Chapter 142

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Don’t mock me. It’s rude,” Hardin says.

“You’re rude.”

“So are you—are you sure you’re only five?” Hardin asks.

Which is exactly what I’ve always wanted to ask the kid. Smith is so mature for his age, but I guess he has to be, considering what he’s been through.

“Pretty sure. Do you want to play?” Smith asks him.

“No, I don’t.”

“Why?”

“Why do you ask so many questions? You remind—”

“Tessa?” Kimberly’s voice startles me and I nearly scream. She puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Sorry! Have you seen Smith? He took off, and Hardin, of all people, went after him.” She looks confused yet touched by that.

“Um, no.” I hurry down the hallway to avoid the humiliation of being caught by Hardin. I know he heard Kimberly call my name.

When I get back to the dining room, I approach the small group that Christian is speaking with and tell him how much I appreciate him inviting me, and I congratulate him on his engagement. Kimberly appears moments later, and I hug her goodbye before doing the same with Karen and Ken.

I check my phone: ten minutes till eight. Hardin is occupied with Smith and obviously has no intention of speaking to me, and that’s fine. That’s what I need, I don’t need him to apologize and tell me that he’s been miserable without me. I don’t need him to hold me and tell me we’ll find a way to work this out, to fix everything he has broken. I don’t need that. He won’t do it anyway, so it’s pointless to need it.

It hurts less when I don’t need it.

By the time I reach the end of the driveway, I’m freezing. I should’ve worn a jacket—it’s the end of January and it’s just begun to snow. I don’t know what I was thinking. I hope Zed gets here soon.

The icy wind is unforgiving as it whips my hair around and makes me shiver. I wrap my arms around me in an attempt to keep warm.

“Tess?” I look up, and for a moment I think I’m imagining the boy in all black walking toward me in the snow.

“What are you doing?” Hardin asks me, drawing even closer.

“I’m leaving.”

“Oh . . .” He rubs his hand over the back of his neck like he always does. I stay quiet. “How are you?” he asks and I’m baffled.

“How am I?” I turn to look at him.

I try to keep my cool as he stares at me with a completely neutral expression. “Yeah . . . I mean, are you . . . you know, okay?”

Should I tell him the truth or lie . . . ? “How are you?” I ask, my teeth chattering.

“I asked first,” he responds.

This is not how I had envisioned our first encounter. I’m not entirely sure what I thought would happen, but this isn’t it. I thought he would be cursing me out and we would be in a screaming match. Standing in a snow-dusted driveway, asking each other how we’re doing, is the last thing I imagined. The lanterns hanging in the trees lining the driveway make Hardin appear to be glowing, like an angel. Obviously an illusion.

“I’m fine,” I lie.

He looks me up and down slowly, making my stomach leap and my heart pound. “I see that.” His voice carries over the wind.

“And now, how are you?”

I want him to say he’s doing terribly. But he doesn’t.

“Same. Fine.”

Quickly I ask, “Why haven’t you called me?” Maybe this will evoke some emotion from him.

“I . . .” He looks at me and then down at his hands before running them through his snow-covered hair. “I . . . was busy.” His answer is the wrecking ball that takes down the rest of my wall.

Anger overpowers the bone-crushing hurt that is threatening to take over at any moment. “You were ‘busy’?”

“Yeah . . . I was busy.”

“Wow.”

“Wow what?” he asks.

“You were busy? Do you know what I’ve been going through the last eleven days? It’s been hell, and I felt pain that I didn’t know I could endure, and at times I didn’t think I could. I kept waiting . . . waiting like a fucking idiot!” I scream.

“You don’t know what I’ve been doing either! You always think you know everything—but you don’t know shit!” he yells back, and I walk to the very end of the driveway.

He’s going to lose it when he sees who’s picking me up. Where the hell is Zed, anyway? It’s five minutes after eight.

“Tell me, then! Tell me what was more important than fighting for me, Hardin.” I wipe the tears from under my eyes and beg myself to stop crying.

I’m so sick of crying all the time.

Chapter ninety

HARDIN

When she starts to cry, it becomes much harder to keep a neutral face. I don’t know what would happen if I told her that I’ve been through hell, too, that I felt pain that I wasn’t sure I could endure either. I think she’d run into my arms and tell me it’s okay. She was listening to me talk to Smith, I know she was. She’s sad, just the way the obnoxious little boy claimed, but I know how this ends. If she forgives me, I’ll just come up with some other fucked-up thing to do to her next. It’s always been that way, and I don’t know how to stop it.

The only option here is giving her a chance to be with someone much better for her. I believe that deep fucking down she wants someone who is more like her. Someone with no tattoos, no piercings. Someone without a fucked-up childhood and anger issues. She thinks that she loves me now, but one day, when I do something even more fucked up than I already have, she’ll regret ever speaking to me. The more I look at her crying in this driveway with the snow falling down around her, the more I know that I’m not good for her.