After We Collided (The After Series) (16 page)

I peer into the living room to make sure that his impulsive behavior hasn’t woken up his mother. Fortunately, she’s still asleep, her mouth slightly open in a way that makes her resemblance to her son all the stronger.

As usual, I’m left to clean up the mess that Hardin made. I load the dishwasher and put away the leftovers before wiping down the counter. I’m exhausted, mentally more than physically, but I need to take a shower and go to bed. But where the hell am I going to sleep? Hardin is in the bedroom and Trish is on the couch. Maybe I should just drive back to the motel.

I turn the heat up a little and switch off the light in the living room. When I walk into the bedroom to get my pajamas, Hardin is sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He doesn’t look up, so I grab a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and panties from my bag before exiting the room. As I hit the doorway, I hear what sounds like a muffled sob.

Is Hardin crying?

He isn’t. He couldn’t be.

On the off chance that he is, I can’t leave the room. I pad back to the bed and stand in front of him. “Hardin?” I say quietly
and try to remove his hands from his face. He resists, but I pull harder. “Look at me,” I beg.

The breath is knocked out of me when he does. His eyes are bloodshot and his cheeks are soaked with tears. I try to take his hands in mine, but he jerks away. “Just go, Tessa,” he says.

I’ve heard him say that too many times. “No,” I say and kneel down between his opened legs.

He wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. “This was a bad idea. I’m going to tell my mum in the morning.”

“You don’t have to.” I’ve seen him let out a few tears before, but never full-on, body-shaking, tears-streaming-down-his-face crying.

“Yeah, I do. This is torture for me to have you so close but so far. It’s the worst possible punishment. Not that I don’t deserve it, because I know I do, but it’s too much,” he sobs. “Even for me.” He draws in a deep, desperate breath. “When you agreed to stay . . . I thought that maybe . . . maybe you still cared for me the way I do for you. But I see it, Tess, I see the way you look at me now. I see the pain I’ve caused. I see the change in you because of me. I know that I did this, but it still kills me to have you slip through my fingers.” The tears come much faster now, falling against his black T-shirt.

I want to say something—anything—to make this stop. To make his pain go away.

But where was he when I was crying myself to sleep night after night?

“You want me to go?” I ask, and he nods.

His rejection hurts, even now. I know I shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t be doing this, but I need more. I need more time with him. Even dangerous, painful time is better than no time. I wish I didn’t love him, that I had never met him.

But I did. And I do love him.

“Okay.” I swallow and stand up.

His hand grips my wrist to stop me. “I’m sorry. For everything, for hurting you, for everything,” he says, goodbye thick in his tone.

As much as I resist this, I know deep down that I’m not ready for him to give up on me. On the other hand, I’m not ready to easily forgive him either. I’ve been in a constant state of confusion for days, but today takes the cake.

“I . . .” I stop myself.

“What?”

“I don’t want to go,” I say so low that I’m not sure he even heard me.

“What?” he asks again.

“I don’t want to go. I know I should, but I don’t want to. Not tonight at least.” I swear I can see the pieces of the broken man in front of me slowly come back together, one by one. It’s a beautiful sight, but terrifying deep in my soul, too.

“What does this mean?”

“I don’t know what it means, but I’m not ready to find out either,” I say, hoping to be able to get at this feeling by talking about it.

Hardin looks at me blankly, his earlier sobs nowhere to be find. Robotically, he wipes his face with his shirt and says, “Okay. You can sleep on the bed, I’ll take the floor.”

As he grabs two pillows and the throw blanket from the bed, my mind can’t help but entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, all those tears were for show. Still, somehow I know that they couldn’t have been.

T
ucked like I am under our comforter, the thought that keeps going through my mind is that I never, ever would have thought I’d witness anything like that from Hardin. He was so raw, so vulnerable, as his body shook with tears. I feel like the dynamic between Hardin and me is constantly shifting, so that one of us is always gaining an upper hand over the other. Right now, I would be the one in control.

