After We Fell (44 page)

I
want to move closer to her, to reach for her shaking hand and find a way to erase her memories. I hate that she went through such an ordeal, and I'm once again blown away by her strength. She's sitting up, her back as straight as a board, and ready to talk to me.

“Why did you come here?” she asks quietly.

By way of answer, I ask, “Why is
he
here?” and nod my head toward the kitchen. I just
know
Noah is perched against the wall, listening in to our conversation. I really can't fucking stand him, but given the circumstances, I should probably shut up about it.

Playing with her hands, she says, “He's here to check on me.”

“He doesn't need to check on you.” That's why I'm here.

“Hardin”—she frowns—“not today. Please.”

“Sorry . . .” I inch back, feeling like an even bigger asshole than I did seconds ago.

“Why did you come here?” Tessa asks again.

“To bring your car. You don't want me here, do you?” I haven't once, until now, even considered that possibility. And it burns through me like acid. My being here might only be making things worse for her. The days of her finding solace in me are no longer.

“It's not that . . . I'm just confused.”

“About what?”

Her eyes shine under the dim lights of her mum's living room. “You, last night, Steph, everything. Did you know that it was all a game to her, and she really has hated me all this time.”

“No, of course I didn't know,” I tell her.

“You had no idea that she had any bad feelings toward me?”

Dammit.
But I want to be honest, so I say, “Maybe a little, I guess. Molly had mentioned it once or twice, but she didn't elaborate, and I didn't think it was something to this extent—or that Molly even knew what she was talking about.”

“Molly? Since when does Molly care about me?”

So black and white. Tessa always wants things to be so black and white, and it makes me shake my head, a little sad that things just can never be so simple. “She doesn't, she hates you still,” I tell her and look down. “But she called me after that Applebee's shit, and I was mad. I didn't want her or Steph to ruin things between me and you. I thought Steph was trying to meddle just to be a nosy bitch. I didn't think she was a fucking psycho.”

When I look over at Tessa, she's wiping tears from her eyes. I move across the couch to close the space between us, and she recoils. “Hey, it's okay,” I say and grab her arm to pull her to my chest. “Shhh . . .” My hand rests over her hair, and after a few seconds of trying to pull away, she gives in.

“I just want to start over. I want to forget about everything that's happened in the last six months,” she sobs.

My chest tightens as I nod along, agreeing with her even though I don't want to. I don't want her to want to forget me.

“I hate college. I always looked forward to it, but it's been one mistake after another for me.” She pulls at my shirt, bringing herself closer to me. I stay silent, not wanting to make her feel any worse than she's already feeling. I didn't have a fucking clue of what I was walking into when I knocked on the door, but I sure as hell didn't expect to have a crying Tessa in my arms.

“I'm being so dramatic.” She pulls away too soon, and for a moment I consider pulling her back to me.

“No. No, you're not. You're being really calm, considering
what happened. Tell me what you remember, don't make me ask again. Please.”

“It's all a blur really, it was so . . . strange. I was aware of every­thing but nothing made any sense. I don't know how to explain it. I couldn't move, but I could feel things.” She shudders.

“Feel things? Where did he touch you?” I don't want to know.

“My legs . . . they undressed me.”

“Only your legs?”
Please say yes.

“Yes, I think so. It could have been so much worse, but Zed—” She stops. Takes a breath. “Anyway, the pills made my body so heavy . . . I don't know how to explain it.”

I nod. “I know what you mean.”

“What?”

Broken memoires of blacking out in bars and stumbling down the streets of London race through my mind. The idea of fun that I once had is completely different from what I consider to be fun now. “I used to take them now and then for fun.”

“You did?” Her mouth falls open, and I don't like how her look makes me feel.

“I guess ‘fun' isn't really the word,” I backtrack. “Not anymore.”

She nods and gives me a sweet, relieved smile. She adjusts the collar of her sweater, which I see now is pretty tight on her.

