Last Light(25)

Chapter 14


MATT


Hannah sat on our bed, angled away from me. Her shoulders moved with quiet sobs. The room was dark, and I could just make out the silvery satin of her nightie.

“Hannah?” I reached for her. “Baby, why are you crying?”

“I miss you,” she whispered.

“Bird, I’m right here.”

“You’re not. You don’t want to be.”

Something tightened inside me. I didn’t want to be with Hannah?

“You’re the one who won’t run away with me,” I said. “You won’t leave Denver … won’t leave your life. You don’t want to be with me.”

“Matt … I miss you. Where are you?”

With that, Hannah slipped off the bed and rushed out of the room. I watched, mesmerized, as her little nightie shifted around her body, as her curls fanned across her back, and she disappeared out the bedroom door.

“Hannah!” I darted after her.

I reached the hallway in time to see her rounding the corner into the kitchen.

I heard the condo door opening.

When I got there, I found the door hanging open and no Hannah.

“Hannah!” I called. “Where the hell are you going?”

Barefoot, I dashed down the complex stairs and out into the Denver night. A wall of cold air crashed into me. Improbably, a crowd filled the street—masses of strangers milling and laughing. I glimpsed Hannah’s body vanishing into the mob.

Silver satin. Pale skin. Dark, thick, heavy hair.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

“Hannah!” I lunged after her. A commanding anger filled my voice. “Hannah, get back here!” The crowd on the street closed around me. Hannah slipped away effortlessly; I slammed into an immovable jam of bodies.

“M. Pierce!” someone shouted.

“Matt! Matthew Sky!” said another.

Strange hands touched me. Eyes staring. Voices rising.

“Hannah!” I roared. “Hannah!”

My eyes flared open.

I lay alone in the cabin bedroom, my arm outstretched and hand grasping air. Fuck. My heart pounded in my ears.

Was I screaming Hannah’s name? My throat was raw.

I sat up and checked the time. Seven at night. My cell and Jack Reacher novel lay at my side. I must have dozed after getting off with Hannah.

When I collected my breath, I forced myself out of bed and pulled on jeans. The wind had picked up. It gusted against the cabin—a lonely, howling sound—and I felt hollow.

I hardly needed to analyze my dream. I knew what it meant.

It meant that Hannah wasn’t mine, not truly, and that my best efforts to bring her to me were failing. It also meant that I couldn’t live without her, no matter what I’d thought. Wanting Hannah plagued me all day. Now it invaded my dreams.

And it wasn’t enough, getting off miles apart. It wouldn’t be enough, seeing her this weekend. I needed her with me—always.

That evening, I tried to get back into my writing, but the scene was closed to me. I flipped to a clean page and sketched Hannah.

I checked my phone periodically.

“Melanie, Melanie.” I sighed. “Where the f*ck are you?”

She’d better be busy erasing Night Owl from the Internet—at least insofar as she could. I doubted Shapiro and Nate would go after torrents and forum posts. No e-book, no case.

I messed with my sketch a little more, and then, hurriedly, as if I could convince myself that I wasn’t doing it, I keyed in a Google search: Night Owl by W. Pierce.

I hit Enter.

The search results loaded with agonizing slowness. Agonizing because I had plenty of time to realize I was making a mistake. Sure, I read news and reviews of my other books, but Night Owl wasn’t like my other books.

Night Owl was about Hannah and me. It was precious.

Google found four hundred thousand results. I smirked and scrolled down, my eyes jumping from one link to the next. I saw Facebook pages, fan pages, forum posts, blog reviews, and URLs from Goodreads, Amazon, the iBookstore, Barnes & Noble. Damn …

And there was a link to the e-book, which wasn’t supposed to exist. I clicked it. Still available, still ninety-nine cents. I balked. Night Owl was number thirty-five on the digital bestseller list. It had six hundred reviews and a 4.6-star average rating.

My cursor hovered over the one-star reviews. I clicked.

The first was a refund request with “pornographic quotes.”

TERRIBLE, said another reviewer. Pure porn, no story!

The negative reviews went on like that, attacking my plot, my writing, my person. I was mentally disturbed. I was single-handedly sending women back to the Dark Ages.

By the time I got to the last one-star review, my hands were shaking.

“Hannah,” I said aloud. Her name was a talisman.

I forced myself to read the last review. I always twist the knife.

Don’t waste your money, it said. Matt is a psycho and Hannah is nothing but a slut.

My eyes widened.

Oh, it was one thing for me to call Hannah a slut. She was my slut. She was a slut for me. When we went mad together, when she got on her knees … only I called Hannah “slut.”

But this? This was a backhanded slap—a stranger calling my lover a whore.

I slammed my laptop shut. I nearly snapped my phone in two as I opened it.