice with a prick in my chest that Mackenna looks none too pleased in a manner suggesting he’d hoped some eighteen-wheeler had run me over at some point, burying his secret.
He’s handed a towel, which he drags over his built chest as he shakes his head, raking his fingers through the beautiful buzz of hair on his scalp as he tries to get all the shit off his head. His silence and the thoughtful lines on his face render me beyond nervous and edgy.
Fuck, I don’t like that he’s taking control of things now.
I don’t like the effect he has on me.
The ways he could torture me.
The power he has over me, knowing how I’m privately afraid of my own mother—he’ll fucking know I will do anything to keep her from finding out.
As he’s about to speak again, Lionel says, “Kenna, a word.”
Mackenna heads over to him, the twins joining the little circle. The twins look like Vikings, and Mackenna a pirate who steals and deflowers girls like me. I can feel them watching us as they speak. Mackenna trails his eyes over my body as he listens. He doesn’t even seem to realize how blatantly he’s checking me out. Checking me from the top of my pink-streaked hair down to my badass boots.
Finally, he looks into my eyes, narrows his own, and shakes his head angrily. “No fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way,” Lionel counters.
Sighing over his front man’s stubbornness—which is a palpable thing, as big as an elephant in the room—Lionel ushers out the Vikings and the pirate, the door slamming shut behind a cursing Mackenna.
Melanie and I remain there for what feels like forever, exchanging a what-the-fuck glance.
The two guards stay in the room, watching us—watching me, especially—while little pieces of tomato slide down my face.
I want to punch something.
Something with gray eyes and a buzz cut.
Mackenna returns and grabs the towel again, the rest of the guys shuffling in behind him. “Just let her apologize to us and clean up her mess, then she can go.” He lifts the towel in the air and signals at me to come over, curling his finger in a mocking way.
“Fuck. You,” I breathe, suddenly seething.
“Mackenna,” one of the guys groans, laughing in an Are you fucking kidding me? She’s got you this worked up? way.
“You two look like nice girls. Well, at least one of you does.” Lionel smiles benignly at Melanie, then takes in my Angelina Jolie attire before scowling and adding, “Look, we can put you both in jail. Even a day can haunt you. Is that what you want?”
“Pan, don’t even listen. Grey will make sure—”
“No, Melanie, this is my problem.” I shake my head stubbornly. It’s not like her boyfriend and I get along that well anyway. Hell, I’m not on good terms with any man, so fuck that. I don’t need rescuing. I’d rather stew in jail for a couple of nights. At least before my mother officially kills me.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” the twin with the tattoo says—Jax, I think. “Just tell her the deets, Leo.”
“No, thanks,” I interrupt before they can even say what they want. “I’d rather do jail time than do him.”
A muscle works angrily in the back of Mackenna’s jaw as he slowly crosses his arms over his chest. “That’s assuming you could turn me on.”
“Kenna, shut up,” Lionel growls, then he turns to me again. “We’re currently filming for the Crack Bikini movie. Did you know?”
“The whole world knows. I’m just glad you’re not filming now.”
“We were filming during your little shenanigan.” He gestures at Mackenna’s ripped chest. “We’re wrapping up at Madison Square Garden, and now that your existence has been revealed . . .” He looks accusingly at Mackenna, then at me. “Now that we know that there is, in fact, a human Pandora whom our lead may have based his lyrics on, we want you in the movie.”
“She’s not going within an inch of those cameras,” Mackenna grits out as he charges toward the door.
“Jones, listen to me. This is brilliant. People will eat this up with a fucking spoon!”
Mackenna angrily swings the door open. “I’m not interested, so you might as well leave her out of this.”
“Like you left me out of your stupid song, huh, jackass?” I suddenly explode. “And I’m not interested either!”
“I’ll pay you enough to interest you,” Lionel calmly tells me.
Mackenna stops at the threshold, and that glittering serial-killer look in his eyes makes me want to agree just to spite him. God, I hate him. So much so that I feel spikes in my stomach from my rage. But it doesn’t feel like his glower is for me. It almost feels as if it’s for his manager.
Who continues on with building his case. “Look, you two can fight or not, I don’t care. All I care about is that at the final concert, when Crack Bikini performs, you two will be up there and you’ll kiss in tribute to our number one hit—‘Pandora’s Kiss.’?”
Mackenna laughs, the sound making me feel like someone just crawled over my fucking grave. All the little hairs on my arms are standing on end.
“Lionel, we’ve got this. We don’t need her. The fans want us, not her.” He points at me, then runs his hand all the way through his head to the back of his neck in sheer frustration. Then he storms out through the door, calling with deadly authority, “Leave her out of this or I promise someone will have hell to pay, Leo!”
I don’t know why, but I don’t like him having the last word.
I don’t like feeling as if he’s protecting me from the cameras.
