“Do I disgust you?” I should. I was right there with Matt, lying and scheming.

But Seth had only laughed.

“You? No, Hannah. I feel sorry for you. He’s got you right where he wants you. Fucking incredible, really.” I peeked up at Seth, who stared ahead abstractedly. “He’s always been that way. I’ve seen it my whole life.” Seth’s sneer faded, and he looked momentarily awed. “He draws people in without even trying. Puts them under a spell. And then he does what he always does—lies or disappears—and you break on the rocks you were too dazed to see.”

You break on the rocks …

A master manipulator.

Chrissy pulled me to a stop outside the Four Seasons. She tucked a damp curl behind my ear and thumbed away an eyeliner smudge. I’d let Chrissy do my makeup and pick my outfit—a short denim skirt, moccasin boots, and a loose, striped boat-neck top.

I actually looked cute, and I felt human for the first time in weeks.

“It’ll be fun,” Chrissy said. “And if not, we’ll leave. No harm, no foul. You okay?”

I nodded. No.

“Cool. Wiley said Seth’s been asking about you.”

“He has?”

Chrissy took my hand and led me into the hotel, through the modern, well-appointed lobby. Every surface burned with a high shine.

“Yeah. Just, like, wondering if you’re okay and stuff. Because, you know…” She shook her head. “Matt’s a psycho, basically. I mean, I still can’t believe he faked that shit. I’m so glad you had the guts to leave him. He is truly f**king crazy.”

“Yeah…” My stomach seesawed.

We rode the elevator to the thirteenth floor and Chrissy read off room numbers in the hall. She stopped and knocked on a door. I closed my eyes.

Through the wall, I heard the low pulse of music.

Click.

A breath of air. The door opening.

Wiley’s voice.

“Baby,” he said, “there you are.” Chrissy’s hand slipped out of mine, but not before she dragged me into the room. Warmer air. The smell of alcohol and sweet smoke. An unfamiliar song—hypnotic and grinding, electronic.

I opened my eyes to a dim room.

My pupils adjusted, taking in the suite. The only light came from the cityscape, filtering in through wraparound windows. A film of smoke clouded the air.

Two guys I didn’t recognize and three overdressed girls sat around a coffee table with drinks and playing cards. One of the girls eyed me. Her stare was steely, her mouth a blot of lipstick. I wanted to run.

“Oh, there’s Seth,” said Chrissy. She bumped my hip and I stumbled forward.

In the corner, in the shadow of a thick curtain, Seth slouched in an armchair.

He wore the same deadened expression I had seen on his face at the condo the night he realized Matt was alive.

I padded across the room.

Seth’s eyes met mine and registered no surprise.

When I reached him, he leaned forward and licked a white dusting from his finger.

“Hannah,” he said.

His hair was tied back, one loose piece lying against his cheek. He was barefoot and looked vaguely bohemian in torn jeans and a halfway-unbuttoned shirt.

I processed the scene slowly. Seth licking his finger. A porcelain plate on the table. A pile of snowy powder and two thick lines beside it.

“Oh,” I said, plopping onto a chair. Something greater than gravity pressed me into my seat. I wanted to be there, talking to Seth. I wanted the past nine months to make sense.

“No big deal,” Seth murmured. He shrugged and smiled miserably at me. “I’m not like Matt. Just a party.”

“Yeah, sure.” I tried not to stare at the coc**ne. I’d only seen this stuff in movies.

“Help yourself.”

“Are you guys allowed to smoke in here? I mean—”

Seth touched my bare knee.

“No big deal,” he repeated calmly. “The hotel staff won’t bother us.”

I met his dark, devastatingly careless stare, and I nodded.

“Hi,” I mumbled.

“Hi.”

The rest of the room diminished. Seth and I sat in our corner of the universe, unhappy, silent, studying one another.

After a while, he took a key card from his pocket and began thinning the ridges of coke. He bent over the table and sniffed away a line, then slid the plate toward me.

“I’ve been drinking a little,” I said, as if that would excuse me, and I pressed one nostril shut and inhaled a thread-thin line.

