“I know, but this time isn’t like that, Mum. I ruined everything that I spent months building with her.”
“She loves you.”
“I can’t do it anymore, I can’t. I can’t be who she wants me to be. I always fuck everything up. That’s who I am and always will be, the guy who fucks everything up.”
“That’s not true, and I happen to know that you’re exactly what she wants.”
The cup shakes in my hand and I nearly drop it. “I know you’re only trying to help, but, please . . . just stop, Mum.”
“So what, then? You’re just going to let her go and move on?”
I set the cup down on the side table before answering. I sigh. “No, I couldn’t move on if I wanted to, but she has to. I have to let her move on before I do any more damage.”
I have to let her end up like Natalie. Happy . . . happy after everything I did to her. Happy with someone like Elijah.
“Fine, Hardin. I don’t know what else to say to convince you to step up and apologize,” she snaps.
“Just go. Please,” I beg.
“I will. But only because I have faith in you that you’ll do the right thing and fight for her.”
The small cup and platter are thrown against the wall and shattered into small pieces as soon as she closes the door behind her.
chapter eighty-three
TESSA
After we have lunch at a little nondescript strip mall, we head back toward Zed’s place. As we pass the campus, I finally have the courage to ask him the question I’ve always wanted to ask.
“Zed, what do you think would’ve happened if you had won?”
He’s clearly caught by surprise, but he recovers after looking at his hands for a minute. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about that a lot.”
“You have?” I look at him, and his caramel eyes meet mine.
“Of course I have.”
“What did you come up with?” I tuck my hair behind my ear, waiting for his answer.
“Well . . . I know I would’ve told you about it before I let it get that far. I always wanted to tell you. Every time I saw the two of you together, I wanted you to know.” He gulps. “You have to know that.”
“I do know it,” I barely whisper, and he continues.
“I like to think that you could’ve forgiven me since I would have told you before anything happened, and we’d have gone out on dates, proper dates. Like the movies or something, and we would have had fun. You would have smiled and laughed, and I wouldn’t have taken advantage of you. And I like to think that you’d eventually have fallen for me, the way you did for him, and when it was right we would have . . . and I wouldn’t have told anyone. I wouldn’t have given anyone a single detail about it. Hell, I wouldn’t have even hung around any of them anymore because I’d have wanted to spend every second with you, making you giggle the way you do when you think something is really funny . . . it’s different from your regular laugh. That’s how I know when I’m really entertaining you or you’re faking it to be polite.” He smiles, and my heart begins to race.
“And I would have appreciated you and not lied to you. I wouldn’t have mocked you behind your back or called you names. I wouldn’t have cared about my reputation and . . . and . . . I think we could have been happy. You could have been happy, all the time, not just sometimes. I’d like to think—”
I cut him off by grabbing the collar of his jacket and bringing my lips to his.
chapter eighty-four
TESSA
Zed’s hand immediately moves to my cheek, causing the skin on the back of my neck to rise, and he pulls my arm to bring me to him. I hit my knee on the steering wheel as I climb across and mentally curse at myself for nearly ruining the moment, but he doesn’t seem to notice and wraps his arms around my back, bringing me flush against his chest. My arms latch around his neck, and our mouths move in sync.
His mouth is foreign to me; it’s not like Hardin’s. His tongue doesn’t move the same, it doesn’t trace mine, and he doesn’t trap my bottom lip between his teeth.
Stop it, Tessa. You need this, you need to stop thinking about Hardin. He’s surely in bed with some random girl, Molly even. Oh God, if he’s with Molly . . .
You could have been happy all the time, not just sometimes, Zed just said.
I know he’s right—I would have been much better off with him. I deserve this. I deserve to be happy. I’ve suffered enough and dealt with enough of Hardin’s bullshit, and he hasn’t even tried to talk to me about it. Only a weak person would run back to someone who has trampled on them repeatedly. I can’t be that weak, I have to be strong and move on. Or try at least.
I feel better right now, in this moment, than I’ve felt in the last nine days. Nine days doesn’t sound like a long time until you spend it counting every single second of misery waiting for something that doesn’t come. With Zed’s arms around me, I can finally breathe. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Zed has always been so kind to me and he’s always been there. I wish he had been the one I fell for instead of Hardin.
“God, Tessa . . .” Zed moans and I tug at his hair.
I kiss him harder.
“Wait . . .” he says into my mouth, and I pull away slowly. “What is this?” He looks into my eyes.
“I . . . I don’t know?” My voice is shaky and I’m out of breath.
“Me, either . . .”
“I’m sorry . . . I’m just emotional, and I’ve been going through a lot, and what you said to me just now made me . . . I don’t know, I shouldn’t have done that.” I look away from him and climb off of his lap, getting back into the driver’s seat.
“It’s nothing to be sorry for . . . I just don’t want to get the wrong idea, you know? I just want to know what this means to you,” he tells me.
What does this mean to me? “I don’t think I can answer that, not yet. I—”
“Thought so,” he says, his voice slightly angry.
“I just don’t know . . .”
“It’s fine, I get it. You still love him.”
