The clicking of the door startles me out of my pathetic daydream. I jump to my feet as Hardin walks through the door. He doesn’t see me, since he’s looking over his shoulder.
At a brunette in a black sweater dress.
“So this is it . . .” he begins, and then stops when he notices my bags on the ground.
I’m frozen as his eyes travel around the apartment and then over to the kitchen, where they widen in shock at seeing me.
“Tess?” he says, as if he’s not sure that I actually exist.
chapter four
TESSA
I look like hell. I’m in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, yesterday’s smeared makeup, and tangled hair. I look at the girl standing behind him. Her curly brown hair is silky and cascades in loose waves down her back. Her makeup is light, and perfect, but then, she’s one of those women who doesn’t need it to begin with. Of course she is.
This is humiliating and I wish I could sink into the floor, disappearing out of the beautiful girl’s sight.
When I reach down to pick one of my bags up off the floor, Hardin seems to remember the girl is there and turns around to face her.
“Tessa, what are you doing here?” he asks. As I wipe at the makeup around my eyes, he asks his new girl, “Can you give us a minute?”
She looks at me, then nods and goes back into the building hallway.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says and walks into the kitchen. He removes his jacket, which makes his plain white T-shirt ride up and reveal the tanned skin of his torso. The ink there, the twisted, angry branches of the dead tree on his stomach, taunt me. Calling out to be touched. I love that tattoo, it’s my favorite that he has. Only now I see the parallel between him and the tree. Both unfeeling. Both alone. At least the tree has hope to bloom again. Hardin does not.
“I . . . I was just leaving.” I manage to say. He looks so perfect, so beautiful. Such a beautiful disaster.
“Please just let me explain myself,” he begs, and I notice the dark circles under his eyes are even more prominent than mine.
“No.” I reach for my bags again, but he grabs them from me and drops them back onto the floor.
“Two minutes, that’s all I’m asking for, Tess.”
Two minutes is too long to be here with Hardin, but this is the closure I know I need in order to move on with my life. I sigh and sit down, trying to hold back any noise that would betray my neutral expression. Hardin is clearly surprised, but quickly takes the seat across from me.
“You sure moved on fast,” I say quietly, lifting my chin toward the door.
“What?” Hardin says, then seems to remember the brunette. “She works with me; her husband is downstairs with their newborn daughter. They’re looking for a new place, so she wanted to see our . . . the layout.”
“You’re moving?” I ask.
“No, not if you’ll stay, but I don’t see the point in staying here without you. I’m just going over my options here.”
Something in me is slightly relieved, but then immediately a more defensive part of me notes that just because he isn’t sleeping with the brunette doesn’t mean he won’t be sleeping with someone else soon. I ignore the twinge of sorrow that comes along with Hardin talking about moving out, even though I won’t be here when he does.
“You think I would bring someone back here to our apartment? It’s only been two days—is that how you think of me?”
He has some nerve. “Yes! Of course it is—now!”
When I nod viciously at this, pain flashes across his face. But after a moment he just sighs in defeat. “Where did you stay last night? I went to my father’s and you weren’t there.”
“My mother’s.”
“Oh.” He looks down at his hands. “Did you guys work everything out?”
I stare directly into his eyes—I can’t believe he has the nerve to ask me about my family. “That’s no longer any of your business.”
He starts to reach out to me, but stops. “I miss you so much, Tessa.”
I lose my breath again, but remember how good he is at twisting things around. I turn away. “Sure you do.”
Despite the whirlwind of my emotions, I won’t allow myself to come undone any further in front of him.
“I do, Tessa. I know I fucked up big-time—but I love you. I need you.”
“Just stop, Hardin. Save yourself the time and energy. You aren’t fooling me, not anymore. You got what you wanted, so why not just stop?”
“Because I can’t.” He reaches for my hand, but I jerk away. “I love you. I need you to give me a chance to make this up to you. I need you, Tessa. I need you. You need me, too—”
“No, I don’t actually. I was fine before you came into my life.”
“Fine isn’t happy,” he says.
“Happy?” I scoff. “And what, am I happy now?” How dare he try to claim he makes me happy.
But he did make me happy. So happy, once.
“You can’t sit here and tell me that you don’t believe that I love you.”
“I know you don’t, it was all a game to you. While I was falling in love with you, you were using me.”
His eyes well up with tears. “Let me prove to you that I love you, please. I’ll do anything, Tessa. Anything.”
“You’ve already proved enough to me, Hardin. The only reason I’m even sitting here right now is because I owe it to myself to listen to what you have to say so I can move on with my life.”
“I don’t want you to move on,” he says.
I let out a harsh breath. “This isn’t about what you want! This is about how you hurt me.”
His voice sounds small, and cracks. “You said you’d never leave me.”
I don’t trust myself when he’s like this. I hate the way his pain rules me, making me irrational. “I said I wouldn’t leave you if you didn’t give me a reason to. But you did.”
