I smile at the idea of his walking during his graduation in June. I can’t imagine him in a cap and gown, but it’s certainly something that I am looking forward to seeing, and I know that it meant so much to Ken that he agreed to do it. Ken has made it clear on multiple occasions that he never expected Hardin to graduate from college, and now that the truth of their past is out in the open, I’m sure that Ken never expected Hardin to change his mind and go along with the typical graduation ritual. Hardin Scott is anything but typical.
I press my fingers to my forehead, willing my brain to function properly. How should I bring it up now? What if he offers to come along to New York? Would he do that? If he does offer, should I agree?
Suddenly I can feel his eyes on me from where he sits in the living room, and sure enough, when I look over at him, he’s studying me, his green eyes curious, his soft mouth pressed into a soft line. I give him my best “I’m okay, just thinking” smile and watch as he frowns and gets up. In a few long strides, he’s across the room and leaning with one of his palms pressed against the wall for support while he hovers over me.
“What is it?” he asks.
Landon’s head lifts from his focus on Sophia at the sound of Hardin’s loud voice.
“I need to talk to you about something,” I quietly admit. He doesn’t look concerned—not as concerned as he should be.
“Okay, what is it?” He leans closer, too close, and I try to step away, only to be reminded that he has me cornered against the wall. Hardin raises his other arm to completely block me in, and when my eyes meet his, an obvious smirk covers his face. “Well?” he presses.
I stare at him in silence. My mouth is dry now, and when I open it to speak, I begin to cough. It’s always that way it seems, in a quiet movie theater, in church, or while having a conversation with someone important. Basically in situations where coughs don’t fit in. Like right now for example, I’m having an inner rambling session about coughing, while coughing, and while Hardin stares at me like I’m dying in front of him.
He pulls back and walks into the kitchen with purpose. He moves around Karen and returns to me with a glass of water for what feels like the thirtieth time in the last two weeks. I take it, and I’m relieved when the cool water calms my itchy throat.
I’m aware that even my body is trying to back out of breaking this news to Hardin, and I want to pat myself on the back and kick myself in the chin at the same time. If I did that, I assume Hardin would feel a little sorry for me due to my insane behavior and possibly change the subject.
“What is going on? Your mind is moving a mile a minute.” He looks down at me, holding his hand out for the empty glass. When I begin to shake my head, he insists, “No, no, I can tell.”
“Can we go outside?” I turn toward the patio door, trying to make it clear that we shouldn’t talk in front of an audience. Heck, we should probably drive back to Seattle to discuss this mess. Or farther. Farther is good.
“Outside? Why?”
“I want to talk to you about something. In private.”
“Fine, sure.”
I take a step in front of him to keep the balance. If I lead the way outside, then I may have a better chance to lead the conversation. If I lead the conversation, then I may have a better chance of not allowing Hardin to steamroll the entire thing. Maybe.
I don’t pull my hand from Hardin’s when I feel his fingers lace into mine. It’s so quiet—only the soft sound of the voices from the crime show Ken fell asleep watching, and the low rumbling of the dishwasher in the kitchen.
When we step onto the deck, those sounds dissolve, and I’m left alone with the sound of my chaotic thoughts and Hardin’s low humming. I’m grateful for whatever song he’s quietly filling the air with, but it’s distracting and helps me focus on something outside of the blowup that is sure to come. If I’m lucky, I will have a few minutes to explain myself and my decision before he goes nova.
“Spill,” Hardin says as he drags one of the patio chairs across the wood of the deck.
There goes my chance at having him calm for a few minutes; he’s not in a waiting mood. He sits down and rests his elbows on the table between us. I scramble to sit across from him and struggle with where to place my hands. I move them from the top of the table to my lap, to my knees, and back to the table before he reaches across and flattens his palm across my fidgeting fingers.
“Relax,” he softly says. His hand is warm, and it completely covers mine, giving me a sliver of clarity, if only for a moment.
“I have been keeping something from you, and it’s driving me insane. I need to tell you now, and I know this isn’t the time, but you have to know before you find out another way.”
He lifts his hand from mine and leans against the back of the chair. “What did you do?” I can hear the anxiety in his tone, the suspicion in his controlled breath.
“Nothing,” I hastily remark. “Nothing like what you are assuming.”
“You haven’t . . .” He blinks a few times. “You weren’t . . . with anyone else, were you?”
“No!” My voice squeaks, and I shake my head to prove my point. “No, nothing like that. I’ve just made a decision about something and have kept it from you. It doesn’t involve me being with anyone else.”
I’m not sure if I am relieved or offended that this was his first thought. In a way, I’m relieved, because moving to New York couldn’t possibly be as painful for him as my being with another man, but I’m slightly offended, because he should know me better than that by now. I’ve done my share of irresponsible, hurtful things to him, involving Zed mostly, but I would never sleep with someone else.
“Okay.” He rubs his hand over his hair and rests his curved palm over the back of his neck, massaging the muscles there. “It couldn’t be that bad, then.”