I don’t like any of it, and before I know it, my voice stops him. “Ha! Like your promises ever mean anything, dickhead!” As I speak, I tear free the ring hanging from my necklace and chuck it at the open door.
Time stands utterly still.
Deathly slow, Mackenna steps back into the room to where the ring lies on the floor.
He looks at the small white-gold band with the sparkly diamond resting at his feet, and his expression changes from surprise to anger, then to something I don’t comprehend. He lifts it and looks at it for the longest moment of my life, then he lifts his head and stares at me with an expression that wrecks me on the inside. He clenches his jaw, turns around, and slams the door shut.
I’m trembling.
Battling with the urge to run after him and . . . and what?
I hate that I can still feel the warmth from his hand when he used to hold mine. I hate that the memory of his mouth on mine still wakes me in the middle of the night. I feel a dull ache at the loss of the ring I’ve been hiding under my tops, and I ache at the sound of his voice and the sight of his face, and I hate that I don’t know how to stop it.
When I press my lips to my talisman bracelet as I try to hold myself together, fighting for those in the room not to notice how easily Mackenna gets to me, Lionel steps forward and takes my arm. “Dear, you wanted his attention?” he asks me, both amused and confused.
“I don’t want his attention. I don’t want anything from him!”
“You’re getting a lot of him, whether you two want it or not.”
I yank my arm free. “I’m not for sale. There’s nothing you can say or do to convince me to do this.”
“How about . . .” He leans over and whispers a very long, very big number into my ear.
Product details
- Publisher : Gallery Books (Dec 9 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1476755620
- ISBN-13 : 978-1476755625
- Item weight : 354 g
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.54 x 21.59 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #864,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #14,690 in Christian Romance
- #26,166 in Contemporary Women's Fiction
- #112,347 in Contemporary Romance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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Katy Evans is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over a dozen novels, starting with her blockbuster debut romance, Real. She writes sexy contemporary romances with smoldering hot alpha males.
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Top reviews from Canada
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Reviewed in Canada on December 14, 2014
Verified Purchase
Reviewed in Canada on September 5, 2017
I loved getting to peel back all the layers to Pandora. She is this amazing friend to Brooke and Melanie but she keeps herself separate somehow. She struggles to truly open up and feel like she fits in. As the story begins, she goes to a concert and throws tomatoes at the lead singer, McKenna, the guy that broke her heart and then wrote songs about it. This sends Pandora on a crazy road trip with the band as they film their tour and the manager has the fabulous idea to reveal Pandora at their big show in Madison Square Garden. Now the struggle is how to stay away from McKenna because, even though he broke her heart, he still owned it. McKenna can’t believe Pandora just walked back into his life. There is a lot to what happened when they were teenagers and it was wonderful when they finally put all the hurt aside and opened up about what they both went through. But, Pandora has always been told her whole life that she doesn’t matter by her mother, can she overcome these feelings and truly let love back into her life? What an incredible journey. Pandora is an amazing woman with incredible strength to have endured everything she did. I love her feistiness and willingness to push boundaries. I also loved being back in the “Real” world with all of these amazing characters.
Reviewed in Canada on July 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
Read it in one sitting!
Only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because there became a point in the story in which I started to get very irritated at Pandora and her reluctance to admit her feelings out loud. ... It seemed to drag in slightly too long for me. But other than that awesome read!!!
Only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because there became a point in the story in which I started to get very irritated at Pandora and her reluctance to admit her feelings out loud. ... It seemed to drag in slightly too long for me. But other than that awesome read!!!
Reviewed in Canada on December 10, 2014
For years Pandora’s friends wonder who turned their friend into a man hater. Pandora was happy with how her the way her life was now. She had a great set of friends and her cousin Magnolia to keep her busy. There is only one name that can set Pandora off, Mackenna Jones and he was coming back to town. Pandora thought this would be a great opportunity to really show him how she felt. Like the rest of her life, it didn’t turn out like she thought it would. Now she’s left with a choice to make, go on tour with the group until the last show at Madison Square Gardens and then the movie premiere or face charges for what she and Melanie did. Will Pandora be able to get Mackenna out of her life or will the man who walked away from her proved that he made the biggest mistake of his life?
I was gifted this book in exchange for an honest review.
Pandora is a headstrong, independent woman who was hurt when she was a teenager. She has always been seen as an outsider and she that suited her just fine. Her Goth look is her shield against the world but only a few got to know who she really is. Pandora still lives with her mother as she helps out with her much younger cousin Magnolia. She absolutely adores her and would do just about anything for her. Magnolia is the glue that holds her family together. Pandora’s mother is a bitter woman who was betrayed by her husband and wants only the best for her girls, but the way she goes about it may not be the best way as it has harden Pandora.
Pandora sees and envies the love and happiness her friends Brooke and Melanie have with their significant others and she wonders what could’ve been between her and Mackenna if he hadn’t left her. After the pain of Mackenna walking out on her, she is determine not to feel like that again. The only problem is that she is still very much in love with him.
