Chapter 143

I’m Tom and she’s Daisy. Lovely Daisy, who is corrupted by Tom, and she’s never the same after. If I beg for her forgiveness right now, on my knees, in this snowy driveway, she’ll be the awful Daisy for eternity, all of her innocence will be gone and she’ll end up hating me, and herself. If Tom had left Daisy at the first moment of her uncertainty, she could have had a life with the man she was destined to be with, a man that would have treated her the way she deserved to be treated.

“It’s none of your concern really, is it?” I say and watch as my words rattle her to her core.

She should be inside with Trevor, or back home with Noah. Not with me. I’m no Darcy, and she deserves one. I can’t change for her. I will find a way to live without her, just the way she must live without me.

“How could you even say that? After everything we’ve been through, you just toss me aside and don’t even have the decency to give me an explanation?” she cries.

Headlights appear at the end of the dark street, casting her into silhouette and creating new shadows across the land.

I’m doing this for you! I want to shout. But I don’t. I just shrug my shoulders.

Her mouth opens, then closes as a truck stops in front of us.

That truck . . .

“What is he doing here?” I croak.

“Picking me up,” she says with such offhand finality that the news nearly brings me to my knees.

“Why would . . . why is he . . . what the fuck?” I pace back and forth. I had been trying to push her away from me and trying to let her move on so she could be with someone like herself—not fucking Zed, out of all people.

“Have you . . . have you been seeing that piece of shit?” I say, glaring at her. I’m aware of how frantic I sound, but I don’t give a shit as I step past Tessa and walk over to where his truck is stopped. “Get out of the goddamn car!” I shout.

Zed surprises me by climbing out and leaving the engine running. He’s such a fucking idiot.

“Are you all right?” he has the nerve to ask her.

I get up in Zed’s face. “I knew it! I knew you were waiting for your moment to swoop in and make a move on her! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

He looks at her and she looks at him. Holy fucking shit, this is really happening.

“Leave him alone, Hardin!” she insists . . .

And I snap.

One of my hands wraps around the collar of Zed’s jacket. The other connects with his jaw. Tessa screams, but it’s barely a whisper, lost in the wind and my rage.

Zed stumbles back, holding his jaw. But then he quickly steps back up toward me. He and his death wish.

“Did you think I wasn’t going to find out! I fucking told you to stay away from her!” I move to hit him again, but this time he blocks me and manages to nail me right in the jaw.

Anger mixes with the adrenaline of being in a fight for the first time in weeks. I’ve missed this feeling, the energy flowing through my bloodstream, getting me high.

I hit him in the ribs. This time he falls to the ground, and I’m on top of him in seconds, pummeling him again and again. I’ll give him credit: he’s managed to get in a few punches. But he has no way to overpower me.

“I was there . . . and you weren’t.” He eggs me on.

“Stop it! Stop, Hardin!” Tessa pulls on my arm, and reflexively I knock her backward onto the driveway.

Immediately, I snap out of my rage and turn to her as she backs away on her hands and knees and then stands and puts her arms straight out, as if to ward me off. What the fuck did I just do?

“Don’t you fucking go near her!” Zed yells behind me. He’s by her side in no time, and she’s staring at him, not bothering to even look at me.

“Tess . . . I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t know it was you, I swear! You know how I see red when I’m angry . . . I’m so sorry. I . . .”

She stares straight through me. “Can we just go, please?” she asks calmly, and my heart leaps . . . until I realize that she’s talking to him, to Zed.

How the fuck did this happen?

“Yes, of course.” Zed drapes his jacket over her shoulders and opens the passenger seat of his truck for her and helps her inside.

“Tessa . . .” I call again, but she doesn’t acknowledge me as she buries her face in her hands and her body is racked with sobs.

I point a finger at Zed and threaten, “This isn’t over.”

He nods and goes around to the driver’s side before looking at me again. “I think it is, actually.” He smirks and climbs inside his truck.

Chapter ninety-one

TESSA

I’m so sorry that he pushed you like that,” Zed tells me as I swipe the warm cloth across his busted cheek. The skin is cut and just won’t stop bleeding.

“No, it’s not your fault. I’m sorry you keep getting dragged into this.” I sigh and dip the cloth back into his sink.

He had offered to take me back to Landon’s instead of following our previous plan of seeing a movie, but I didn’t want to go back to Landon’s. I didn’t want Hardin to show up there and cause a scene

He’s probably there destroying Ken and Karen’s entire house right now. God, I hope not.

“It’s cool. I know how he is, I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you. Well, worse than he did.” He sighs.

“I’m going to apply pressure to this, so it may hurt,” I warn him.

He closes his eyes as I press the cloth to his skin. The cut is deep—it looks like it may scar, even. I hope not; Zed’s face is too perfect to have a scar like this, and I certainly don’t want to be the cause of it.