I take a breath, deciding to just throw it onto the table, no more dancing around the subject. “Well—”
He holds a hand up to stop me. “Wait. How about before you tell me what it is, you tell me why.”
“Why what?” I tilt my head in confusion.
He raises a brow to me. “Why you made whatever choice you’re pissing yourself over about.”
“Okay.” I nod. I sift through my thoughts while he watches me with patient eyes. Where should I begin? This is much harder than simply telling him that I’m moving, but it’s a much better way to communicate the news to him.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think we’ve ever done this. Anytime some big, dramatic thing was happening, we always found out from other sources in that same big, dramatic way.
I glance at him one last time before I begin to speak. I want to take in every inch of his face, remember and study the way his green eyes can appear so patient at times. I notice the way the soft pink of his lips appears so inviting now, but I also remember the times when they were split open on one side, straight down the middle, blood pouring from the gashes from fighting. I remember his piercing there, and how it grew on me so quickly.
I relive the way it felt when the cool metal would brush across my lip. I focus on thinking back to the way he would pull it between his own lips whenever he was deep in thought, and how it just looked so tempting.
I think back to the night when he took me ice-skating in his attempt to prove that he could be a “normal” boyfriend to me. He was nervous and playful and had taken out both of his piercings. He claimed that he did it because he wanted to, but still, to this day, I think he removed them to prove something to himself and to me. I missed them for a while—I still do sometimes—but I sort of loved what their absence represented, no matter how undeniably sexy they looked on him.
“Hardin to Tessa: Care to share?” he teases, and leans up and rests his chin in the palm of one hand.
“Yes.” I smile nervously. “Well, I made the decision because we need time apart, and it seemed like the only way to be sure that actually happens.”
“Time apart, huh? Still?” His eyes set on mine
, pressuring me to back down.
“Yes, time apart. Everything is such a mess between us, and I needed to put distance between us—really this time. I know we say that all the time, we do this little song and dance around everything, and we drive back and forth from Seattle to here, and then London got thrown into the mix; we are basically spreading our mess of a relationship across the globe.” I pause for his reaction, and receiving only an indecipherable expression, I finally tear my eyes from his.
“Is it really that much of a mess?” Hardin’s voice is soft.
“We fight more than we get along.”
“That isn’t true.” He tugs at the collar of his black T-shirt. “Technically and literally, that isn’t true, Tess. It may feel that way, but when you think back over all the bullshit we’ve gone through, we’ve spent more time laughing and talking, reading, teasing, and in bed, of course. I mean, I take a long time in bed.” He smiles a small smile, and I can feel my resolve weakening.
“We solve everything with sex, and that’s not healthy,” I say, pushing my next point.
“Sex isn’t healthy?” he scoffs. “We are having consensual sex, full of love and full of fucking trust.” He looks at me with intensity. “Yeah, it also doubles as amazing, mind-blowing fucking sex, but don’t forget why we do it. I don’t fuck you just to get off. I do it because I love you, and I love the trust you place in me when you allow me to touch you in that way.”
Everything he is saying is making sense, despite that it shouldn’t. I agree with him, no matter how cautious I try to be.
I feel New York City slipping farther and farther away, so I decide to drop the bomb sooner rather than later: “Have you ever looked into the signs of an abusive relationship?”
“Abusive?” He sounds as if he’s gasping for air. “You find me abusive? I’ve never laid a hand on you, and I never would!”
I stare down at my hands and press forward with the honesty. “No, that’s not what I meant. I was referring to both of us and the way we do things to purposely hurt each other. I wasn’t accusing you of being physically abusive.”
He sighs and runs both hands over his hair, a sure sign he’s starting to panic. “Okay, so this is obviously much more than some stupid decision to not live with me in Seattle or something.” Then he stops and looks at me with a deathly seriousness. “Tessa, I’m going to ask you something, and I want your real honest answer—no bullshit, no thinking about it. Just say what comes to your mind when I ask, okay?”
I nod, unsure where he is going with this.
“What’s the worst thing I’ve done to you? What’s the most disgusting, terrible thing that I’ve put you through since we met?”
I begin to think through the last eight months, but he clears his throat, reminding me that he wanted me to say the first thing that came to mind.
I fidget in the chair, not wanting to open that vault right now, or anytime in the future, really. But finally I spit it out. “The bet. The fact that you had me completely fooled when I was falling in love with you.”
Hardin appears thoughtful, lost for a moment. “Would you take it back? Would you change that mistake of mine if you could?”
I take my time to think this through, really think this through before answering. I’ve answered this question before, many times, and I’ve changed my mind even more than that, but now the answer feels so . . . final. It feels so final and certain, and it just feels like it matters more now than ever before.
The sun is moving lower in the sky, hiding behind the thick trees lining the Scotts’ property, activating the automatic patio lights.
“No. I wouldn’t take it back,” I say, mostly to myself.
Hardin nods as if he knew exactly what my response would be. “Okay, so next to that, what is the worst thing I’ve done?”
“When you ruined that apartment for me in Seattle,” I answer easily.
“Really?” He sounds surprised by my response.
“Yes.”