Mackenna Jones was Pandora’s secret. He let her have her way to make her happy, but he wanted everyone to know that they were dating. He’s a strong, outgoing alpha male who is used to being disappointed. When his father got busted and went to jail. He was supposed to leave with Pandora the day his father was sentence but instead he left without her. All these years he has regretted what he did. He was surprised and shocked to see Pandora again but even more surprised as to what she did. After his manager suggested she come on the road with his band Crack Bikini, Mackenna doesn’t want her to come. His only thoughts are to protect her. That is what he has been doing most of his adult life or at least what he tells himself.
This is the fifth novel in the Real series and it rocks! I was hook the moment I started reading it. I love the relationship between Mackenna and Pandora. He isn’t like Greyson or Remy but is still very alpha male. You can’t help but fall in love with him. Getting to know Pandora better answered a lot of question as to why she is the way she is. Her family life is not like her friends and it helps explains why Pandora turned out the way she did. She may be strong woman but her spirit has been broken down after dealing with her father’s betrayal and her mother’s bitterness about it. The tomato throwing was awesome and I loved how it all plays out giving me a few laughs during this story.
I love that Katy kept Pandora’s friends lives intertwined, as they would’ve been in real life. The fact that Remy, Brook and Melanie made an appearance or two in the book just made it even better. If you’re looking for a rock star book to read, I highly recommend this story!!!
Friends Till The End Book Blog: http://friendstilltheendbookblog.blogspot.ca/
I was gifted this book in exchange for an honest review.
Pandora is a headstrong, independent woman who was hurt when she was a teenager. She has always been seen as an outsider and she that suited her just fine. Her Goth look is her shield against the world but only a few got to know who she really is. Pandora still lives with her mother as she helps out with her much younger cousin Magnolia. She absolutely adores her and would do just about anything for her. Magnolia is the glue that holds her family together. Pandora’s mother is a bitter woman who was betrayed by her husband and wants only the best for her girls, but the way she goes about it may not be the best way as it has harden Pandora.
Pandora sees and envies the love and happiness her friends Brooke and Melanie have with their significant others and she wonders what could’ve been between her and Mackenna if he hadn’t left her. After the pain of Mackenna walking out on her, she is determine not to feel like that again. The only problem is that she is still very much in love with him.
Mackenna Jones was Pandora’s secret. He let her have her way to make her happy, but he wanted everyone to know that they were dating. He’s a strong, outgoing alpha male who is used to being disappointed. When his father got busted and went to jail. He was supposed to leave with Pandora the day his father was sentence but instead he left without her. All these years he has regretted what he did. He was surprised and shocked to see Pandora again but even more surprised as to what she did. After his manager suggested she come on the road with his band Crack Bikini, Mackenna doesn’t want her to come. His only thoughts are to protect her. That is what he has been doing most of his adult life or at least what he tells himself.
This is the fifth novel in the Real series and it rocks! I was hook the moment I started reading it. I love the relationship between Mackenna and Pandora. He isn’t like Greyson or Remy but is still very alpha male. You can’t help but fall in love with him. Getting to know Pandora better answered a lot of question as to why she is the way she is. Her family life is not like her friends and it helps explains why Pandora turned out the way she did. She may be strong woman but her spirit has been broken down after dealing with her father’s betrayal and her mother’s bitterness about it. The tomato throwing was awesome and I loved how it all plays out giving me a few laughs during this story.
I love that Katy kept Pandora’s friends lives intertwined, as they would’ve been in real life. The fact that Remy, Brook and Melanie made an appearance or two in the book just made it even better. If you’re looking for a rock star book to read, I highly recommend this story!!!
Friends Till The End Book Blog: http://friendstilltheendbookblog.blogspot.ca/
Reviewed in Canada on December 27, 2014
I just finally read Ripped part of the REAL series and let me tell you this was an awesome read for REAL!!!! WOW I just LOVED this story with MacKenna and Pandora. We have met Pandora throughout this REAL series and now she has her own amazing story with MacKenna....Mr. hot, sexy rock star MacKenna. These two have a history together but haven't seen each other now for 6 years and when they do .....well let me just say look out!!! This story was beautifully written once again by the talented and gifted Katy Evans.....she just has a way of having her characters come to life ....in this case MacKennd and Pandora, where you share in their happiness, hardships, torment, betrayal, trust and most of all their amazing love story. Without giving too much away, everyone has to read this story....it is a must read and you won't be disappointed!!!
