“Stop by the chemist, and you’ll be good to go.” The doctor gives me a quick nod and leaves me alone in the exam room.
“Fuck.” I tap on the hard surface of the stupid cast. This is such bullshit. Will I be able to drive? To write?
Fuck no, I don’t need to write anything anyway. That shit needs to stop now; it has gone on long enough, and my sober mind keeps fucking with me, slipping thoughts and memories in when I’m too distracted to keep them out.
Karma keeps fucking with me, and true to her bitchy reputation, she continues the mockery as I pull my phone from my pocket to find Landon’s name across the screen. I ignore the call and shove the thing back into my jeans.
What a fucking mess I’ve made.
chapter twenty-one
TESSA
How long will she be like this?” Landon says to someone somewhere. Everyone is acting like I can’t hear them, like I’m not even present, but I don’t mind. I don’t want to be here, and it feels good to be here but feel invisible at the same time.
“I don’t know. She’s in shock, honey,” Karen’s sweet voice answers her son.
Shock? I’m not in shock.
“I should have gone inside with her!” Landon chokes out through a sob.
If I could look away from the cream-colored wall in the Scotts’ living room, I know that I would see him in his mother’s arms.
“She was up there alone with his body for almost an hour. I thought she was just getting her stuff, and maybe even some closure—but I let her sit up there with his dead body for an hour!”
Landon’s crying so much, and I should comfort him; I know I should, and I would if I could.
“Oh, Landon.” Karen’s crying, too.
Everyone seems to be crying except me. What is wrong with me?
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known he was there; you couldn’t have known that he left his program.”
At some point during the hushed whispers and sympathetic attempts to get me to move from my spot on the floor, the sun has gone down and the attempts come less often, until finally they stop completely, and I’m left alone in the oversize living room with my knees hugged tightly against my chest and my eyes never, ever leaving the wall.
Through the paramedics’ and police officers’ rushed voices and orders, I learned that my father was in fact dead. I knew it when I saw him, when I touched him, but they confirmed it. They made it official. He died by his own hand, from pushing the needle into his vein. The bags of heroin found in the pocket of his jeans spoke of his intent for the weekend. His face was so pale and whitewashed that the image behind my eyelids looks more like a mask than a human face. He was alone in the apartment when it happened, and he had been dead for hours when I stumbled onto his body. His life bled out as the heroin seeped in through the syringe, further damning that hell disguised as an apartment.
That’s exactly what that place is—as it had been from the moment I entered it. Bookshelves and a brick wall veiled the evil there, hiding the cursed place with pretty details, masking an evil that every demon in my life seems to point back to, that damn apartment. If I had never stepped across that threshold, I would still have everything.
I would have my virtue; I wouldn’t have given it to a man who would never love me enough to stick around.
I would still have my mother; she’s not much, but she’s the only family I have now.
I would still have a place to live, and I would never have reconnected with my father only to find his lifeless body on the bathroom floor two months later.
I’m well aware of the dark place that my thoughts are dragging me into, but I don’t have the strength to fight anymore. I’ve been fighting for something, for what I thought was everything, for too damn long and I can’t do it anymore.
“HAS SHE SLEPT AT ALL?” Ken’s voice is low and cautious.
The sun has come up now, and I can’t find the answer to Ken’s question. Have I slept? I don’t remember falling asleep, or waking up, but it doesn’t seem possible that an entire night has passed while I’ve been staring at this blank wall.
“I don’t know, she hasn’t moved much since last night.” The sadness in my best friend’s voice is deep and painful.
“Her mum called again an hour ago. Have you heard from Hardin?”
That name coming from Ken’s mouth would have just killed me . . . if I weren’t already dead.
“No, he won’t answer my calls, and I called the number you gave me for Trish, but she hasn’t answered either. I think they’re still on their honeymoon. I don’t know what to do, she’s so . . .”
“I know.” Ken sighs. “She just needs time; that had to be traumatizing for her. I’m still looking into what the hell happened and why I wasn’t informed when he left the facility. I gave them strict orders, along with a healthy amount of money, to call me if something happened.”
I want to tell Ken and Landon to stop blaming themselves for my father’s mistakes. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I should never have gone to London. I should have been there to keep watch over him. Instead, I was across the world dealing with another loss, and Richard Young was fighting and losing the battle with his own demons, all alone.
KAREN’S VOICE WAKES ME, or jars me out of my trance. Or whatever this is.
“Tessa, please have some water. It’s been two days, dear. Your mom’s coming here to get you, sweetheart. I hope that’s okay,” the person I consider closest to being my real mother says softly, trying to get through to me.
I attempt to nod, but my body just won’t respond. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m screaming from the inside out and no one can hear me.
Maybe I’m in shock after all. Shock isn’t a bad place, though. I’d like to stay here as long as I can. It hurts less.
chapter twenty-two
HARDIN
The apartment is full again, and I’m working on my second drink and first joint. The constant burn of liquor on my tongue and smoke in my lungs is starting to get to me. If being sober didn’t hurt so fucking bad, I wouldn’t touch the shit again.