“Why that? What was it about me doing that that pissed you off so bad?”
“The fact that you completely took control of a decision that was mine and you hid it from me.”
He nods, then shrugs. “I won’t try to justify that shit, because I know it was fucked-up.”
“Okay?” I hope he has more to say on that.
“I do understand where you are coming from with that. I shouldn’t have done that; I should have talked to you instead of trying to keep you from going to Seattle. I was fucked in the head at the time, still am, but I’m trying, and that’s something different than before.”
I’m unsure how to respond to that. I agree that he shouldn’t have done it, and I agree that he is trying now. I look into his very earnest, very brilliant green eyes, and it’s hard to remember what my point behind this entire conversation is supposed to be.
“You have this idea in your head, baby, an idea that someone planted there, or maybe you saw it on some shitty television show, or maybe in one of your books, I don’t know. But real life is fucking hard. No relationship is perfect, and no man is ever going to treat a woman exactly how he should.” He lifts a hand in the air to stop me from interrupting. “I’m not saying it’s right, okay? So hear me out: I’m only saying that I think if you and maybe some other people in this fucked-up, criticizing world would just pay closer attention to the shit behind the scenes, you would see things differently. We aren’t perfect, Tessa. I’m not fucking perfect, and I love you, but you are far from perfect, too.” He winces at that, letting me know that he means that in the least terrible way possible. “I have done a lot of shit to you, and, fuck, I’ve made this speech one thousand damn times, but something inside of me has changed—you know it’s true.”
When Hardin stops speaking, I stare into the sky behind him for a few seconds. The sun is setting just below the trees, and I wait for it to disappear before responding. “I’m afraid we are too far gone. We have both made so many mistakes.”
“It would be a waste to give up instead of fixing those mistakes, and you fucking know it.”
“A waste of what? Time? We don’t have much time to waste now,” I say, inching into the inevitable train wreck.
“We have all the time in the world. We’re still young! I’m about to graduate, and we’ll live in Seattle. I know you are sick of my bullshit, but I’m selfishly counting on your love for me to convince you that I should have one last chance.”
“What about all the things I’ve done to you? I’ve called you names, all the stuff with Zed?” I bite my lip and look away at the mention of Zed.
Hardin’s fingers tap against the glass countertop of the table. “First off, Zed doesn’t have a place here, in this conversation. You’ve done stupid shit; so have I. Neither of us had any damn clue how to be in a relationship. You may have thought you did because you were with Noah for so long, but let’s be real here: the two of you were basically kissing cousins. That shit wasn’t real.”
I glare at Hardin, waiting for him to continue digging this hole he’s working on.
“And as far as you calling me names, which is hardly ever”—he smiles, and I begin to wonder who this man sitting across from me actually is—“everyone calls each other names. I’m sorry, but even your mum’s pastor’s wife is calling her husband an asshole sometimes. She probably doesn’t say it to his face, but it’s the same shit.” He shrugs his shoulders. “And I would much rather you call me an asshole to my face.”
“You have an explanation for everything, don’t you.”
“No, not everything. Not much, really, but I know you’re sitting across from me looking for a way out of this, and I’m going to do my damn best to make sure you know what you’re saying.”
“Since when do we communicate this way?” I can’t help but be astonished at the lack of yelling and screaming coming from both of us.
Hardin crosses his arms in front of his chest, picks at the frayed edges of his cast, and shrugs. “Since now. Since, I don??
?t know, since the other shit didn’t seem to work for us. So why not try this way?”
I feel my mouth fall open in surprise at the nonchalance of his statement. “Why do you make it sound so easy? If it was this easy, we could have done it before.”
“No; I wasn’t the same before, and neither were you.” He stares at me, waiting for me to speak again.
“It’s not that simple; the time it took for us to get here matters, Hardin. It matters that we went through that, and I need time to myself now. I need time to find out who I am and what I want to do with my life, and how I’m going to get there, and I need to do that on my own.” I say the words with full bravado, but they taste like acid as they leave my mouth.
“You’ve made your mind up, then? You don’t want to live with me in Seattle? Is that why you’re so closed off and unwilling to actually listen to what I’m saying?”
“I am listening, but I’ve already made up my mind . . . I can’t keep doing this back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Not just with you, but with myself.”
“I don’t believe you, especially since it doesn’t sound like you believe yourself.” He leans back against the cushion on the chair and lifts his legs onto the table. “Where’s your place at, then? Which neighborhood in Seattle?”
“It’s not in Seattle,” I say curtly. My tongue is suddenly made of lead, and I can’t get a word out.
“Oh, where, then? Which suburb?” he asks snidely.
“It’s New York, Hardin. I want to go—”
That gets him believing. “New York?” He removes his feet from the table and stands up. “You’re talking about actual New York? Or is that some little hipster neighborhood in Seattle that I haven’t come across yet?”
“Actual New York,” I clarify as he paces across the deck. “In a week.”
Hardin is silent except for his feet hitting the wood as he walks up and down the length of the deck. “When did you decide this?” he finally asks.
“After London and after my father passed away.” I stand.