“It’s only been nine days, Zed, I can’t help it.” I keep managing to make new messes, each one bigger than the last.
“I know, I’m not saying that you can or will stop loving him. I just don’t want to be your rebound. I just started dating someone—I haven’t dated anyone since I met you, and I finally met Rebecca. Then, when I drove you home and saw the way you reacted to me dating someone, I started thinking . . . I know I’m an idiot, but I started thinking you didn’t want me to move on or something.” I look away from his handsome face and stare out the window.
“You aren’t my rebound . . . I wanted to kiss you just now; I just don’t know what I’m thinking or doing. Nothing’s made sense to me for the last nine days, and I finally stopped thinking about him when I kissed you and it felt amazing. I felt like I could do this. I could get over him, but I know that it’s not fair for me to use you that way. I’m just confused and irrational. I’m sorry for making you cheat on your girlfriend; that wasn’t my intention. I just—”
“I don’t expect you to move on so soon. I know how deep his claws are into you.”
He has no idea.
“Just tell me one thing,” Zed says and I nod. “Tell me that you’ll at least try to allow yourself to be happy. He hasn’t even called you, not once. He’s done so much shit to you and he hasn’t even tried to fight for you. If that were me, I’d be fighting for you. I would have never let you go in the first place.” He reaches across and tucks an errant lock of hair behind my ear. “Tessa, I don’t need an answer right now, I just need to know that you’re ready to try to be happy. I know you aren’t ready for any type of relationship with me, but maybe someday you will be.”
My mind is racing, my heart is racing and aching all at once, and the air has been sucked out of the car. I want to tell him that I can try and I will try to allow myself this, but the words won’t come. That small smile that Hardi
n has on his face in the mornings when I finally get him to wake up after complaining about my alarm clock, the way his raspy morning voice says my name, the way he tries to force me to stay in bed with him and I end up squealing and running from the room, the way he likes his coffee black just like me, the way I love him more than anything in the entire world and I wish he could be different. I wish he could be exactly the same, only different—it doesn’t make sense to me, and I know it won’t make sense to anyone else, but that’s the way it is.
I wish I didn’t love him as much as I do. I wish he hadn’t made me fall in love with him.
“I get it. It’s okay,” Zed says, and he tries his best to smile but fails miserably.
“I’m sorry . . .” I say, and mean it more than he could ever know.
He climbs out of the car and shuts the door behind him, and I’m left alone, again.
“Fuck!” I scream and hit my hands against the steering wheel, reminding me of Hardin once again.
chapter eighty-five
HARDIN
I wake up soaked in my own sweat again. I had forgotten how miserable it was to wake up this way nearly every night. I had thought the sleepless nights were a thing of the past, but now the past is haunting me yet again.
I glance at the clock: it’s six in the morning. I need sleep, real sleep. Uninterrupted sleep. I need her, I need Tess. Maybe if I close my eyes and pretend that she’s here, I’ll be able to go back to sleep . . .
I close my eyes and try to imagine her head on my chest as I lie on my back. I try to remember the way her hair always smells like vanilla, the way she breathes heavily in her sleep. For a moment I feel her, feel her warm skin against my bare chest . . . I’m officially going fucking crazy.
Fuck.
Tomorrow will be better, it has to be. I’ve been thinking that for the last . . . ten days now. If I could just see her one more time, it wouldn’t be so bad. Just once. If I saw her smile one more time, I could live with myself for letting her go. Will she be at Christian’s party tomorrow? Seems pretty likely . . .
I stare at the ceiling and try to imagine what she’d be wearing if she was to go. Would she wear the white dress that she knows I love so much? Will her hair be curled and tucked behind her ear or will she pull it back? Will she wear makeup even though she doesn’t need to?
Goddammit.
I sit up and get out of bed. There is no way I can go back to sleep. When I get downstairs, Mike is sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper.
“Good morning, Hardin,” he says to me.
“Hey,” I mumble back and pour myself a cup of coffee.
“Your mum is still asleep.”
“You don’t say . . .” I roll my eyes.
“Your mum is really happy to have you here.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ve been a dick the entire time.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But she was glad to have you open up to her. She’s always been so worried about you . . . until she met Tessa. Then she wasn’t so worried anymore.”
“Well, guess she’ll have to be worried again.” I sigh. Why is he trying to have a fucking heart-to-heart with me at six in the fucking morning?
“I wanted to bring something to your attention,” he says and turns to me.
“Okay . . . ?” I eye him.
“Hardin, I love your mum and I intend to marry her.”
I spit my coffee back into my cup. “Marry her? Are you mad?”
He raises a brow. “And why would my intention to marry her be mad?”
“I don’t know . . . she’s already been married . . . and you’re our neighbor . . . her neighbor.”
“I can take care of her the way she should have been taken care of her entire life. If you don’t approve, I’m sorry, but I thought I’d let you know that when the time is right, I’ll be asking her to spend her life with me, officially.”
I don’t know what to say to this man, the man who has lived next door to me my entire life, the man who I’ve never seen angry, not even once. He loves her, I can tell, but this is too weird for me to comprehend right now.