“It’s been two days, and this shit’s already itching,” I complain to whoever will listen.
“Sucks, man, but next time you won’t be putting holes in walls, will you?” Mark taunts me with a smirk.
“Yes, he will,” James and Janine say at the same time.
Janine holds her hand out to me. “Give me another one of your pain pills.” The fucking junkie has already eaten half the bottle in less than two days. Not that I care—I don’t have a use for them, and I sure as fuck don’t care about what she puts into her body. At first I thought the pills would help me, get me higher than the shit James has, but they don’t. They make me tired, and being tired leads to sleep, which leads to nightmares, which always involve her.
I roll my eyes and stand to my feet. “I’ll just give you the damn bottle.” I walk to Mark’s room to get the pills from under my small pile of clothes. It’s been almost a week, and I have only changed my clothes once. Before she left, Carla, the annoying chick with a savior complex, sewed some hideous black patches over the holes in my jeans. I would have cussed her ass out if James wouldn’t have kicked me out on the spot for doing so.
“Hello, Hardin Scott. Phone!” Janine’s high-pitched voice echoes from the living room.
Fuck! I left my phone on the table in the living room.
When I don’t respond immediately, I hear Janine say cheekily, “Mr. Scott’s busy at the moment; can I ask who’s calling?”
“Give me the phone, now,” I say, darting back into the room and tossing the pills for her to catch. I try to stay calm when she just gives me her middle finger and continues talking, letting the bottle hit the floor. I’m getting fucking tired of her shit.
“Ooohh, Landon sounds like a hot name, and you’re American. I love American men—”
All subtlety lost, I snatch the phone from her hand and press it to my ear. “What the hell
do you want, Landon? Don’t you think if I wanted to talk to you, I would have answered the last . . . I don’t know, thirty fucking times you called?” I bark.
“You know what, Hardin?” His voice is equally as harsh as mine. “Fuck you. You’re a selfish asshole, and I should have known better than to call you. She will get through this without you, just the way she always has to.”
The line goes dead.
Get through what? What the hell is he talking about? Do I even want to know?
Who am I kidding—of course I fucking do. I immediately dial him back and push past a couple of people and go into the empty hallway for some privacy. Panic rises within me, and my fucked-up mind travels to the worst possible scenario. When Janine slinks into the hallway, clearly to eavesdrop, I head out to the rental car I’ve been hanging on to still.
“What?” he snaps.
“What are you talking about? What happened?” She’s okay, right? She has to be. “Landon, tell me she’s okay.” I have no patience for his lack of words.
“It’s Richard, he’s dead.”
Whatever I might have been expecting to hear, that was not it. Through the haze I’m in, I feel it. I feel the sting of loss inside me, and I fucking hate it. I shouldn’t feel this, I barely even knew the junk—the man.
“Where’s Tessa?” This is why Landon called me so many times. Not to give me a lecture about leaving Tessa, but to let me know her father’s dead.
“She’s here at the house, but her mother is on her way to get her. She’s in shock, I think; she hasn’t spoken since she found him.”
The last part of his sentence has me reeling and clutching my chest. “What the fuck? She found him?”
“Yeah.” Landon’s voice breaks at the end and I know he’s crying. It doesn’t bother me like it usually does.
“Fuck!” Why did this happen? How could this happen to her just after I sent her away? “Where was she, where was his body?”
“Your apartment. She went there to get the last of her stuff and drop your car off.”
Of course, even after that, and even after how I treated her, she’s considerate enough to think of my car.
I force out the words I both want to and don’t want to say: “Let me speak to her.” I’ve wanted to hear her voice, and I’ve hit rock bottom, falling asleep for the last two nights to the robotic message reminding me that she has changed her number.
“Did you not hear me, Hardin?” Landon says, exasperated. “She hasn’t spoken or moved in two days except to use the restroom, and I’m not even sure about that. I haven’t seen her move at all. She won’t drink anything, she won’t eat.”
All the shit I’ve been pushing back, trying to ignore, floods over me and pulls me under. I don’t care what the repercussions will be, I don’t care if the last shred of sanity I have left disappears: I need to talk to her. I reach the car and get in, immediately clear on what I have to do.
“Just try to put the phone to her ear. Listen to me and just do it,” I tell Landon and start the car up, silently pleading with whoever is listening up there that I don’t get pulled over on the way to the airport.
“I’m just worried that hearing your voice may make it worse,” his voice sounds through the speakerphone. I turn the volume all the way up and set the phone on the center console.
“Goddammit, Landon!” I hit my cast against the steering wheel. It’s hard enough to drive with a fucking cast as it is. “Put the phone to her ear, now, please.” I try to keep my voice calm, despite the cyclone ripping me apart from the inside out.
“Fine, but don’t say anything to upset her. She’s already been through enough.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know her better than I do!” My anger toward my know-it-all stepbrother has reached a new high, and I nearly run into the median, yelling at him.
“I may not, but you know what I do know? I know that you’re a freaking idiot for whatever you did to her this time, and you know what else I know? That if you weren’t so damn selfish, you would have been here with her and she wouldn’t be in the state she’s in now,” he spews. “Oh, and one more thing—”
“Enough!” I hit my cast against the steering wheel again. “Just put the phone to her ear—you being an asshole isn’t going to help anything. Now give her the fucking phone.”
