After We Collided (The After Series) (4 page)

By the time I go back inside the house, my hands and face are numb from the cold. My mother is sitting in a chair reading a magazine.

“Can I stay tonight?” I ask her.

She looks at me briefly. “Yes. And tomorrow we’ll figure out how to get you back into the dorms,” she says and goes back to her magazine.

Figuring I’ll get no more from my mother tonight, I go up to my old room, which is exactly the way that I left it. She hasn’t changed a thing. I don’t bother removing my makeup before bed. It’s hard, but I force myself to sleep, dreaming of when my life was much better. Before I met Hardin.

My phone rings in the middle of the night, waking me. But I ignore it, briefly wondering if Hardin’s able to sleep at all.

THE NEXT MORNING
all my mother says to me before leaving for work is that she’ll call the school and force them to let me back into the dorms, in a different building far from my old one. I leave, intending to head to campus, but then decide to go to the apartment, taking the exit to the road that leads there and driving quickly to keep from changing my mind.

At the complex, I scan the parking lot for Hardin’s car, twice. Once I’m sure he isn’t around, I park and hurry across the snowy lot to the door. By the time I get to the lobby, the bottoms of my jeans are soaked and I’m freezing. I try to think of anything except Hardin, but it’s impossible.

Hardin must have really hated me to go to this extreme to ruin my life and then to move me into an apartment far from anyone I know. He must be pretty proud of himself right now for causing me this much pain.

As I fumble with my keys before unlocking the door to our place a tidal wave of panic crashes over me, nearly knocking me the ground.

When will it stop? Or at least decrease?

I go straight to the bedroom and grab my bags from the closet, roughly shoving all my clothes in them without care. My eyes flicker to the bedside table, where a small frame stands, displaying the picture of Hardin and me smiling together before Ken’s wedding.

Too bad it was all fake. Leaning across the bed, I grab it and throw it against the concrete floor. It shatters into pieces and I jump over the bed, grab the photo, and rip it into as many pieces as I can, not realizing that I’m sobbing until I choke on my own breath.

I grab my books, piling them into an empty box, and, instinctively, Hardin’s copy of
Wuthering Heights
; he won’t miss it, and, honestly, I’m owed it, after what he’s taken from me.

My throat is sore, so I go into the kitchen and grab a glass of water. I sit down at the table and allow myself a few minutes to pretend that none of this has happened. To pretend that instead of my having to face the future days alone, Hardin will be home from class shortly, and will smile at me and tell me he loves me, that he missed me all day. That he will lift me onto the counter and kiss me with longing and love—

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.

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 made 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.