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 fucking 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.
Once before I had managed to convince Matt to use a bath bomb with me. It was called a “sex bomb” and it was supposed to “put us in the mood” with “exciting scents” and “natural pheromones.” I grinned at the memory. As soon as Matt realized the bomb was coating his skin in sparkles, he leapt out of the tub ranting about “looking Twilighty” and “smelling like a girl.”
“What’re you grinning at?”
“You.” I smiled. “And this bath, which is such a transparent effort to avoid saying good-bye. Sweet … but transparent.”
Matt frowned and paced the small space of the bathroom. Ha! I was right. Matt planned to leave me in the tub and slip away.
My poor, adorable night owl—he really had issues with good-byes.
“No,” he mumbled. “Maybe…”
“Can I induce you to stay a little longer?” I uncrossed my legs deliberately and spread them. Matt watched. He folded his arms and tilted his head.
“How does your cheek feel?”