Maybe I didn’t need an excuse.

Or maybe Seth and I had the same excuse.

Matt.

“First time doing that?” Seth said.

“Yeah.” I sniffed and looked around. No one was watching. Almost immediately, excess energy fizzled up my spine, effervescing in my brain. I smiled. “Weird…”

“But good, yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I think so.” A muscle jumped in my leg. I bounced my foot to the music.

“Great, then no worries.” Seth stood, rubbed his face, sat. He ran his fingers up and down his thighs. Whenever we looked at one another, our eyes locked a little longer than necessary.

We spoke simultaneously, our voices colliding.

“Congrats on your record deal,” I said, and Seth said, “Come to my room.”

We laughed.

I studied my feet.

“Come to my room, Hannah.”

“Sure,” I said. “We can’t talk in here anyway.”

Seth took my hand and led me through the suite. We passed the girls playing cards and I smiled at them. Now, somehow, I belonged in this smoke-filled room.

We turned into a bedroom off the suite and Seth shut and locked the door. The clack of the bolt resounded in my brain.

“Better,” he said.

The room smelled like clean linen. I saw fake flowers on a glass table, a neatly made king-size bed, and the city beyond a vast window.

I said, “You’re really living the rock star dream, huh?”

“What do you mean?” Seth held on to my hand. A frisson of fear passed through me—I was alone again with this unpredictable man—and I watched him guardedly. From the next room, Lana Del Rey’s new song started to play. Boy blue, she sang in her sultry voice.

“I mean nice hotels, drugs, girls.”

Seth flashed a smile, feral in the dark.

“Whatever,” he said. “Everyone gives in eventually.”

He stepped closer and I instinctively stepped back, bumping into the wall.

“Have you been okay, Hannah?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Another lie. “Just figuring myself out. I left Matt.” I said it offhandedly, but the words hung between us. I left Matt, and here I am.

“You all right for money?” Seth said.

I blinked, then glared at his half-lit face. The city lights played along his features, his jaw rough with stubble, his liquid dark eyes.

“I am fine for money,” I said. “I am not some victim here, Seth. You should know that. Or is that how you still see me—as a pawn in Matt’s game?”

My heart punched against my ribs.

Seth raised a brow and stepped closer still, his h*ps touching mine. I could lift my leg, drive my knee into his groin, and he’d be walking crooked for days. But I didn’t.

“What do you think you are, Hannah, a player in his game? The queen to his king?” He lowered his head so that his mouth hovered beside my ear. He smelled like winter, smoky and masculine. “No, I’ll tell you what you are.” His breath whispered along my neck. He pressed against my thigh and I felt the hard length of his dick. “You’re a class A drug.”

I shuddered and shook off Seth’s hand, but instead of fleeing, I grasped his hips.

“Hannah,” he growled lowly.

Lana sang move baby. The music vibrated through the wall, strumming my blood.

Everyone gives in eventually.

I bent my clean-shaven leg, silky soft, until my knee slid under Seth’s shirt and rubbed over his flank. I pressed my calf against the small of his back and tugged him closer.

“God,” he said, grinding his erection against my thigh. “You’re strong…”

Strong? I felt ephemeral, suspended outside of the scene.

P.S. I slept with Seth.

I wrote it to force Matt to get over me.

Now I was doing it to force myself to get over him.

Seth didn’t kiss me, but he took what he wanted. He squeezed my br**sts through my shirt, hiked up my skirt, and kneaded my ass. Everything was different … from being with Matt. Seth was rangier. Sharper angles. Cocaine fueled.

I simply held on to him and breathed.

When he undid his jeans and freed his cock, the thick weight of it resting against my stomach, I looked down.

My lips twitched, but I managed to keep my expression neutral.

A Prince Albert piercing crowned Seth’s tip, the silver barbell shining in the dark.

My eyes lifted—and I met Seth’s sly smile.

“What?” he said.

