Chapter 72

“No . . . I like it.” He smiles.

“I’ve missed your smile,” I tell him, and his fingers stop their movements.

“I’ve missed yours, too.” He frowns. “I don’t make you smile enough.”

I want to say something to remove that doubt from his face, but I don’t want to lie to him. He needs to know how I feel. “Yeah . . . we need to work on that,” I say.

His fingers move again, drawing little hearts on my palm. “I don’t know why you love me.”

“It doesn’t matter why I love you, only that I do.”

“The letter was stupid, wasn’t it?”

“No! Would you stop with the self-loathing? It was wonderful. I read it three times straight. It really made me happy to read the things that you were thinking about me . . . about us.”

He looks up, half smirking, half concerned. “You knew I loved you.”

“Yes . . . but it was nice to know the small things, the way you remembered what I was wearing. Those types of things. You never say those types of things.”

“Oh.” He looks embarrassed. It is still slightly unnerving to have Hardin be the vulnerable one in our relationship. That role has always been mine.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” I say.

His arms wrap around my waist and pull me onto his lap. “I’m not,” he lies.

I run one of my hands through his hair and wrap my other arm around his shoulder. “I think you are,” I challenge softly, and he laughs, burying his head in my neck.

“What a Christmas Eve. It’s been a long-ass day,” he complains, and I can’t help but agree.

“Way too long. I can’t believe my mother came here. She is so unbelievable.”

“Not really,” he says, and I pull back to look at him.

“What?”

“She’s not being unreasonable, really. Yeah, she goes about it the wrong way, but I can’t blame her for not wanting you to be with someone like me.”

Tired of this talk, and his notion that my mother is somehow right about him, I scowl at him and move off of his lap to sit next to him on the bed.

“Tess, don’t look at me like that. I’m just saying that now that I’ve really thought about all the shit I’ve done, I don’t blame her for worrying.”

“Well, she’s wrong, and we can stop talking about her,” I whine. The emotional turmoil of the day—of the year, really—is making me tired and cranky. The year is almost over. I can’t believe it.

“Okay, so what would you like to talk about?” he asks.

“I don’t know . . . something lighter.” I smile, convincing myself to be less cranky. “Like how romantic you can be.”

“I am not romantic,” he scoffs.

“Yes, you most certainly are. That letter was one for the classics,” I tease.

He rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t a letter, it was a note. A note that was only supposed to be a paragraph at most.”

“Sure. A romantic note, then.”

“Oh, would you shut up . . .” he groans comically.

I wrap a lock of his hair around my finger and laugh. “Is this where you annoy me to get me to say your name?”

He moves too quickly for me to respond, grabbing my waist and pushing me back onto the bed, hovering over me with his hands on my hips. “No. I have since come up with other ways to get you to say my name,” he breathes, his lips against my ear.

My entire body ignites with only a few words from Hardin. “Is that so?” I say in a thick voice.

But suddenly Natalie’s faceless figure appears in my mind, causing my stomach to turn. “I think we should wait until your mother isn’t in the other room,” I suggest, partly because I clearly need more time to ease back into our relationship, but also because it was already awkward enough doing it once before while she was here.

“I can kick her out now,” he jokes, but rolls off to lie next to me.

“Or I could kick you out.”

“I’m not leaving again. Neither are you.” The certainty in his tone makes me smile.

We are lying next to each other, both of us staring at the ceiling. “So this is it, then, we’re done with the back-and-forth?” I ask.

“Yes, this is it. No more secrets, no more running away. Do you think you can manage not leaving me for a week at least?”

I push his shoulder with my arm and laugh. “Do you think you can manage to not piss me off for a week at least?”

“Yeah, probably not,” he answers. I know that he’s smiling.

As I turn my head to the side, sure enough: a huge grin covers his face. “You’ll have to stay with me at my dorm sometimes, too. The drive is far.”

“Your dorm? You aren’t living in a dorm. You live here.”

“We just got back together—do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“You’re staying here. We aren’t discussing this any further.”

“You are obviously confused, to be speaking to me that way,” I say, then raise myself up on an elbow to look at him. I shake my head lightly and give a slight smile. “I don’t really want to live in the dorm, I just wanted to see what you would say.”

“Well,” he says, lifting himself up and mirroring my actions, “I’m glad to see you’re back to being annoying.”

“I’m glad to see you’re back to being rude. I was getting worried that after that romantic letter you had maybe lost your edge.”