Once you start reading this you will not want to put it down....it should come with a warning label...."highly addictive" so read when you have lots of time because you just want to finish it in one sitting. I would give this more then 5 stars if I could, it was that good!! Thanks Katy for your amazing stories and this continuation with your REAL series.....this book and all your leading men with stay with me forever. You truly have a gift and we are so thankful you can share it will all of us faithful readers!!! <3
Once you start reading this you will not want to put it down....it should come with a warning label...."highly addictive" so read when you have lots of time because you just want to finish it in one sitting. I would give this more then 5 stars if I could, it was that good!! Thanks Katy for your amazing stories and this continuation with your REAL series.....this book and all your leading men with stay with me forever. You truly have a gift and we are so thankful you can share it will all of us faithful readers!!! <3
Top reviews from other countries
Down Under Reviewer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow
Reviewed in Australia on October 9, 2018Verified Purchase
This was young hearts in love. Then ripped apart by circumstances. She thinks she is getting revenge, but walks away with the only love of her life. A great read.
Narration was awesome too.
Narration was awesome too.
Jennifer Michael
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another smash hit!
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2015Verified Purchase
"I know now, from life, that it take only a second to break you. But with time, with effort, it takes a little longer, but you can make it."
Katy Evans and the REAL Series is one of my favorites. Who didn’t fall in love with the black-blue-eyed misunderstood fighter that is Remington Tate, whom found understanding from Brooke Dumas? Now we’re on book 5 and it’s time for Pandora’s story; to learn what has made her into the dark and closed off woman we have met in the books thus far.
Pandora is the tuff best friend of Brooke and Melanie. She wears her anger on her sleeve in the form of attitude, dark clothes and black lipstick. She is a stark contrast from Brooke and Melanie and if you’re like me, I’m sure you have all been wondering what her story is. Now we get to find out. It is time to see if what’s really inside Pandora is evil, like Mythology tells us or if there is a lot more behind what’s inside.
Let’s dive in…
It’s kind of eerie when your reading something and you have a similar memory to the character or a feeling or a loss but that is what happened for me in Ripped right from the first paragraph. I lost my father as a teen and my strongest memory of him is always when I would come downstairs in the morning he would be sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. When I was really little I used to crawl under the table to try and surprise him and poke the other side of his paper. So right from the first paragraph I was so curious how all the pieces would fit together.
"I’m the only person in my apartment building that still gets a newspaper. It sits on my doorstep this morning, and I love the way it smells. I love the crackling noise when I drop into my dining room chair and slap the sucker open. This sound, this smell… they remind me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper with my dad, his cologne scent engulfing me. By the time I was seventeen, he was gone. As was his morning rumple of my hair and his cologne-but not the smell of the paper. It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper."
I relate a lot to Pandora and her coping mechanisms. Sometimes in life all you have is your coping mechanisms to get you through the tuff bits and sometimes wearing an armor of “I’m tuff, you can’t hurt me” is what you feel you need to do to not get hurt again. This is Pandora. She has been hurt in the past by her family and by an ex and now she is determined to not be hurt again.
"Right after Dad died, I stopped trying to be anything other than what I really was. I stopped trying to fit in. Trying wore me out, and it only made me more aware that I didn’t belong."
Mackenna Jones is a talented successful rock star in one of the largest bands of the generation. He is also the source of some of Pandora’s anger and hurt. When Pandora hears that he is in town she is extremely anxious and nervous. The decision of how she decides to greet him is AMAZING. I’ll let you read to see how she welcomes him home but I loved it and I am sure anyone of us woman would love to greet a man from our pasts the way Pandora did. She’s got balls.
Circumstances unravel and Pandora finds herself in a position where she will be spending a lot more time with Mackenna and through her interactions with him and through his POV we see that despite the fame and fortune Mackenna is one of the good guys. He’s been dealt some bad cards and there may be more to the story behind Pandora’s heartbreak than she knows. Heck there may be more to the story than they both know and they won’t figure it out until they talk it through and through reading we get to see that process. The more time Pandora spends with Mackenna her icy outer layer begins to thaw, even if it’s terrifying for her. Through this we get to see another side of her, a gentler side.
"“I was not programmed to have feelings. It just wasn’t coded into my hard drive,” I lie, struggling to return to my grumpy, defensive self."
This is a second-chance love story. Two teens forbidden to love each other were broken apart due to circumstance and now find their way back to each other in their 20’s. The two have great chemistry and Mackenna is one sexy rock star, good guy, wrapped in a bad boy package.
"Happiness and love curl like partners in my tummy. I could be seventeen right now. I’m chronologically older and outwardly bitter, but inside, I’m still his girl."
Katy Evans is a phenomenal author who writes real and brave characters. She captures love, friendship, and passion in her writing that will leave you with the flutters in your tummy. Plus as the series continues we get more of Brooke, Remy, Melanie, and Greyson too. Who could complain about that?! Not me! Another great couple has been added to the series with Pandora and Mackenna and we finally see inside Pandora’s box – mythology was wrong!
Katy Evans and the REAL Series is one of my favorites. Who didn’t fall in love with the black-blue-eyed misunderstood fighter that is Remington Tate, whom found understanding from Brooke Dumas? Now we’re on book 5 and it’s time for Pandora’s story; to learn what has made her into the dark and closed off woman we have met in the books thus far.
