Page 129 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
Hawk closed his eyes, struggling for air, sick and aching and so swamped with longing he wanted to scream.
“This planet doesn’t only belong to the human race. It belongs to every living creature on it. Equality isn’t an ideal that can be applied according to the whim of popularity, or toward one race or gender or species in lieu of another. We either believe in equality for all—all—and strive toward that . . . or we’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”
There was another beat of silence after she stopped speaking. Then the room erupted into noise, everyone shouted at once, questions were volleyed, cameras clicked furiously.
“There’s one last thing I’d like to say.” Jack held up a hand and the roar slowly dulled to a restless murmur.
The cameras zoomed in tight on her face so it filled the screen. Pale skin, dusted with freckles. Bloodshot eyes fringed in a curve of brown lashes. Her mouth, the lower lip full and trembling. She inhaled a long, deep breath, nostrils flaring, and for a gut-wrenching moment Hawk thought she might cry.
Instead she said in a steady, soft voice, those blue eyes burning, “Lucas Eduardo Tavares Castelo Luna, you underhanded son of a dung beetle . . . I love you. With all my heart and soul, I love you. I’m not a religious person, but because of you, I believe in miracles. You taught me how to be loved. I never knew what that meant before, I was too busy feeling terrible and hating myself and thinking that’s the way things were always going to be, but you gave me the gift of yourself and a glimpse of happiness, and for that I want to say thank you.”
She bit her lower lip. Her eyes filled with tears. Her voice breaking, she said, “Knowing you made me a better person. I’ll always be grateful I met you. And I’ll always be yours.”
She turned and ran off the stage.
The room leapt to its feet, the reporters shouting questions, shooting pictures, surging toward the stage to get one last, final picture of her before she disappeared through a side door. A team of newscasters behind a desk came on to comment on the broadcast, and Jenna pushed a button on the remote, plunging the television screen into darkness. She rose, turned to look at Hawk, and smiled. “So, what did you think? Interesting speech, wasn’t it?”
He stood unsteadily. His chest felt constricted, as if an invisible winch was tightening around it, and he couldn’t catch his breath. He thought for one wild, deranged moment he was having a heart attack.
Jacqueline remembered. She remembered everything.
And she loved him.
He stammered, “I . . . I . . .”
“I know,” said the Queen, moving to the other side of the room. She stopped beside Leander, glancing up at him with a smile. When she looked back at Hawk, her whole face was alight. “Go,” she urged softly, resting her head on Leander’s chest. “If you catch a good tailwind, you’ll be in New York by nightfall.”
Hawk made a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh, then put his hand to his face, rubbing his jaw. He nodded, looking between Jenna, Leander, and Morgan, who was grinning mischievously.
Without another word, he Shifted to Vapor and surged out of the room and into the sky, leaving his clothes behind in a pile on the Queen’s living room floor.
The carton of noodles with spicy garlic sauce was empty, as was the carton of curry dumplings, the box of veggie rolls, and the container of pad thai, which Jack normally didn’t order because it tasted vaguely of pork. She suspected those small, meaty chunks Mr. Hsu at her favorite Chinese place always claimed were fried tofu were, in fact, of animal origin.
Tonight, consuming things of animal origin seemed like a perfectly rational idea. Right up there with ruining your career, conducting a weepy confessional on national television, becoming the laughingstock of everyone you ever knew, and realizing you’d lost the love of your life because you were, one: suffering from amnesia, and two: a complete jerk.
“Maybe no one will recognize me in Iceland,” Jack muttered, looking up at the moon hanging in the night sky. Cold and remote, it stared balefully back through her apartment windows. “Or . . . Costa Rica.”
Yes. Costa Rica. Better than Iceland. Less ice.
She’d finally convinced Nola she’d spent enough time away from her own life and should return to it, and that no, she was in no danger of slitting her wrists. Nola had gone grudgingly, threatening to call first thing in the morning, though she’d already texted her three times in the past three hours.
Instead of walking to China Palace as Jack normally would have, she’d asked the restaurant to deliver the food because there were still two news vans parked outside her apartment building, filled with reporters waiting to pounce. And now she was sitting on the floor in the living room, with her back against the wall, surrounded by empty food containers, wondering why she’d never had the sense to buy more furniture.
“Because you didn’t need it, that’s why,” she said aloud to the empty room. “You were never home.”
Home. Now there was a concept. For the first time in her life she knew where home really was.
The same place her heart was. With Hawk.
Just thinking his name hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut, took a few deep breaths, then pushed herself up to her feet, leaving the cartons behind. She wandered through the dim, silent apartment, went to stand at the tall windows to look out into the night. Lights in windows and streams of traffic and a skyline forested with skyscrapers . . . New York City was about as different from the rainforest as it was from the moon.
She’d finally called her father. The conversation was awkward. At the end, Jack told him she loved him, and that if he ever again uttered racist, sexist, hateful things about people in her presence that would be the last time he’d see her. He’d gone quiet when she said that; then he’d said, “Okay, Jackie,” and Jack had felt such a surge of relief she wished she’d demanded it years ago.
Then he told her Garrett had finally succeeded in killing himself.
She’d sunk to her knees as he spoke, clutching the phone so hard she thought it might break, every muscle in her body shaking.
“Made himself a rope of thread he’d been pulling from his clothes. Took him over a year to make it, they think. Guess he was determined.”