“Where did that come from?” I ask.

“The sweater?” She gives me a wry smile. “It's my mother's . . . can't you tell?” Her fingers tug at the thick fabric.

“I don't know. Noah was at the door, and you're dressed like that . . . I thought I had stepped into a time machine,” I tease. Her eyes light up with humor, all sadness momentarily washed away, and she bites down on her lip in an attempt to stop from laughing.

She sniffles and reaches over to the small table to pull a
tissue from the floral box. “No. There are no time machines.” Tessa shakes her head back and forth slowly while wiping at her nose.

Fuck, even after crying she's so damned beautiful.
' “I was worried about you,” I tell her.

Her smile disappears.
Fuck.

“This is what confuses me,” she says. “You told me you didn't want to try anymore, but here you are telling me that you were worried about me.” She stares at me blankly, her lip trembling.

She's right. I don't always say it, but it's true. I spend hours a day worrying about her. Emotion . . . this is what I need from her. I need the reassurance.

But she takes my silence the wrong way. “It's okay, I'm not upset with you. I do appreciate you coming here and bringing my car. It means a lot to me that you did that.”

I remain mute on the couch, unable to talk for some time.

“It's nothing,” I finally manage to say with a shrug. But I need to say something real, anything.

After watching more of my painful silence for a moment, Tessa goes into polite hostess mode. “How will you get home? Wait . . . how did you even know how to get here?”

Shit. “Landon. He told me.”

Her eyes light up again. “Oh, he's here?”

“Yeah, he's outside.”

She flushes and rises to her feet. “Oh! I'm keeping you, I'm sorry.”

“No, you aren't. He's fine out there waiting,” I stammer.
I don't want to leave. Unless you're coming with me.

“He should have come inside.” She glances toward the door.

“He's fine.” My voice comes out much too sharp.

“Thank you again for bringing my car . . .” She's trying to dismiss me in a polite way. I know her.

“Do you want me to bring your stuff inside?” I offer.

“No, I'm leaving in the morning, so it's easier to keep it in there.”

Why does it surprise me that every single time she opens her mouth, she reminds me that she's going to Seattle? I keep waiting for her to change her mind, but it will never happen.

A
s Hardin reaches the door, I ask, “What did you do about Dan?”

I want to know more about last night, even if Noah can hear us talking. As we pass him in the hallway, Hardin doesn't so much as look at him. Noah glares, though, unsure of what to do, I assume.

“Dan. You said Molly told you. What did you do?” I know Hardin well enough to know that he went after him. I'm still surprised by Molly's help—I was far from expecting it when she walked into the bedroom last night. I shudder at the memory.

Hardin half smiles. “Nothing too bad.”

I didn't kill Dan when I found him; I only kicked him in the face . . .

“You kicked him in the face . . .” I say, trying to dig through the mess in my head.

He raises a brow. “Yeah . . . Did Zed tell you that?”

“I . . . I don't know . . .” I remember hearing the words, I just can't remember who said them.

I'm Hardin, not Zed,
Hardin said—his voice in my mind feels so real.

“You were here, weren't you? Last night?” I step toward him. He backs into the wall. “You
were;
I remember it. You said you were going to drink and you didn't . . .”

“I didn't think you remembered,” Hardin mutters.

“Why wouldn't you just tell me?” My head aches while I struggle to separate drug-induced dreaming from reality.

“I don't know. I was going to, but then everything got so familiar and you were smiling and I didn't want to ruin it.” He shrugs one shoulder, and his eyes focus on the large painting of the golden gates of Heaven on my mother's wall.

“How would you telling me that you drove me home ruin it?”

“I didn't drive you home. Zed did.”

I remembered that earlier, sort of. This is so frustrating.

“So you came after? What was I doing?” I want Hardin to help me put together the sequence of events. I can't seem to do it on my own.

“You were lying on the couch; you could barely speak.”

“Oh . . .”

