Maybe my uncle didn’t mean one hundred grand, but I’m an overachiever.

“I have to think about it,” Hannah said.

“Fine, think about it.” I flipped open my notebook and began to doodle. I drew a fat little bird on a branch. “We’ll talk about it. You’re coming out, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I was thinking … Friday night.” Hannah’s voice lightened and I smiled.

Yes, here was a good thought: Hannah at the cabin with me all weekend. Finally.

“Great,” I said. “Perfect. I can’t wait…”

“Me either,” she murmured.

“I can’t wait, Hannah.” I pressed the point of my pen against the page. Black ink bled out. “You’re home. I’m glad.”

“Me too. I don’t … want to wait.” Whenever Hannah got embarrassed, which happened often and easily, her voice softened. I grinned and tilted my head. Mm, Hannah’s shy side delighted me. It made me feel like a devil.

“Let’s not wait. A week is a long time. Do you need to get settled?”

“Yeah … let me go get Laurence. I might grab a shower, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“Shave.”

Hannah took a moment to process my imperative.

“Oh … yeah, okay. Yeah.”

I could barely hear her, she spoke so softly.

“Take your time, Hannah. I’ll wait for your call. I love you.”

“I love you, too. I won’t be long.”

We said our good-byes—my good-bye involving anything but the word “good-bye”—and I left the desk and headed toward the bedroom.

Chapter 13

HANNAH

The charms I threw over my whole life for.

I threw over my whole life.

Hey, I’m kidding.

I shuffled down the hallway with Laurence’s cage digging at my belly.

“You’ll be out of here soon,” I said to the rabbit. He slid along the newspaper and scrabbled to stay steady. His eyes were big as quarters.

I had tried to pay Jamie for watching him—Jamie lived in the condo above mine—but she refused my money. Maybe I could slip a gift card under her door.

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 h*ps … 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 br**sts. My ni**les 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**king crazy.”

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

“You weren’t. This is our reality, Hannah. I don’t have time for what-ifs. You shaved?”

“Yes.” I smiled again. I loved the way Matt dismissed things out of hand—always with ice in his voice. I don’t have time for what-ifs.

“Where? What did you shave?”

“My legs.”

“What else?”

“My—” My cheeks warmed. “My pu**y.”

“Mm.” Matt sighed roughly. “Touch it for me. I miss it.”

I slipped my hand into my thong, over the soft bare hill of skin. Matt missed this. I remembered his mouth between my legs and circled my fingers around the wet folds.

“Tell me what you’re doing,” I whispered, “and where you are. I want to know.”

He laughed and I felt the color rising in my face.

“Okay, bird. I’m lying on the bed. You know, in the bedroom—the one whose windows face east. I keep it warm in here. I’m not wearing anything.” Matt paused for a beat and I envisioned his firm, na**d body. My sex throbbed under my fingers. “That’s how I want to be with you, Hannah. Nothing between us … your body and mine.”

I moaned softly and spread my legs. “Matt, I miss you. I miss you so much.”

“I miss you, too. I miss your cunt. I’m already hard. You make it easy.”

I groaned and shoved down my thong, dragging it off with a foot. Matt hard. Now, that was a beautiful thought.

“Play with your clit. How does that feel?”

I rolled my fingers over that bundle of nerves. My calves tensed.

“G-good,” I mumbled. Matt stayed quiet, but I could feel his deadpan smirk. “Um … it feels … strange, I can’t—”

I missed Matt’s body like hell and maybe I resented our relapse to long distance, but phone sex has its virtues. Just this—putting words to my pleasure—turned me way, way on.

“I can’t quite explain. It’s like I’m chasing something, a sensation, an itch. It’s hard to stop.” My h*ps twitched as I skimmed my fingers over my clit. “And it makes me so wet.”

“God, Hannah.”

“Tell me…” I bit my lip.

“Tell you how my dick feels?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Sensitive. Warm. So f**king sensitive, Hannah. It’s not always this way—” Matt hesitated, breathing softly on the line. My eyes slipped closed. I could see him in my mind’s eye, his muscled forearm working, his hand gliding up and down his shaft.

“But f**k, when I get hard,” he said, “it gets so sensitive. I can’t ignore it. I can’t think about anything else. All I want is you. All I want is to come. My mind, it’s … good for nothing … a  p**n ographic reel of you. You on your hands and knees. Your ass. Your pu**y. Your tits. I want to f**k you. I want to f**k you Hannah, f**k.”

My eyes flared opened. Matt could still shock me. His anger. His raw honesty. And whew, the way he laid it all out there … like he was possessed.

“I miss your body, your tight pu**y around me.” He panted in my ear. “My c**k inside you. Deep. God, f**k. Fuck yourself. Do it.”

I groped at my box of toys and pulled out the plum-colored LELO. It was long and thick and smooth. And powerful. I didn’t need any lube; I was soaked.

“Hannah … fuck yourself. Tell me. I’m hard for you. Touching my head … my balls … thinking of your sweet mouth…”

“I’m … p-putting it in,” I whispered. Matt moaned his appreciation. I pressed the tip of the vibrator to my slit and inched it in and out.

“God, baby. Think about me f**king you. I can’t wait … I can’t wait a week. I can’t wait five f**king minutes.”

I turned on the vibrator and whimpered as I slid it deeper. Think about me f**king you. I did. I thought about the way Matt looked at me when he entered me, and the way I felt when he took me. The way he held me down as he moved. His relentless pace. His arousal filling me.

“Matt,” I breathed. My legs trembled. I dropped my phone on the pillow and rubbed my clit. I brought myself closer and closer to the edge.

“Hannah … move it in and out. Fast, the way I’ll f**k you this weekend. I think about it all the time. I dream about your tight ass. I wake up hard and—” He gasped. “I get off thinking about your cunt.”

“More,” I panted.

“I wish you could see me.” Matt’s sexy voice was fraying. “My cock. How hard I am. How I’m oozing. God, f**k. Are you going to squirt for me? You are. You are.”

“I will … I p-promise.”

“You want to see it, don’t you? You miss my cock. Say it.”

“I miss it.” I did. I groaned as I plunged the toy in and out of my body. I got crazy when I got close, willing to say and do anything, the maddest thoughts in my head.

“I’m close—close—want to come inside you…” Matt’s breaths grew sharp and erratic. My spine arched. I held back because it felt so damn good, and I wanted to come with Matt.

Maybe Matt was holding back, too. He kept swearing and moaning—sounds I loved—and telling me to f**k myself. “You only f**k yourself for me,” he rasped. Then, “God, I’m coming—fuck—I’m coming.”

I let myself go. My pleasure was right there waiting. A little shift in pressure, a subtle change of pace, and that incendiary ribbon of feeling unraveled in my body. How is it that this feeling never grows old? Ecstasy is strange fire.

I came down slow and smiling. Little aftershocks of pleasure tickled my limbs.

“My bird,” Matt murmured. “Baby. Did you come?”

“I did. With you.”

A gray day and drawn curtains lent a deceptive darkness to the room, but it was only one in the afternoon. I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

“Let’s talk awhile?” Matt said. The hope in his voice hurt my heart.

“Hey, of course. I’ve got nowhere to go.” I folded Matt’s bathrobe back around my body. It smelled like a freshly showered Matt hug.