Now it makes perfect sense to me why he was always worried about me leaving. I thought it was his own paranoia about being good for me, but I was wrong. So wrong. He knew once I found out I would run. I should be running right now. I made excuses for him because of the things he went through as a child, but now I’m beginning to wonder if he was lying about that, too. About all of it.
“I can’t do this anymore. I trusted you. Hardin, I trusted you with every fiber of my being—I depended on you, I loved you, and you were using me all along. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? That everyone around me was mocking me and laughing behind my back, including you, the person I trusted the most.”
“I know, Tessa, I know. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with me when I brought up the bet in the first place. I thought it would be easy . . .” His hands shake as he pleads with me. “I thought you would sleep with me and that would be the end of it. But you were so headstrong and so . . . intriguing that I found myself thinking of you constantly. I would sit in my room and try to plot ways that I could see you, even if it was just to fight with you. I knew it wasn’t just a bet anymore after that day at the stream, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. I was battling with myself, and I was worried about my reputation—I know that’s fucked up, but I’m trying to be honest. And when I told everyone about the things we did, I didn’t tell them what we were actually doing . . . I couldn’t do that to you, even in the beginning. I would just make up shit that didn’t actually happen, and they bought it.”
A few tears fall from my eyes and he reaches across to wipe them. I don’t move away fast enough and his touch burns my skin. It takes everything in me to not lean into his palm.
“I hate to see you this way,” he mutters. I close my eyes and reopen them, desperate for the tears to stop. I stay quiet as he continues: “I swear, I started telling Nate and Logan about the stream, but I found myself getting irritated, jealous even, over the idea of them knowing what I did with you . . . how I made you feel, so I told them that you gave me . . . well, I just m
ade shit up.”
I know that him lying about what we did is no better than telling them the truth, not really. But for some reason I feel some relief that Hardin and I are the only people who really know what happened between us, the real details of our moments together.
Which isn’t good enough. And then again, he’s probably lying right now—I can never tell—and here I am already quick to believe him. What the hell is wrong with me?
“Even if I believed you, I can’t forgive you,” I say. I blink away my tears and he puts his head in his hands.
“You don’t love me?” he asks, looking at me between his fingers.
“Yes. I do,” I admit. The truth of my confession weighs heavily between us. He lowers his hands, staring at me in a way that makes me regret my admission. It’s true, though. I love him. I love him too much.
“Then why can’t you forgive me?”
“Because this is unforgivable, you didn’t just lie. You took my virginity to win a bet—and then showed people my blood on the sheets. How could anyone forgive that?”
He drops his hands and his bright green eyes look desperate . “I took your virginity because I love you!” he says, which only makes me shake my head vigorously, so he continues. “I don’t know who I am without you anymore.”
I look away. “This wasn’t going to work anyway, we both know that,” I tell him to make myself feel better. It’s hard to sit across from him and watch him in pain, but at the same time my sense of justice means that seeing him in pain eases mine . . . somewhat.
“Why wouldn’t it work? We were doing great—”
“Everything we had was based on a lie, Hardin.” And because his pain has given me a sudden feeling of confidence, I say, “Besides, look at you and look at me.” I don’t mean it, but the look on his face when I use his biggest insecurity about our relationship against him—though it kills something inside me—also reminds me that he deserves it. He’s always been worried about how we look together, that I’m too good for him. And now I’ve thrown it in his face.
“Is this about Noah? You saw him, didn’t you?” Hardin asks and my mouth falls open at his audacity. His eyes shine with tears and I have to remind myself that he did this. He ruined everything.
“Yes, I did, but that has nothing to do with it. That’s your problem—you go around doing whatever the hell you want to people, not caring about the outcome, and you expect everyone to just be okay with it!” I shout and stand up from the table.
“No, I don’t, Tessa!” he yells, and I roll my eyes. At that, he pauses, then stands and looks out the window, then back at me. “Okay, yes, so maybe I do. But I really do care about you.”
“Well, you should have thought about that when you were bragging about your conquest,” I say steadily.
“My conquest? Are you fucking serious right now? You aren’t some conquest of mine—you’re everything to me! You’re my breath, my pain, my heart, my life!” He takes a step toward me. What’s makes me the saddest is that these are the most touching words that Hardin has ever said to me, but he’s screaming them.
“Well, it’s a little too late for that!” I scream back. “You think you can just—”
He catches me off guard by wrapping his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me to him, crashing his lips to mine. The familiar warmth of his mouth nearly brings me to my knees. My tongue is moving along with his before my mind catches up to what’s happening. He moans in relief and I try to push him away. He grabs my wrists in one hand and holds them on his chest as he continues to kiss me. I keep struggling to get out of his grip, but my mouth continues to move along with his. He backs up and pulls me with him until he’s against the counter, and his other hand reaches out to the side of my neck, holding me still. All of the pain and heartache inside me begin to dissolve and I relax my hands in his. This is wrong but so right.
But wrong.
I pull away and he tries to reconnect our lips, but I turn my head. “No,” I say.