Pandora is the tuff best friend of Brooke and Melanie. She wears her anger on her sleeve in the form of attitude, dark clothes and black lipstick. She is a stark contrast from Brooke and Melanie and if you’re like me, I’m sure you have all been wondering what her story is. Now we get to find out. It is time to see if what’s really inside Pandora is evil, like Mythology tells us or if there is a lot more behind what’s inside.
Let’s dive in…
It’s kind of eerie when your reading something and you have a similar memory to the character or a feeling or a loss but that is what happened for me in Ripped right from the first paragraph. I lost my father as a teen and my strongest memory of him is always when I would come downstairs in the morning he would be sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. When I was really little I used to crawl under the table to try and surprise him and poke the other side of his paper. So right from the first paragraph I was so curious how all the pieces would fit together.
"I’m the only person in my apartment building that still gets a newspaper. It sits on my doorstep this morning, and I love the way it smells. I love the crackling noise when I drop into my dining room chair and slap the sucker open. This sound, this smell… they remind me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper with my dad, his cologne scent engulfing me. By the time I was seventeen, he was gone. As was his morning rumple of my hair and his cologne-but not the smell of the paper. It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper."
I relate a lot to Pandora and her coping mechanisms. Sometimes in life all you have is your coping mechanisms to get you through the tuff bits and sometimes wearing an armor of “I’m tuff, you can’t hurt me” is what you feel you need to do to not get hurt again. This is Pandora. She has been hurt in the past by her family and by an ex and now she is determined to not be hurt again.
"Right after Dad died, I stopped trying to be anything other than what I really was. I stopped trying to fit in. Trying wore me out, and it only made me more aware that I didn’t belong."
Mackenna Jones is a talented successful rock star in one of the largest bands of the generation. He is also the source of some of Pandora’s anger and hurt. When Pandora hears that he is in town she is extremely anxious and nervous. The decision of how she decides to greet him is AMAZING. I’ll let you read to see how she welcomes him home but I loved it and I am sure anyone of us woman would love to greet a man from our pasts the way Pandora did. She’s got balls.
Circumstances unravel and Pandora finds herself in a position where she will be spending a lot more time with Mackenna and through her interactions with him and through his POV we see that despite the fame and fortune Mackenna is one of the good guys. He’s been dealt some bad cards and there may be more to the story behind Pandora’s heartbreak than she knows. Heck there may be more to the story than they both know and they won’t figure it out until they talk it through and through reading we get to see that process. The more time Pandora spends with Mackenna her icy outer layer begins to thaw, even if it’s terrifying for her. Through this we get to see another side of her, a gentler side.
"“I was not programmed to have feelings. It just wasn’t coded into my hard drive,” I lie, struggling to return to my grumpy, defensive self."
This is a second-chance love story. Two teens forbidden to love each other were broken apart due to circumstance and now find their way back to each other in their 20’s. The two have great chemistry and Mackenna is one sexy rock star, good guy, wrapped in a bad boy package.
"Happiness and love curl like partners in my tummy. I could be seventeen right now. I’m chronologically older and outwardly bitter, but inside, I’m still his girl."
Katy Evans is a phenomenal author who writes real and brave characters. She captures love, friendship, and passion in her writing that will leave you with the flutters in your tummy. Plus as the series continues we get more of Brooke, Remy, Melanie, and Greyson too. Who could complain about that?! Not me! Another great couple has been added to the series with Pandora and Mackenna and we finally see inside Pandora’s box – mythology was wrong!
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Books Laid Bare
5.0 out of 5 stars
MacKenna and Pandora, WoW!!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2015Verified Purchase
The Real Series by Katy Evans keeps me sane, it is my constant companion, one of those sets of books that no matter what will never leave my kindle and always make me feel...no more than that I can just feel, even on a down day. And now I can say that I have a new addition to the family because Pandora and MacKenna’s story Ripped is my welcome addition to the fold.
Pandora has never been the easiest character to get a handle on but in this she is eventually laid bare and we get to see all her secrets, painful as they are for her.
She opens herself up a little at a time but the onslaught commences right off the bat, you barely have time to draw breathe before she is right up in your face with her attitude but be thankful that MacKenna is the focus for her vitriol because I know I wouldn’t want to be the one on the receiving end. But what has caused this, what happened between them and more to the point what the hell can she do to get over it.
So I settled in to hold on tight and enjoy the ride, all the highs and the various lows that I knew were coming as they were not only thrust back together but also forced to unlock the secrets that they both had hidden so deep about what really happened all those years ago and why neither of them had been able to move on.
Pandora had the youthful image of her happy ever after torn from her at the tender age of just 17 and it all but destroyed her, but she kept her secrets and locked them away refusing to be the shattered woman that others may have expected. She was stronger than that, she could move on, but what she couldn’t do was forgive or forget because MacKenna Jones took her heart with him the night he left and she has nothing left to give to anyone else, including herself.