Silence is followed by Landon’s gentle voice: “Tessa? Can you hear me? Of course you can.” He half laughs. I can hear the pain in his voice as he tries to coax her to speak. “Hardin is on the phone, and he . . .”
Soft chanting comes through the speaker, and I lean toward the phone in an attempt to hear the noise. What is that? For the next few seconds, it continues, low and haunting, and it takes me too long to realize it’s Tessa’s voice repeating the same word over and over and over. “No, no, no,” she says, not stopping, not slowing, “no, no, no, no, no . . .”
What was left of my heart snaps into too many pieces to count.
“No, please, no!” she cries on the end of the line.
Oh God.
“Okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk to him—”
The line goes dead, and I call back, knowing that no one is going to pick up.
chapter twenty-three
TESSA
I’m going to pick you up now,” the familiar voice I haven’t heard in too long says, trying to comfort me as strong arms lift me from the floor and cradle me like a child.
I bury my head into Noah’s solid chest and close my eyes.
My mother’s voice is here, too. I don’t see her, but I can hear her: “What’s wrong with her? Why isn’t she talking?”
“She’s just in shock,” Ken starts to say. “She’ll come around soon—”
“Well, what am I supposed to do with her if she won’t even speak?” my mother bites back.
Noah, able to deal with my callous mother in a way that no one else can, softly says, “Carol, she just found her dad’s body a few days ago. Be easy on her.”
I’ve never been so relieved to be near Noah in my entire life. As much as I love Landon, and as thankful as I am for his family right now, I need to be taken away from this house. I need someone like my oldest friend now. Someone who knew me before.
I’m going crazy; I know I am. My mind hasn’t been functioning properly since my foot hit the very solid, and very still, body of my father. I haven’t been able to process a single rational thought since I cried his name and shook him so hard that his jaw fell open and the needle popped out of his arm, landing with a clinking noise that still echoes inside my broken mind. Such a simple sound. Such a horrific sound.
I felt something inside me snap when my father’s hand jerked in mine, an involuntary muscle spasm that I still can’t decide about, whether it actually happened or if it was my mind creating a false sense of hope. That hope quickly vanished when I checked his pulse again, only to feel nothing, only to leave me staring into his dead eyes.
Noah’s stride gently rocks me as we move through the house.
“I’ll call her phone later to check on her. Please answer so I can see how she’s doing,” Landon softly requests. I want to know how Landon is; I hope he didn’t see what I saw, I just can’t remember.
I know I was holding my father’s head in my hands, and I think I was screaming or crying, or both, when I heard Landon enter the apartment. I remember him trying to fight with me to let go of the man who I was only beginning to know, but after that my mind jumps straight to when the ambulance arrived and blanks out again until I was sitting on the floor at the Scotts’ home.
“I will,” Noah assures him, and I hear the screen door opening. Cool drops of rain land on my face, washing away days’ worth of tears and filth.
“It’s okay. We’re going home now; it’s all going to be okay,” Noah whispers to me, his hand pushing my rain-soaked hair off my forehead. I keep my eyes closed and rest my cheek against his chest; its heavy beat only reminds me of when I pressed my ear against my father’s chest, on
ly to find no heartbeat, no breathing.
“It’s okay,” Noah says again. This is just like old times, his coming to my rescue after my father’s addictions wreak havoc.
But there are no greenhouses to hide in, not this time. This time there is only darkness and no escape in sight.
“We’re going home now,” Noah repeats as he places me into a car.
Noah’s a dear, sweet person, but doesn’t he know that I have no home?
THE HANDS ON MY CLOCK move so slowly. The longer I stare at them, the more they mock me, slowing down with each click of their hands. My old bedroom is so big—I could have sworn it was a small room, but now it feels massive. Maybe it’s me that feels small? I feel light now, lighter than I did the last time I slept in this bed. I feel like I could float away and no one would notice. My thoughts aren’t normal; I know this. Noah tells me this each time he tries to talk me back into reality. He’s here now; he hasn’t left since I lay down in this bed, Lord knows how long ago.
“You’re going to be okay, Tessa. Time heals all. Remember our pastor always said that.” Noah’s blue eyes are worried for me.
I nod, staying silent, and stare at the provoking clock hanging on the wall.
Noah drags a fork along the untouched plate of food from hours ago. “Your mother is going to come in and make you eat dinner. It’s late, and you still haven’t touched your lunch.”
I glance toward the window, noting the darkness outside. When did the sun disappear? And why didn’t it take me with it?
Noah’s soft hands gather mine in them, and he asks me to look at him. “Just take a few bites so she will let you rest.”
I reach for the plate, not wanting to make things more difficult for him, knowing he’s just doing my mother’s bidding. I bring the stale bread to my mouth and try not to gag on the rubbery lunchmeat as I chew. I count the time it takes to force myself to take five bites and swallow them down with the room-temperature water left on the nightstand from this morning.