I shook my head. “Nothing…”

Seth pulled my hand to his dick. My fingertips brushed the overheated skin and he sighed. Tentatively, I touched the piercing—cool and weighted—and watched the ripple effect of pleasure on Seth’s face. Eyelids drifting down. Lips parting.

This is power, I thought, touching a man like this.

And then I knew what I wanted to do.

I wrapped my fingers around his shaft. He hardened fully in my hold. I began to stroke him, my gaze moving between his arousal and his face, and he watched some unspecified point on the wall. God only knows what cocktail of substances Seth took that night. He looked delirious. As I jerked him up and down, faster, reaching into his jeans to rub his balls, he braced his forearms against the wall and began to thrust into my grip.

We stood so close. The serpentine movement of his body hypnotized me. If I stopped … we would f**k. I would undress him and see those curling tattoos on his sides. We would kiss and say things we didn’t mean. Counterfeit intimacy.

“Sweet girl,” Seth whispered.

His c**k thickened in my grip. I wrapped my fingers tight around his girth and head, and I let him buck into my hand until he came. He was curiously silent. Warm fluid surged across my palm. An expression like pain flickered on his face, primal and stunned, and then it was over.

The drumming of my heart filled my body.

Seth tucked himself away, zipped his jeans, and turned toward the window. I moved automatically to the bathroom and washed my hands in the dark.

When I stepped out, my skirt straightened, I found Seth seated on the edge of the bed. A few more pieces of hair had come loose from his ponytail. He looked beautiful, and fallen, like Lucifer. He lit a cigarette and smoked vapidly, his eyes on the floor.

“I’m pretty f**king high,” he said after a while.

“I’m kind of wired, too.”

“I knew it would be this way, if I hooked up with you.” He sucked in a lungful of smoke. “So I just let myself go.”

“Hey, don’t even worry about it.”

Seth chuckled. “I’m not worried about it.” He lifted his head, looked at me, and I felt nothing. Not aroused. Not embarrassed or coy. Nothing.

I knew if I thought about Matt, though, and how much this would have hurt him, I would fall to my knees.

The heart always knows what the mind refuses to accept.

My heart knew that I would be holding a torch for Matt forever.

“Stick around and I’ll make you come,” Seth said, but his voice was defeated, as if he already knew my answer.

I went to him and tucked a piece of hair behind his ear. I touched his cheek and frowned.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and left him smoking on the bed.

I let myself out of the room and found Chrissy. I told her that I wanted to walk back to my hotel, and then I did, feeling less and less alive with each step.

Chapter 38

MATT

One foot in front of the other. The rhythmic slap of my sneakers on pavement. The streetlights passing in long yellow ellipses.

And my breath coming faster and faster.

Calves burning, arms aching, my heart outpacing my stride.

As if I could outrun the pain.

But maybe I could. When I ran like this—dead runs late at night—I left behind the nauseating unease of Hannah’s absence. I stopped picturing Hannah and Seth together, and I stopped trying to work out the logistics of their romance.

I reached the point of exhaustion, and then I pushed myself harder. And when my limbs felt numb and my chest seemed ready to explode, I smiled.

Here we go, I thought, I’m going to collapse.

Except I never collapsed, and the effort left me feeling juvenile and stupid.

A streak of sweat ran into my eye, salt stinging.

I slowed to a jog and pushed back my hair. Everything’s going to be okay, I told myself. Then I imagined Hannah touching my face and saying, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She left three weeks ago.

This wasn’t getting any more okay.

I passed the Hard Rock Cafe and a little Italian place and realized dimly that I was about to cross Fourteenth. I stopped. In the city lights and nighttime traffic ahead, I saw someone like Hannah walking. A trick of the mind, no doubt. I refused to give in to irrationality.

I turned and sprinted back to the condo.

I had one new voice mail from Nate. I checked the time—ten for me, midnight for him—and returned his call.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” I said as soon as he answered.

“It’s not that late. How are you doing?”

“Fine. I was running.” I sat at the kitchen island and fiddled with the AlumaFoam splint on the counter. I’d removed it to run. I barely wore it, in fact, preferring the pain in my hand.