“You were calling out for him,” he adds quietly, venom laced through his deep voice.

“For who?”

“Zed.” His answer is simple, but I can feel the emotion behind it.

“No, I wasn't.” That doesn't make sense. “This is so frustrating.” I sift through the mental mud and finally find a lump of sense . . . Hardin speaking about Dan, Hardin asking me if I can hear him, me asking him about Zed . . .

“I wanted to know about him, if you had hurt him. I think.” The memory is fuzzy, but it's there.

“You said his name more than once; it's okay. You were so out of it.” His eyes drop to the carpet and stay there. “I didn't expect you to want me anyway.”

“I didn't want him. I may not remember much, but I was afraid. I know myself enough to know that I would only call for you,” I admit without thinking.

Why did I just say that?
Hardin and I broke up, again. This is our second actual breakup, but it feels like there have been so many more. Maybe because this time I haven't jumped into his arms at the slightest sign of affection from him. This time I
left the house and the gifts from Hardin; this time I'm leaving for Seattle in less than twenty-four hours.

“Come here,” he says, holding his arms open.

“I can't.” I take a page from his book and run my fingers over my hair.

“Yes, you can.”

Whenever Hardin is around me, despite the situation, the familiarity of him always seeps into every fiber of my being. We either scream at each other or we smile and tease. There's never any distance, no middle ground between us. It's such a natural thing for me now, an instinct really, to let myself find comfort in his arms, laugh at his stale attitude, and ignore the issues that caused us to be in whatever terrible situation that we're in at the time.

“We aren't together anymore,” I say quietly, more to remind myself.

“I know.”

“I can't pretend that we are.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and try not to notice the way his eyes dull at the reminder of our status.

“I'm not asking you to do that. All I'm asking is for you to come here.” His arms are still open, still long and inviting, calling for me, pulling me closer and closer.

“And if I do, we'll only fall back into repeating the cycle that we both decided to end.”

“Tessa . . .”

“Hardin, please.” I back away. This living room is much too small for me to avoid him, and my self-control is faltering.

“Fine.” He finally sighs and his hands tug at his hair, his usual sign of frustration.

“We need this, you know that we do. We have to spend some time apart.”

“Some time apart?” He looks wounded, pissed off, and I'm a
little afraid of what will come out of his mouth next. I don't want a fight with him, and today isn't the day for him to try to start one.

“Yes, some time alone. We can't get along and everything seems to always be working against us. You said yourself the other day that you were sick of it. You kicked me out of the apartment.” I cross my arms in front of my chest.

“Tessa . . . you can't be fucking—” He looks into my eyes and stops midsentence. “How much time?”

“What?”

“How much time apart?”

“I . . .” I didn't expect him to agree. “I don't know.”

“A week? A month?” He pushes for specifics.

“I don't know, Hardin. We both need to get ourselves to a better place.”

“You're my better place, Tess.”

His words swarm through my chest, and I force my eyes to move from his face before I lose whatever resistance I have left. “You're mine, too, you know you are, but you're so angry and I'm always on edge with you. You have to do something about your anger, and I need time to myself.”

“So this is my fault, again?” he asks.

“No, it's me, too. I'm too dependent on you. I need to be more independent.”

“Since when does any of this matter?” The tone of his voice tells me that he hasn't ever considered my dependency on him a problem.

“Since we had that massive blowup at the apartment a few nights ago. Actually, it started a while ago; Seattle and the argument the other night were just the icing on the cake.”

When I finally gather the courage to look up at Hardin, I see that his expression has changed.

“Okay. I get it,” he says. “I'm sorry, I know I fuck up a lot. We've already beaten the Seattle thing into the ground, and maybe it's
time that I start listening to you more.” He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it, momentarily baffled by his newfound agreeability. “I'll give you some space, okay? You've dealt with enough shit in the past twenty-four hours alone. I don't want to be another problem . . . for once.”