But I don’t want to be. And I don’t like this dynamic. Love shouldn’t be such a battle. Besides, I don’t trust myself to be in control of what happens between us. Up until a few hours ago I had it all figured out, but now, after seeing him so shaken up, my mind is muddled and my thoughts clouded.

Even in the darkness, I can feel Hardin’s eyes on me. When I let out the breath I realized I was holding, he quickly asks, “Do you want me to turn the television on?”

“No. If you want to, you can, but I’m okay,” I answer.

I wish that I had grabbed my e-reader so I could read until I fell asleep. Maybe observing the ruination of Catherine and Heathcliff’s lives would make mine seem easier, less traumatic. Catherine spent her whole life trying to fight her love for that man, on and off until the day she begged for his forgiveness and claimed she could not live without him—only to die hours later. I could live without Hardin, couldn’t I? I won’t spend my entire life fighting this. This is only temporary . . . Right? We won’t bring ourselves and others misery because of our stubbornness and
hard heads, right? I’m bothered by the uncertainty of this parallel, especially since it means I start comparing Trevor to Edgar. I don’t know how to feel about this. It’s awkward.

“Tess?” my very own Heathcliff calls, wresting me away from my thoughts.

“Yeah?” I croak.

“I didn’t fuck . . .
sleep with
Molly,” he says, as if correcting his foul language makes the statement any less shocking.

I stay silent, partly stunned by him talking about this, partly because I want to believe him. But I can’t allow myself to forget that he’s a master of deception.

“I swear it,” he adds.

Oh, well, if he “swears” it . . .
“Why did you say that, then?” I ask harshly.

“To hurt you. I was just so mad because you said you kissed someone, so I just said the thing that I knew would hurt you the most.”

I can’t see Hardin, but somehow I know that he’s lying on his back, his arms crossed, hands under his head, staring at the ceiling. “Did you really kiss someone?” he asks before I can respond.

“Yeah,” I admit. But when I hear the suction of a deep breath, I try to soften the blow by adding, “Only once.”

“Why?” His voice is cool yet heated. It’s a strange sound.

“I honestly have no idea . . . I was mad because of how you were acting on the phone, and I had way too much to drink. So I danced with this guy, and he kissed me.”

“You danced with him? Danced how?” he asks.

I roll my eyes at Hardin’s needing to know every detail of what I do, even when we aren’t together. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

His words thicken the air between us again. “Yes, I do.”

“Hardin, we just danced like people do at a club. Then he kissed me and tried to get me to go home with him.” I stare at the
blades on the ceiling fan. I know that if we keep talking about this, they will eventually be forced to stop, unable to cut through the tension.

I try to change the subject. “Thank you for the e-reader. It was very thoughtful.”

“He tried to get you to go home with him? Did you?” I hear him shuffling, giving me an indication that he’s now sitting up.

I remain flat against the mattress. “Do you even have to ask that? You know I would never do that,” I snap.

“Well, I never thought you would be kissing and dancing at a club either,” he barks.

After a few beats of silence I speak. “I don’t think you want to get started on the unexpected.”

The blankets shuffle again, and I can feel him right next to me. That voice is right next to me. “Tell me, please tell me, that you didn’t.”

He sits down on the bed next to me and I move away from him. “You know I didn’t. I saw
you
later that night.”

“I need to hear you say it.” His voice is harsh but pleading. “Say that you only kissed him once and you haven’t spoken to him since.”

“I only kissed him once and I haven’t spoken to him since,” I repeat, only because I know he desperately needs to hear the words.

I keep my eyes focused on the swirl of ink poking out from the low collar of his shirt. Having him on the bed soothes me and burns me all at once. I can’t stand the internal battle I’m stuck in the middle of.

“Is there anything else I should know?” he asks softly.

“No,” I lie. I am not telling him about the date with Trevor. Nothing happened and it’s none of Hardin’s business. I like Trevor, and I want to keep him safe from the time bomb that is Hardin.

“You sure?”

“Hardin . . . I don’t really think you’re in the position to be hounding me,” I say and look into his eyes. I can’t help it.

“I know,” he surprises me by saying.

