43. Hawk
“Dude, will you sit down already?”
It was the third time Alex had made the request, and I wasn’t any more likely to agree than I had been the first two times he’d griped at me.
Lewis had been gone for over an hour. His house wasn’t that far away; even in the worst L.A. traffic, he should have been there and back in thirty minutes, tops.
So it was safe to say I was losing my shit. So far, I’d pictured him having died in a fiery car crash, having been abducted by aliens, and even stopping on the side of the road to help someone recover their lost dog.
The intrusive thought that was sticking out the most, however, was the one where he and Tori were sitting in their Bel Air mansion, drinking their martinis and laughing their faces off at me.
That one was the fuckin’ worst.
As soon as Lewis had left, I’d headed to the basement studio to find Alex. He’d taken one look at my face and called in reinforcements. Gavin and Charlie had arrived in record time—way faster than whatever the fuck it was Lewis was doing, that was for sure—and I had reluctantly filled them in on the most pertinent details.
I’d found the letters. I’d grown attached to the letters. I wanted all the letters.
That was it. They didn’t need to know that I’d tried my hand at cyberstalking and I was almost certain that it was Wren’s eyes I’d been seeing in my dreams for over a decade. They didn’t need to know that I felt closer to her through this scant amount of one-way communication that I had from her than I had felt for any woman I’d ever known.
And they sure as fuck didn’t need to know that I was worried that I was starting to believe that Victoria may have had a hand in more than just blackmailing me into a marriage that I absolutely didn’t want.
“He should be back by now,” I grumbled, my worried steps taking me to the doors overlooking the pool. The wide glass doors were open, the afternoon breeze filling the house with the soft smell of the sagebrush from the canyon, the spicy scent briefly chasing away the skunky smell of the pot I’d smoked earlier. It was the first thing Alex had done after he’d called in the guys; pass me a blunt.
Turning around again, I caught sight of Charlie and Gavin watching me from their places on the couch. Neither of them had said much since I’d told them about Wren and her letters, both appearing lost in thought as they digested the information.
Alex, on the other hand, never stopped to think about anything, keeping up a steady stream of inane chatter and unhelpful advice the entire time I’d been stressing.
“I’m sure he’s on his way, man. So just chill. You’re gonna put a hole in Harry’s tile floor, and then she’ll kick both our asses.”
I opened my mouth, prepared to tell him that I’d pace wherever the fuck I wanted to pace in my own home, thank you very much, but before I could get a word out, the notification for the gate went off on my phone.
“Yeah?” I barked into the app.
“It’s me,” came Lewis’s hesitant voice.
“’Bout fuckin’ time,” I growled, hitting the button to open the gate and making my way to the front door.
I watched as Lewis parked, climbing out of his ridiculous hypercar—seriously, the thing had once belonged to a Saudi Prince, and he bought it at auction for an astronomical price—and making his way to the house.
“Did you find them?” I asked as I closed the door behind him.
“Yeah.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small bundle. My heart leapt as I caught sight of the collection of small, sketched feathers on the envelopes. I reached for them, taking them out of his hands and staring at them carefully. Immediately I recognized the handwriting on the envelope’s return address, the harsh, jaggedly formed letters the same as on all the other letters I had from her.
It was them. Lewis had delivered. “Right where I thought they’d be.”
“Then what the fuck took you so long?” I asked, not really caring about the answer now that I had Wren’s letters in my hands. All I wanted to do was head to my study and read them. I let my gaze drift over the decorated envelopes, held together with a sparkly gold elastic band. I noticed they had a piece of plain white paper wrapped around them, like a stack of hundreds from the bank, covering the addressee to any casual observer.
That clever bitch. Anyone who would have glanced at these envelopes would never have noticed that they had been addressed to me.
I would have admired her cunning if she wasn’t such a cunt.
“I got there just as Tori was leaving, so I had to listen to her bitch for twenty minutes about how the cleaning staff rearranged her shoe collection again. Sorry.”
I nodded absently, flipping over the stack of envelopes and scowling when I saw the back side.
“They’re open!” I accused.
“What?” Lewis asked dumbly, as though he hadn’t just had the letters in his possession. “I didn’t do it.”
“Fuckin’ with the mail’s a federal offense, man,” Alex said from his spot by the stairs. “They’ll put your ass in postal jail or some shit.”
“I swear I didn’t do it, guys. I literally just grabbed them out of the safe, stuffed them in my pocket, and came right back here.” He looked panicked, as though he was terrified that we wouldn’t believe him, but at the moment, I didn’t have it in me to care about Lewis’s feelings.
Because there were three letters from Wren in my hands and every single one of them had been opened.
The sense of violation was intense, like someone had broken into my home and rifled through my personal things. That was how I felt about Victoria having opened and read through Wren’s letters. Like she had desecrated something sacred to me, defiled it with her very touch. It was enraging; I was as angry with her as I had ever been, and that was fuckin’ saying something.
Flipping through the stack, I noticed there were only three letters.
“Is this all of them?” I asked Lewis, getting in his face again. “You said there was a stack, and this is only three. Where the hell are the rest?”
“I mean, I’d guessed at the number, man. That was all that was in there. I’ve never seen any others.”
I stared at him, searching his face for a lie. I’d known the guy most of my life, and I thought I could read him fairly well, even now.
Lewis was telling me the truth. This was all there was.
I didn’t understand why that thought was so upsetting, making it feel like I’d just taken a punch to the chest. It had been more than fourteen years since the letter Wren had sent telling me she’d gotten tickets to our show. Fourteen years, and these three skinny envelopes were all I had of her.
Clutching them tightly, I nodded at Lewis and then headed down the hall, slamming the study door behind me. Settling into my chair, I unbound the letters and laid them out on the desk in front of me, arranged chronologically by postmark. These three letters were also over fourteen years old, and they had been sent in quick succession, with only a handful of weeks between them, which struck me as odd. Previously, Wren had gone a year or two between correspondence, her letters flowing naturally with the events of her life. So why had she chosen to send them rapid fire this time?
Staring down at them, I took in the drawings, frowning as I did. They were the same as the others, but they were different, too, the feathers smaller and much less numerous than the previous letters. It made the envelopes look empty, sad almost. As though there was no life in them like there had been with the others.
Something had happened, something that changed Wren, made her harder, I thought. Guarded.
Flipping open the first one—feeling my rage rise again at the sight of the torn flap, the carelessness with which it had been handled—I slid out the letter and read it.
Then I read the second.
When I got to the third, something else tumbled out of the envelope when I pulled out the letter, and my whole world fucking exploded.