“Okay then . . .”
“Okay then,” he echoes back and then looks behind me.
My mum walks into the kitchen with her robe wrapped tight around her and her hair in a mess on her head. “What are you doing up, Hardin? Are you going back home?” she asks.
“No, I couldn’t sleep. And this is home,” I tell her and take another drink of coffee. This is my home.
“Hmm . . .” she sleepily replies.
chapter eighty-six
TESSA
I’m getting sucked back in, back under. The memories that I shared with Hardin tug at my feet, attempting to pull me under the water.
I roll the windows down in an attempt to get some air. Zed is so sweet to me, he’s understanding and kind. He’s dealt with a lot for me and I’ve always brushed him aside. If I could just stop being foolish, I could try with him. I can’t even imagine being in a relationship right now, or really anytime soon. But maybe with time I could. I don’t want Zed to break up with Rebecca because of me if I can’t give him an answer, or even a hint of an answer.
As I drive back to Landon’s house, I’m more confused than ever.
If I could just talk to Hardin, just see him once more, I could get closure. If I could hear him say that he doesn’t care, if he would be cruel to me just one last time, I could give Zed the chance, give myself the chance.
Before I can stop myself, I grab my phone and press the button that I’ve been avoiding since day four. If he ignores me, I can move on. We are officially over if he doesn’t answer my call. If he tells me that he’s sorry and that we can work on it . . . no. I put the phone back on the seat. I’ve come too far to call him again, to break down again.
But I need to know.
The line goes straight to voicemail. “Hardin . . .” The words leave my lips at a frantic rate. “Hardin . . . it’s Tessa. I . . . well, I need to talk to you. I’m in my car and I’m so confused . . .” I begin to cry. “Why haven’t you even tried to contact me? You just let me leave, and here I am pathetically calling you and crying into your voicemail. I need to know what happened to us. Why was this time different—why didn’t we fight it out? Why didn’t you fight for me? I deserve to be happy, Hardin,” I sob and hang the phone up.
Why did I just do that? Why did I break down and call him? I’m such an idiot—he’s probably going to listen to it and laugh. He’ll probably let whatever girl he’s hooking up with listen to the message, and they’ll laugh and laugh at my expense. I pull into a deserted parking lot to gather my thoughts before getting into another accident.
I stare at the phone and breathe in and out in order to stop crying. Twenty minutes go by and he still hasn’t returned my call, or even texted me.
Why am I sitting in a parking lot at ten at night crying and calling him? I’ve fought myself for the last nine days to get myself to be strong, yet here I am falling apart, again. I can’t let this happen. I pull out of the parking lot and drive back to Zed’s apartment. Hardin is obviously too busy to be bothered with me, and Zed is here, honest and always here for me. I park next to his truck and take a deep breath. I have to think of myself first and what I want.
As I race up the stairs to Zed’s door, I’m at peace with myself.
I bang on the door, shifting back and forth waiting for it to open. What if I’m too late and he doesn’t answer the door? I’ll get what I deserve, I suppose. I should’ve known better than to kiss him in the middle of all of this.
When the door opens I nearly stop breathing. Zed is wearing only black gym shorts, his inked chest exposed.
“Tessa?” He gapes, clearly surprised.
“I . . . I don’t know what I can give you, but I want to try,” I tell him.
He runs his hand over his black hair and takes a deep breath. He’s going to reject me, I know it.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come . . .” I can’t
handle any more rejection.
I turn toward the stairs and take two at a time before a hand hooks my arm and Zed turns me around to face him.
He doesn’t say anything at all; he just takes my hand in his and leads me back up the stairs and inside his apartment.
Zed is calm, so quiet and understanding as we sit on his couch, him on one side and me on the other. He’s completely different from what I’m used to with Hardin. When I don’t want to talk, he doesn’t push me to talk. When I can’t think of an explanation for my actions, he doesn’t call me out. And when I tell him that I’m not comfortable sleeping in his bed with him, he brings me the softest blanket and a somewhat clean pillow and lays them on his couch.
THE NEXT MORNING when I wake up, my neck is killing me. Zed’s old couch isn’t the most comfortable, but I slept well, considering.
“Hey,” he says when he walks into the living room.
“Hey.” I smile.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asks me, and I nod.
Zed was incredible last night. He didn’t even blink when I asked to sleep on the couch. He listened to me talk about Hardin and how it had all gone wrong. He told me how he cares for Rebecca but now doesn’t know what to do because he’s always thought about me, even after meeting her. I felt guilty for the first hour while crying to him, but as the night went on, the tears turned to smiles, which shifted to laughs. My stomach literally hurt from laughing about stupid memories from our childhoods by the time we decided to go to bed.
It’s nearly two in the afternoon now, the latest I think I’ve ever slept, but that’s what happens when you stay up until seven in the morning.
“Yes; you?” I stand and fold the blanket he lent me. I vaguely remember him draping it over me while I drifted off to sleep.
“Same.” He grins and sits on the couch. His hair is wet, and his skin is glistening like he just got out of the shower.
“Where should I put this?” I ask him, referring to the blanket.