Because for the first time in my cursed existence, I had allowed myself to hope.
I had allowed myself to love.
And she has destroyed that precious, fragile thing as surely as if she’d torn my heart from my chest with her own small hands.
Now I understand why Creator-Father warned against such foolishness.
Love makes monsters of us all.
But if she thinks she can simply walk away from our bargain, from me, she is gravely mistaken.
I will find her.
I will bring her home.
And perhaps... perhaps I will teach her exactly what happens when someone betrays a creature like me.
The cold spreads through my chest where warmth had lived just moments before.
She wanted to see the monster?
Now she will.
TWENTY-SEVEN
HANNAH
I stareat the phone and nearly laugh at the absurdity. Who can I call? Whose number do I even know by heart?
I know exactly two numbers. Calling my mother certainly won’t help anything. She’s useless in a crisis. She flaps her hands and starts crying. Even when I’d fall as a child, which happened constantly. She can’t handle the sight of blood. After my surgeries, she’d stay at the hospital with me, but somehow... she’d make it more about her trauma of having a sick child than about me actually going through it.
There’s only one other number I remember.
So I dial it.
I half expect him not to answer. When he does, I’m still not sure what to say.
“Hello?” Drew’s voice comes through startlingly clear. It’s jarring to hear him again after everything that’s happened. “Look, if this is a telemarketer, I’m hanging up.”
“No!” I say quickly.
A pause. Then, “Hannah?”
I suck in a breath at hearing my name in his voice.
“Hannah, is that you? Hannah?”
“Yes.” The admission makes my chest tighten. “It’s me.”
“Jesus, your mother and I have been worried sick. Tell me where you are so I can come get you. This has gone on long enough. You need to come home. Look, I forgive you, okay?”
I frown. “Well, I?—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupts. “I know you haven’t been thinking clearly lately, but I forgive you, and we can go back to how things were. Just tell me where you are, and I’ll fly there and handle everything.”
My grip on the phone begins to feel numb again. The hot coffee had restored some sensation, but now everything inside me goes cold.
“Hannah? Hannah, tell me where you are.”