His eyes soften. “Please . . .” he begs.
“No, Hardin. I need to go.”
He lets go of my wrists. “Go where?”
“I . . . I don’t know yet. My mother is trying to get me back into a dorm.”
“No . . . no . . .” He shakes his head, his voice becoming frantic. “You live here, don’t go back into the dorms.” He runs his hands through his hair. “If anyone should, it’s me. Just please stay here so I know where you are.”
“You don’t need to know where I am.”
“Stay,” he repeats.
If I’m being completely honest with myself, I want to stay with him. I want to tell him that I love him more than I want to breathe, but I can’t. I refuse to get pulled back in and be that girl who lets guys do whatever the hell they want to her.
I pick up my bags and say the only thing that will keep him from following. “Noah and my mother are waiting, I have to go,” I lie and walk out of the door.
He doesn’t follow, and I don’t let myself turn around to see the pain he’s in.
chapter five
TESSA
When I get to my car I don’t cry like I had assumed I would. I just sit and stare out the window. The snow sticks to my windshield, blanketing me inside. The wind around the car is chaotic, picking up the snow and swirling it, completely sheltering me. With each flake of snow coating the glass, a barrier between the harsh reality and the car is formed.
I can’t believe that Hardin came to the apartment while I was there. I had hoped to not see him. It did help, though, not the pain but the situation in general. At least now I can try to move on from this disastrous time in my life. I want to believe him and that he does love me, but I got into this situation by believing him. He could just be acting like this because he knows he doesn’t have control over me anymore. Even if he does love me, what would that change? It wouldn’t take back everything he did, it wouldn’t take back all the jokes, the terrible bragging about the things we did, or the lies.
I wish I could afford that apartment on my own, I would stay there and make Hardin leave. I don’t want to go back to the dorms and get a new roommate—I don’t want a community shower. Why did it all have to start with a lie? If we’d met in some different way, we could be inside that apartment right now, laughing on the couch or kissing in the bedroom. Instead, I’m in my car alone with nowhere to go.
When I finally start the car, my hands are frozen. Couldn’t I be homeless in the summer?
I feel like Catherine again, only not my usual Wuthering Heights Catherine. This time Catherine in Northanger Abbey is who I relate to: shocked and forced to make a long journey alone. Granted, I’m not making a seventy-mile journey from Northanger after being dismissed and embarrassed, but still, I feel her pain. I can’t decide who Hardin would be in this version of the book. On one hand, he’s like Henry, smart and witty, with a knowledge of novels as great as mine. However, Henry is much kinder than Hardin, and that’s where Hardin is more like John, arrogant and rude.
As I drive through town with nowhere to go, I realize that Hardin’s words had a bigger impact on me than I would like to admit. Him begging me to stay almost put the pieces back together just to break them again. I’m sure he only wanted me to stay to prove that he could. It’s not like he’s started calling and texting again since I drove away.
I force myself to drive to campus and take my last final before winter break. I feel so detached during the exam and it feels impossible that everyone on campus could be so clueless about what I’m going through. A fake smile and small talk can hide the splitting pain, I suppose.
I call my mother to check on the status of getting into a new dorm, only to have her mumble “no luck” and quickly hang up the phone. After driving aimlessly for a bit, I find myself a block away from Vance and realize it’s already five in the evening. I don’t want to take advantage of Landon by asking him to stay at Ken’s house again. I know he wouldn’t mind, but it’s not fair of me to put Ha
rdin’s family in the middle of this, and honestly that house holds too many memories. I couldn’t stand it. I pass a street lined with motels and pull into the lot of one of the nicer-looking ones. I suddenly realize that I’ve never actually stayed at a motel before, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.
The short man behind the counter looks friendly enough as he smiles at me and asks for my driver’s license. A few short minutes later he’s handing me a key card and a slip of paper with a Wi-Fi code. Getting a room is much easier than I thought it would be—a little expensive, but I don’t want to stay someplace cheap and risk my safety.
“Down the sidewalk and make a left,” he informs me with a smile.
I thank him and head back out into the blistering cold and move my car to the spot next to my room so I don’t have to carry my bags.
This is what I’ve come to because of that thoughtless, egotistical boy: I am someone staying in a motel, alone, all my belongings stuffed frantically into bags. I am someone who has no one to lean on instead of someone who always had a plan.
Grabbing some of my bags, I lock my car, which looks like junk compared to the BMW next to me. Just as I think my day could not get any worse, I lose my grip on one of my bags and drop it onto the snowy sidewalk. My clothes and a few books topple out onto the wet snow. I scramble to pick them up with my free hand, but I’m afraid to see which books they are—I don’t think I can take my favorite possessions being ruined alongside me, not today.
“Here let me help you, miss,” a man’s voice says as a hand reaches down to help me. “Tessa?”
Shocked, I look up to see blue eyes and a concerned face. “Trevor?” I say even though I know it’s him. I stand upright and look around. “What are you doing here?”