Page 9

His voice was rough and a little slurred. Was he drunk?

“No, I was just watching TV. How are you?”

“Better now that I’m talking to you.”

Her heart somersaulted in her chest. “You . . . You are?”

“Yeah, I had a bad night. My friends tried to set me up.”

“Oh . . . ” That was good, right? That he hadn’t been interested in the other woman and was calling her now? “I’m sorry. Was she nice?”

“Yeah, she was fine, but she had this real shrill voice the more she drank, and I just couldn’t take it. It’s nothing like yours.”

Whoa, what did that mean? “Mine?”

“Yeah, your voice is low. Smoky. Daddy like.”

Hannah couldn’t hold back her laughter. He was definitely wasted, but she’d heard people were actually more honest when they were drunk. He could mean everything he was saying.

Even the incredibly goofy stuff.

“I think you’re a bit hammered.”

“You would be correct, partner,” he said, a thick twang in his voice. “I just got your message and was thinking about you. Waited all night for you to text.”

“You did?”

“Mmm-hmm. So what did you do tonight?”

Hannah lay back on the couch with a sigh. “Well, my wonderful best friend decided it would be a good idea to get me out of the house and set me up on a terrible blind date. So I suppose our nights were about the same.”

The phone was dead silent. “Hello? Blake?”

Suddenly, a sound came through, faint and guttural. Like a snore.

Oh God, it was a snore. He’d fallen asleep on the phone with her.

“Good night.” She flicked the red phone icon with the tip of her thumb and ended the call, staring up at the ceiling with a smile. She didn’t care that he’d drunk dialed her and fallen asleep. The fact that he’d been thinking about her was enough to keep her up all night.

Unable to concentrate on what A was doing to the Liars now, she got up from the couch and sat down at her laptop, powering up the Mac as she pulled her hair back into a messy bun. She opened her manuscript and read through the last page she’d written the night before, the scene playing through her mind.

She’d started writing a middle-grade novel last year, after going through an old box at her parents’ that was filled with pictures of the foster kids who had come before they had adopted her. She’d been placed in Patty and Gilbert York’s care when she was taken into foster care just shy of a year old. She didn’t remember her life before, but when her birth mother stopped making her visitation, she’d become available for adoption, and the Yorks hadn’t hesitated. They had never kept the fact that they weren’t her biological parents from her and told her everything they knew when she became curious in her early teens. That was all it was, though. She’d never had any desire to meet the woman who had given birth to her; she’d been loved and cherished and protected. She didn’t need anything else.

But looking into the faces of those other kids, some who appeared almost haunted and others who stared mutinously at the camera, as if they were afraid to be happy, had hurt her heart so much. That night she’d come home and started writing about Legonia Marie Phillips, or Legs for short. Legs was a foster child with special powers who protected the world and other kids like her.

It had been just for fun, something to do when she was home alone and couldn’t shut her brain off, but before she knew it, she’d finished the first draft. And started a second manuscript.

By the time she’d concluded the third book, she’d had another story formulate in her mind about a young monster hunter named Cameron Fisher, who’d been adopted by normal folks. After his uncle shows up to explain that he’s not crazy, that he’s really seeing scary, supernatural beings, Cameron soon starts being trained on how to protect the people he loves from things that only he can see.

It wasn’t such a surprise that she’d fallen in love with these types of tales; her mother had loved to read to her until she’d learned to read on her own, and the books they always chose had plenty of adventure, fanciful creatures . . .

And romance, of course.

Before she realized it, she’d written four thousand words, and her eyes were so heavy she could hardly keep them open. Finishing the sentence she was on, she walked into her bedroom and crawled into bed, grimacing as she looked at the angry red numbers on her alarm clock.

It was 3:47 a.m. She had to be up in twenty minutes for work.

But even the realization that she was going to be freaking exhausted couldn’t chase the smile from her face as she thought of Blake’s silly phrase.