Pandora is a shadow, there is no normality in her, nothing she does is real, and it’s all just for show, all just to get by and all just to allow her to forget the one man that she has never been able to get out of her head – MacKenna.
Hate is a powerful force but when it replaces your ability to love, the only power it holds is that of destruction. And Pandora’s hate is killing her slowly from the inside out.
Six years later and the walls she has so carefully constructed start to crumble and all because MacKenna Jones is back in town and she has to see him!
MacKenna is the front man with hugely successful “Crack Bikini” not the best name in the world but I am sure we are all aware of real bands that have names that we read and think – “Really??”
Determined to exact her revenge, have her moment and finally lay the past to rest, Pandora ropes in her friend, lays the truth on the line and sets out to inflict ultimate humiliation on MacKenna at his homecoming concert, I mean who wouldn’t?
She clearly was delusional if she ever thought she could get away with her plan and moreover if she ever thought that she would ever be over him.
But when it all goes wrong, MacKenna is the one who can stop her butt ending up in jail and his management team are the ones that sense the perfect publicity opportunity. What is not to love about the ad men, finish the bands film, get the inside gossip on the muse for the bands biggest hit and who knows get some prime footage in the process.
Ground work laid and contracts signed. Pandora is obliged to spend 3 weeks on the road with MacKenna, whether they both survive is debatable?
There was no love lost between the two of them, there was almost every other emotion known to man but love... it was still there but it was buried so deep that it would take a mighty huge shift in emotion to let even a slither of it free again.
They both had resentment and anger on the situation that they were both in but they were both masters in the art of denying just how much the events of that night 6 years ago had hurt them. Pandora’s mother had left MacKenna with little choice but to walk away but Pandora knew nothing of the guilt that MacKenna carried because of his actions but he had his reasons, ones that had the shoe been on the other foot she too would have taken.
Fate is a bitch and in this case it was given a helping hand by extended families but fate also has the ability to give you a second bite at the cherry. The question was had too much time passed and were they even willing to try.
I liked and empathised with Pandora, she was a strong woman who had a grudge that she felt entitled to bare but one that I felt weighed her down. She was just a mixed up kid looking to find the same love as her friend Brooke has found with Remy, she wanted to feel like she mattered and that she was important enough to have her man stop the world from spinning if that is what it took to make her happy. Someone that loved her more than his last breath and she saw that disappear when her reason for breathing, MacKenna left her when she needed him most.
MacKenna was easy to fall for, I got that he had it all and was not afraid to share but he didn’t share the one thing that they all wanted; his heart because that belonged to Pandora and he knew it always would. When he had her back in his life, despite the circumstances, he knew he had the only opportunity he was ever going to get to rectify the biggest mistake of his life, so he goes balls out to get back the only girl that he has ever given his heart to and boy, he doesn’t hold back. He may have been an ass, with a crude foul mouth and was equally bad tempered at times but he made me sigh when I realised just what he was prepared to do to give Pandora what she wanted, him!
The relationship between them is full on from start to finish and evolves completely from love to hate and back to love again but there is a secret that Pandora has locked away and that when it was unveiled I had my heart in my mouth because I honestly couldn’t see that there was a way back for either of them and definitely not together but they had been through worse and come out the other side, this was just a page in their history that they would have to continue to relive and to try and rewrite.
I loved this book, I know it may not be to everyone taste but for me it was a superb composition and one that gave me hope in the fact that sometimes, just sometimes love is enough!
Pandora has never been the easiest character to get a handle on but in this she is eventually laid bare and we get to see all her secrets, painful as they are for her.
She opens herself up a little at a time but the onslaught commences right off the bat, you barely have time to draw breathe before she is right up in your face with her attitude but be thankful that MacKenna is the focus for her vitriol because I know I wouldn’t want to be the one on the receiving end. But what has caused this, what happened between them and more to the point what the hell can she do to get over it.
So I settled in to hold on tight and enjoy the ride, all the highs and the various lows that I knew were coming as they were not only thrust back together but also forced to unlock the secrets that they both had hidden so deep about what really happened all those years ago and why neither of them had been able to move on.
Pandora had the youthful image of her happy ever after torn from her at the tender age of just 17 and it all but destroyed her, but she kept her secrets and locked them away refusing to be the shattered woman that others may have expected. She was stronger than that, she could move on, but what she couldn’t do was forgive or forget because MacKenna Jones took her heart with him the night he left and she has nothing left to give to anyone else, including herself.
Pandora is a shadow, there is no normality in her, nothing she does is real, and it’s all just for show, all just to get by and all just to allow her to forget the one man that she has never been able to get out of her head – MacKenna.
