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“Matt, you’re so cold.” She sniffled and hugged me. Her tears dropped onto my neck. “Did you spend the whole night out here?”

“It’s fine, baby. I wanted to. My God, are you all right?”

“Yeah, it … was nothing. Too much champagne at the party. The punch put me down for the count, that’s all. I’m fine, I promise. No concussion.” She stroked my hair and I held her tight, my eyes locked on Seth. Round two, brother? I couldn’t erase the image of Seth’s mouth on Hannah’s, his greedy hands pulling at her.

“He going to join us?” I said.

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t want to talk to you…” Hannah glanced back at Seth.

“Fine with me,” I said, but I hesitated and watched my brother awhile. “You think he’s going to tell anyone?”

“No, he won’t tell. He’s leaving today. He wants nothing to do with us.”

“Good. He’s got nothing to do with us.”

After some moments, Seth turned and rolled the wheelchair back into the hospital.

That was the last time I saw him for quite a while.

Hannah let me drive the short distance back to our condo. We were too stunned to speak, or too relieved. She leaned against the seat with her eyes closed and her hand in mine.

Near the condo, I said, “Hannah, what was going on between you and Seth?”

“I’ll tell you inside,” she said, and she did. We sat on the couch and I rubbed her back while she cuddled against me. She came clean about the night in New Jersey when Goldengrove played and Seth tried to kiss her onstage. She told me how they went to the mall and he held her, and how he appeared at the release party last night.

She told me, too, about Aaron Snow’s article and his new online zine, No Stone Unturned. She explained his theory about me writing Night Owl and how and why she said she wrote it. “Seth was there,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll tell anyone, and I don’t think Aaron is going to run the article. I sort of … threatened him.”

I mulled over the new information.

“Mm, no matter,” I said. “He can publish the story or not. No one will believe him. I doubt many people read his stuff, and those who do are fanatics. Seriously, I don’t know what that guy would do without his lifelong boner for me.”

“Start a zine about aliens?” Hannah giggled.

I laughed for the first time in too long.

“Sounds about right,” I said.

Hannah didn’t have an icepack in the freezer, so I filled a ziplock with cubes, wrapped a dish towel around it, and held it to her eye. She had a prescription for Vicodin but refused to fill it. “It makes me groggy,” she said.

“Hey, you could always sell them.”

“Matt!”

I laughed and shrugged. “It’s what I would have done when I was younger.”

“Yeah, but you were a bad boy.”

“Mm. Hannah, I—” I bundled her up and carried her to the bedroom. “I’m so f*cking sorry. I don’t know … if it was me, or if it was Seth … who hit you. I was—I couldn’t—”

“Don’t.” She touched my lips. It was one of her little gestures that I loved, the be quiet, Matt gesture. Her fingertips brushed my bruised eye. “Now we match. It was no one’s fault.”

“What are you going to tell people?”

“I dunno. I’ll come up with something. I’m becoming an expert liar.”

I set her on the sheets and undressed her. She didn’t help except to lift her arms indolently and extend her legs while I peeled down her stockings. The black-and-white skirt she wore to the party … I’d hoped to take it off under different circumstances.

When Hannah was naked, I began to undress. She watched me with her lustrous eyes—her face calm and serious, her breasts rising and falling gently.

“I’m tired,” I said.

My body ached after a night in the car. My mind couldn’t hold another thought. I was dangerously weary, too tired to see all the angles, and I had a growing sense that Hannah and I would not get away with our lie.

Seth knew I was alive. Melanie knew. Aaron Snow suspected. There were too many unknowns. Too many people I couldn’t control.

“I know.” Hannah reached for me. “I am, too.”

I stretched out alongside her and pulled the covers over us. I moved against her and sighed. There. I had one perfect thing in my life.

And though I said I was tired—too tired for sex—the warmth and softness of Hannah’s body made me hard. Her pillows smelled sweet. Her nipples grazed my chest. She rolled away so that I could enter her from behind, and I held her close as I moved inside her.





Chapter 31


HANNAH


We woke in the afternoon and Matt ran a bath for me.

I offered to drive him back to the cabin, but he said he would take a cab. I knew he was antsy to go. Denver was a cage for him now, and he hated cages. Plus, The Surrogate hit stores Tuesday, which meant M. Pierce fever all over again.

Matt insisted on carrying me to the bathroom. I hugged his neck.

“Matt, you realize I can walk with a black eye, right?”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” He set me on the counter and I squeaked; the marble was frigid under my bare bottom. He dropped one of my bath bombs in the tub and watched it fizz and color the water purple.