Last Light(22)

I stroked Laurence’s ears, kissed the top of his head, and set him in his hutch in the living room. He began a full fur clean, the way he always did after I touched him.

“Hey, I’m not so bad,” I said.

I changed Laurence’s food and water and dragged my suitcase to the bedroom. God, I didn’t feel like unpacking. I felt tired and greasy after a four-hour flight, and I couldn’t turn off my brain. Seth, Nate, Matt … Seth with his confusing kiss, Nate with his excessive generosity, Matt with his tongue-in-cheek comment … I threw over my whole life.

I’m kidding, he said. But it was true.

Matt did throw over his whole life for me.

His anonymity, his relationship with Bethany, his safe and stable routine—I broke it all apart when I bumbled into his world. My picture and my clumsy mistake started Matt on the path that ended with him risking his life on Longs Peak. And that, I realized with a shudder, was why I agreed to help him fake his death.

Not just because I loved him.

Not just because I wanted him to be free.

Because I felt responsible for his unhappiness.

And that unhappiness had surrounded Matt, no matter how he tried to hide it. “It’s one thing,” he told me, “to share your life in fiction, on your own terms, and another thing entirely to see your personal history all over the Internet.”

Sometimes I caught Matt looking very pale as he surfed the Net, and I knew he’d seen another article about his life—about his botched suicide, his dead parents, his old partying habits, and petty crimes. I would hug him then and find his heart beating rapidly under my hand.

And even after his birthday, when I finally coaxed Matt out of his funk, he lived like a hermit. The condo was his cell. From its windows he watched the city he loved, where he used to move freely, an unknown observer. But that city had turned on Matt with its insatiable twenty-first-century curiosity, and the more Matt hid, the hungrier people got. He was “Denver’s author,” and they were proud and proprietary. His good looks, his wealth, his damaged past, and wild youth became the stuff of tabloids, literally.

M. Pierce sightings were tweeted.

Young writers haunted the agency’s steps.

Pam received a never-ending deluge of mail for Matt. Clothing, food, books, love letters.

“Wait it out,” I used to tell him. “You’re a fad. This craziness won’t last.”

But he couldn’t wait.

“My life will never be the same,” he said. “I’ll never be free.”

I ran the shower too hot and hissed when the water hit my skin. Unwelcome thoughts kept cropping up—Shapiro, Snow—but I tried to focus on Matt. Shave, he said. I lathered pear-scented gel over my legs and began to work a razor around my ankles.

I shaved before the memorial and my legs were smooth, but Matt liked me velvety. He liked one particular area bare.

My thoughts clouded as I shaved over my knees and up my thighs to my sex. Lord, Matt even made shaving sexy.

Shave. It was an order. I loved taking orders from Matt.

I imagined him lying along the couch by the fire, nothing but a throw draped across his hips … and I dragged my razor over my pubic bone, shearing away the short, stiff hair.

I felt light-headed by the time I stepped out of the shower. I patted my skin dry and rubbed in my DollyMoo lilac body oil. Another thing Matt liked: rubbing oil into my skin.

I pulled on Matt’s bathrobe, which reached my feet and smelled of his body wash, and a black lace thong. I fetched my box of toys from the closet.

The box held two LELOs, toy cleaner, three kinds of lube, the collar with clamps that we first used at Matt’s apartment, a blindfold, silk ties, a gag, and a roll of black tape. Matt sometimes joked about adding a leash or riding crop to the box.

Or maybe he wasn’t joking …

I lit the candles on the bedside table and sprawled across our comforter. I dialed Matt’s number. He answered immediately.

“You,” he said.

“Me.” I smiled. “And you.”

“Did you have a nice shower?”

“Very.” I caught the first whiff of my candles—sandalwood and jasmine. Their light pulsed on the ceiling. “It was only missing you. I think this place misses you.”

“Soon we’ll be together. And before long, we can live together again. When things die down … we’ll get a place. Now you’ll have my money, or some of it. That’s one less worry.”

“Yeah…” I shoved away the thought of the money. Truth be told, Matt and I had no idea what our future held. We didn’t plan that far ahead. Sometimes he talked like this, idly and optimistically, and I agreed because the alternative was painful.

“What are you wearing?” he said.

“Your bathrobe and a black lace thong.”

Matt chuckled. My smile expanded at the sound.

“Very nice. Let the robe hang open. Déjà vu, little bird. Do you remember—”

“Of course.” I reclined against a stack of decorative pillows. Matt’s robe slipped open, exposing my breasts. My nipples stiffened instantly and my skin prickled with anticipation. “The first time, online? You must have thought I was crazy.”

“No crazier than I was. Granted, I thought I was pretty f*cking crazy.”

“What if I had been someone else?” I slid my fingers over the slope of my breast.