Hate is a powerful force but when it replaces your ability to love, the only power it holds is that of destruction. And Pandora’s hate is killing her slowly from the inside out.
Six years later and the walls she has so carefully constructed start to crumble and all because MacKenna Jones is back in town and she has to see him!
MacKenna is the front man with hugely successful “Crack Bikini” not the best name in the world but I am sure we are all aware of real bands that have names that we read and think – “Really??”
Determined to exact her revenge, have her moment and finally lay the past to rest, Pandora ropes in her friend, lays the truth on the line and sets out to inflict ultimate humiliation on MacKenna at his homecoming concert, I mean who wouldn’t?
She clearly was delusional if she ever thought she could get away with her plan and moreover if she ever thought that she would ever be over him.
But when it all goes wrong, MacKenna is the one who can stop her butt ending up in jail and his management team are the ones that sense the perfect publicity opportunity. What is not to love about the ad men, finish the bands film, get the inside gossip on the muse for the bands biggest hit and who knows get some prime footage in the process.
Ground work laid and contracts signed. Pandora is obliged to spend 3 weeks on the road with MacKenna, whether they both survive is debatable?
There was no love lost between the two of them, there was almost every other emotion known to man but love... it was still there but it was buried so deep that it would take a mighty huge shift in emotion to let even a slither of it free again.
They both had resentment and anger on the situation that they were both in but they were both masters in the art of denying just how much the events of that night 6 years ago had hurt them. Pandora’s mother had left MacKenna with little choice but to walk away but Pandora knew nothing of the guilt that MacKenna carried because of his actions but he had his reasons, ones that had the shoe been on the other foot she too would have taken.
Fate is a bitch and in this case it was given a helping hand by extended families but fate also has the ability to give you a second bite at the cherry. The question was had too much time passed and were they even willing to try.
I liked and empathised with Pandora, she was a strong woman who had a grudge that she felt entitled to bare but one that I felt weighed her down. She was just a mixed up kid looking to find the same love as her friend Brooke has found with Remy, she wanted to feel like she mattered and that she was important enough to have her man stop the world from spinning if that is what it took to make her happy. Someone that loved her more than his last breath and she saw that disappear when her reason for breathing, MacKenna left her when she needed him most.
MacKenna was easy to fall for, I got that he had it all and was not afraid to share but he didn’t share the one thing that they all wanted; his heart because that belonged to Pandora and he knew it always would. When he had her back in his life, despite the circumstances, he knew he had the only opportunity he was ever going to get to rectify the biggest mistake of his life, so he goes balls out to get back the only girl that he has ever given his heart to and boy, he doesn’t hold back. He may have been an ass, with a crude foul mouth and was equally bad tempered at times but he made me sigh when I realised just what he was prepared to do to give Pandora what she wanted, him!
The relationship between them is full on from start to finish and evolves completely from love to hate and back to love again but there is a secret that Pandora has locked away and that when it was unveiled I had my heart in my mouth because I honestly couldn’t see that there was a way back for either of them and definitely not together but they had been through worse and come out the other side, this was just a page in their history that they would have to continue to relive and to try and rewrite.
I loved this book, I know it may not be to everyone taste but for me it was a superb composition and one that gave me hope in the fact that sometimes, just sometimes love is enough!
nicky
4.0 out of 5 stars
amazing
Reviewed in Italy on December 26, 2014Verified Purchase
Adoro le storie scritte da Katy Evans sono sempre così cariche di emozioni.
Una bella storia d'amore, un Happy ending dopo tanto dolore causato dal desiderio di una madre di proteggere la propria figlia da un uomo che non era abbastanza, senza capire che l'amore è sempre abbastanza, è la cosa che ci rende felici, completi, unici
Una bella storia d'amore, un Happy ending dopo tanto dolore causato dal desiderio di una madre di proteggere la propria figlia da un uomo che non era abbastanza, senza capire che l'amore è sempre abbastanza, è la cosa che ci rende felici, completi, unici
LittleDarling
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it...
Reviewed in Germany on December 14, 2014Verified Purchase
"Ripped" is the next installment in Katy Evans' "Real" series. And what an installment it is.
After I wasn't all that wowed by Melanie's story in "Rogue", Pandora and Kenna more than made it up to me.
Their story is intense and raw, filled with so much hurt, heartache, betrayal and insecurity, it can bring you to your knees. It's a story about a young love that was pure, real and binding, but couldn't weather the pressure and expectations that the outside world imposed on them.
Now, years later, Pandora is a woman who had her heart-broken by the only man she ever loved. It was a betrayal and pain her heart never recovered from and so she keeps it guarded. Not allowing herself many emotions, she appears cold, distant, sarcastic and cynical. Yet underneath the tough exterior is a young girl feeling rejected and abandoned.
When the person that broke her heart is suddenly in her life again, it all turns upside down. Not wanting to let him back in her heart, she tries everything to fight the feelings she still has for him - except the ones of anger, hate and thirst for revenge. But a love like she felt for him can never be truly laid to rest, so the more time they spend together, the more her feelings resurface.