When he moves off of the bed, I try to ignore the emptiness that takes me over.

T
oday has been hell. A hell that I welcomed with open arms, but hell all the same. I never expected to see Tessa when I came home from the airport. I had come up with a simple lie: my girlfriend wouldn’t be available because she’d be out of town all week for Christmas. My mum had whined a little but didn’t ask too many questions or push my story. She had been so thrilled—and surprised, really—that I had a woman in my life. I think her and my father both expected me to be alone my entire life. Then again, so did I.

I find it amusing, in a twisted way, that I can’t go a second without thinking of this girl, when up until three months ago I wanted to be alone. I never knew what I was missing, and now that I found it, I can’t let it go. It’s only her, though; no matter what I do, I can’t shake her.

I tried to stop, tried to forget about her, tried to move on . . . and it was a disaster. The perfectly nice blonde that I took out Saturday night wasn’t Tessa. No one would ever be. Sure, she looked like her, even dressed like her. She blushed when I cursed and seemed a little afraid of me throughout our dinner. She was nice enough, yeah, but she was boring.

She was missing that fire that Tess has—she didn’t scold me for my foul language, she didn’t even say anything when I put my hand on her thigh in the middle of dinner. I knew she only agreed to go out with me to fulfill some fucked-up bad-boy fantasy before church the next morning, but that’s okay, because I was using
her, too. I was using her to fill the void of Tessa. To distract me from Tessa being in Seattle still with fucking Trevor. The guilt I felt when I moved in to kiss her was overwhelming. I pulled away, and the embarrassment was clear on her innocent face—I practically ran to my car, leaving her stranded at the restaurant.

I sit up further and look at the sleeping girl that I am desperately in love with. Seeing her in our apartment with her clothes in the washer, the apartment clean, and even her toothbrush in the bathroom . . . it gave me a little bit of hope. But then again, you know what they say about hope.

I’m still holding on to the sliver that exists, the small chance that she may forgive me. If she woke up now, she would surely scream at the sight of me standing over her as she sleeps.

I know I need to take it down a few notches. I need to give her a little space. This behavior and these feelings are so exhausting, so overwhelming to me, and I have no fucking idea how to deal with them. But I
will
figure this out—I have to fix all of this. I push a loose strand of her soft hair from her face and force myself away from the bed, back to my pile of blankets, on the concrete floor, where I belong.

Maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

W
hen I wake up, I’m momentarily confused by the brick ceiling above me. It’s strange to wake up here after staying in hotels for the past week. When I climb out of bed, the floor is clear, with the blanket and pillows piled next to the closet. Grabbing my toiletry bag, I head to the bathroom.

I hear Hardin’s voice from the living room: “She can’t stay today, Mum. Her mother is expecting her.”

“Couldn’t we have her mom come here? I would love to meet her,” Trish responds.

Oh no.

“No, her mother is . . . not very fond of me,” he says.

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t think I’m good enough for Tessa, I guess. And maybe because of how I look.”

“How you look? Hardin, don’t you ever let anyone make you feel insecure. I thought you loved your . . . style?”

“I do. I mean, I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. Except Tessa.”

As my mouth falls open, Trish laughs. “Who are you, and where is my boy?” Then, with real happiness in her voice, she says, “I can’t even remember the last conversation we had where you didn’t curse me out, it’s been years. This is nice.”

“Okay . . . okay . . .” Hardin groans and I giggle while imagining Trish trying to hug him.

AFTER MY SHOWER
I decide to get myself all the way ready before leaving the bathroom. I’m a coward, I know, but I need a little more time before I put on a fake smile for Hardin’s mother. It’s not exactly a fake smile . . .
And that’s part of the problem
, my subconscious reminds me. I had a really nice time yesterday, and I slept better than I have all week.

Once my hair is curled to near perfection, I pack my toiletries back into my small bag. There’s a light tap on the door. “Tess?” Hardin asks.

“I’m finished,” I respond and open the door to find him leaning against the door, wearing long gray cotton shorts and a white T-shirt.