And though she tries to hide them behind a sharp tongue and insults, it is easy to see that her heart is still bound to him.
I liked Pandora and I liked the depth that Katy Evans gave her character. She has reasons for her cold and harsh behavior. The pain and the fear of getting hurt again are palpable. It's so easy to understand why she acts the way she does as her heart has never grown beyond the moment it was ripped in pieces. But she has the courage to slowly let love in and I enjoyed witnessing how she allowed her softer and more emotional side to show - step by little baby step.
Mackenna was something else. He too felt betrayed and abandoned, unworthy of love. Now a rock star, those feelings still haven't changed much and even with all the money, fame and women he still feels alone and empty - missing an important piece of himself. That piece is Pandora.
So once their worlds collide again, all his old feelings resurface and burn with an all-consuming fire. While at first he wants to make her pay, it soon changes into wanting to make her stay. And not just because of the mind-blowing sex that they have. He feels like they belong and he doesn't make a secret of it.
He's intense and doesn't stop pursuing her, trying to get her to see what he's seeing. And he does this well - but how could he not, considering he's a sex-as-sin rock star that is also witty and smart, and has a soft side to him as well. What a mix! Add to it his protective and possessive streak as well as his down-to-earth attitude and you have one irresistible book boyfriend.
Their chemistry and sexual tension is off the hook and will make you fan yourself at times. Their banter is hilarious and their emotional moments are intense and raw. I couldn't stop keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that they'll sort their issues out. But as the secrets that both of them carry from the past come to light, they'll have to prove if their love is strong enough to forgive and understand.
Sometimes I wanted to slap them both upside the head though in order to make them see what's in front of them. And I wanted to smother Pandora for constantly going on about his "wolfish eyes" and his perfect buzzed head. Jesus girl, curb your obsession.
But those minor hang-ups didn't do anything to reduce the awesomeness of the story.
4 goth-and-a-rockstar stars.
After I wasn't all that wowed by Melanie's story in "Rogue", Pandora and Kenna more than made it up to me.
Their story is intense and raw, filled with so much hurt, heartache, betrayal and insecurity, it can bring you to your knees. It's a story about a young love that was pure, real and binding, but couldn't weather the pressure and expectations that the outside world imposed on them.
Now, years later, Pandora is a woman who had her heart-broken by the only man she ever loved. It was a betrayal and pain her heart never recovered from and so she keeps it guarded. Not allowing herself many emotions, she appears cold, distant, sarcastic and cynical. Yet underneath the tough exterior is a young girl feeling rejected and abandoned.
When the person that broke her heart is suddenly in her life again, it all turns upside down. Not wanting to let him back in her heart, she tries everything to fight the feelings she still has for him - except the ones of anger, hate and thirst for revenge. But a love like she felt for him can never be truly laid to rest, so the more time they spend together, the more her feelings resurface.
And though she tries to hide them behind a sharp tongue and insults, it is easy to see that her heart is still bound to him.
I liked Pandora and I liked the depth that Katy Evans gave her character. She has reasons for her cold and harsh behavior. The pain and the fear of getting hurt again are palpable. It's so easy to understand why she acts the way she does as her heart has never grown beyond the moment it was ripped in pieces. But she has the courage to slowly let love in and I enjoyed witnessing how she allowed her softer and more emotional side to show - step by little baby step.
Mackenna was something else. He too felt betrayed and abandoned, unworthy of love. Now a rock star, those feelings still haven't changed much and even with all the money, fame and women he still feels alone and empty - missing an important piece of himself. That piece is Pandora.
So once their worlds collide again, all his old feelings resurface and burn with an all-consuming fire. While at first he wants to make her pay, it soon changes into wanting to make her stay. And not just because of the mind-blowing sex that they have. He feels like they belong and he doesn't make a secret of it.
He's intense and doesn't stop pursuing her, trying to get her to see what he's seeing. And he does this well - but how could he not, considering he's a sex-as-sin rock star that is also witty and smart, and has a soft side to him as well. What a mix! Add to it his protective and possessive streak as well as his down-to-earth attitude and you have one irresistible book boyfriend.
Their chemistry and sexual tension is off the hook and will make you fan yourself at times. Their banter is hilarious and their emotional moments are intense and raw. I couldn't stop keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that they'll sort their issues out. But as the secrets that both of them carry from the past come to light, they'll have to prove if their love is strong enough to forgive and understand.
Sometimes I wanted to slap them both upside the head though in order to make them see what's in front of them. And I wanted to smother Pandora for constantly going on about his "wolfish eyes" and his perfect buzzed head. Jesus girl, curb your obsession.
But those minor hang-ups didn't do anything to reduce the awesomeness of the story.
4 goth-and-a-rockstar stars.
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