After Ever Happy (After #4) (35 page)

She lets me hold her while she calms herself down.

“Would you want to?” Tessa asks, minutes later. Her body is still heaving in my arms, but the tears have stopped.

“What?”

“Have a baby?” She rubs at her eyes and I flinch.

“Uhm, no.” I shake my head. “I don’t want a baby with you.”

Her eyes close, and she whimpers again. I replay the words in my head and realize how they sounded. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want kids—you know that.”

She sniffles and nods, still quiet. “Your Karen can give you a baby,” she says, her eyes still closed, and leans her head against my chest.

I’m still as confused as ever. I draw a connection to Karen and my father, but I don’t want to entertain the idea that Tessa thinks she’s my beginning, not my ending.

I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her from the ground, saying, “All right, it’s time for you to go to bed.”

She doesn’t fight me this time. “It’s true. You said it once,” she mumbles and wraps her thighs around my waist, making it easier to carry her through the sliding door and down the hallway.

“Said what?”

“ ‘There can be no happy end to it,’ ” she quotes my previous words.

Fucking Hemingway and his shitty outlook on life. “That was a stupid thing for me to say. I didn’t mean it,” I promise her.

“ ‘I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?’ ” she quotes the bastard again. Leave it to Tessa to have perfect recall while she’s too drunk to even stand.

“Shh, we can quote Hemingway when you’re sober.”

“ ‘All things truly wicked start from innocence,’ ” she says against my neck, arms tightening across my back as I push her bedroom door open.

I used to love that line, as I never understood the meaning. I thought I did, but it’s not until now, when I’m living the fucking meaning, that I actually get it.

My mind growing heavy with guilt, I gently lay her on the bed and toss the pillows to the floor, leaving one for her head. “Scoot up,” I softly command.

She doesn’t have her eyes open and I can tell she’s close to sleep, finally. I leave the light off, hoping she will sleep the rest of the night.

“Stayinggg?” she says, drawing the word out.

“Do you want me to stay? I can sleep in another room,” I offer, even though I don’t want to. She’s so off, so detached from herself, that I’m almost afraid to leave her alone.

“Mhmm,” she mumbles, reaching for the blanket. She tugs at the corner and huffs in frustration when she can’t get the fabric loose enough to cover herself.

After I help cover her, I take my shoes off and climb into the bed with her. While I’m debating how much space to leave between our bodies, she wraps a bare thigh around my waist, pulling me closer.

I can breathe. Finally, I can fucking breathe.

“I was scared you weren’t going to be okay,” I admit into the silence of the dark room.

“Me, too,” she agrees in a broken voice.

I push my arm under her head, and she shifts her hips, turning into me and tightening her leg around my body.

I don’t know where to go from here; I don’t know what I did to her that made her this way.

Yes—yes, I do. I treated her like shit and took advantage of her kindness. I used up chance after chance, like the supply would never end. I took the trust she gave me and ripped it up like it meant nothing and threw it in her face every time I felt like I wasn’t good enough for her.

If I would have just accepted her love from the beginning, accepted her trust and cherished the life she tried to breathe into me, she wouldn’t be this way now. She wouldn’t be lying next to me drunk and upset, defeated and destroyed by me.

She fixed me; she glued the tiny fragments of my fucked-up soul into something impossible, something almost attractive even. She made me into something—she made me normal almost—but with each drop of glue she used on me, she lost that drop of herself, and me being the piece of shit I am, didn’t have anything to offer her.

Everything that I feared would happen has happened, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, I see now that I made it worse. I changed her and ruined her, just the way I promised I would all those months ago.

It seems insane.

“I’m truly sorry that I ruined you,” I whisper into her hair as her breathing begins to show signs of sleep.

“Me, too,” she breathes, and regret fills in the little spaces between us as she drifts off.

B
uzzing. All I can hear is constant buzzing, and my head feels as if it will explode at any moment. And it’s hot. Too hot. Hardin’s weight is heavy; his cast is pressing down on my stomach, and I have to pee.

Hardin.

I lift his arm and wiggle, literally, out from under his body. The first thing I do is grab his phone off the nightstand to stop the buzzing. Text messages and calls from Christian fill the screen. I reply with a simple
We are fine
and turn his phone to silent before walking to the bathroom.

My heart is heavy in my chest, and the remnants of last night’s alcohol abuse are swimming through my veins. I shouldn’t have had that much wine; I should have stopped after the first bottle. Or second. Or third.

I don’t remember falling asleep, and I can’t remember how Hardin came to be here. A muddled memory of his voice through the phone surfaces, but it’s hard to make out, and I’m not fully convinced it actually happened. But he’s here now, asleep in my bed, so I suppose the details don’t really matter.

I lean my hip against the sink and turn on the cold water. I splash some across my face, like they do in the movies, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t wake me up or clear my thoughts; it only makes yesterday’s mascara bleed even farther down my face.

“Tessa?” Hardin’s voice calls.

I shut the faucet off and meet him in the hallway.

“Hey,” I say, avoiding his eyes.

“Why are you up? You just fell asleep two hours ago.”

“I couldn’t sleep, I guess.” I shrug my shoulders, hating the awkward tension I feel in his presence.

“How are you feeling? You drank a lot last night.”

I follow him back into the bedroom and close the door behind me. He sits on the edge of the bed, and I climb back under the covers. I don’t feel like facing the day right now; that’s okay, though, since the sun hasn’t even decided to come out yet.

“I have a headache,” I admit.

“I’m sure—you were throwing up half the night, baby.”

I cringe while remembering Hardin holding my hair back, rubbing his hand across my shoulders to comfort me while I emptied my stomach into the toilet.

Dr. West’s voice delivering bad news, the worst news, pushes through my aching head. Did I drunkenly share the news with Hardin?
Oh no
. I hope not.

“What . . . what did I say last night?” I ask, treading lightly.

He exhales and runs his hand through his hair. “You were going on about Karen and my mum. I don’t even want to know what that meant.” He grimaces, and I assume it matches my own expression.

“Is that all?” I hope it is.

“Basically. Oh, and you were quoting Hemingway.” He smiles a little, and I’m reminded just how charming he can be.

“I
wasn’t.”
I cover my face with my hands in embarrassment.

“You were.” A soft laugh falls from his lips, and I peek through my hands to look at him as he adds, “You were also saying that you accept my apology and you will give me another chance.”

His eyes meet mine through my fingers, and I can’t seem to look away.
He’s good. Really good.

“Liar.” I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry. Here we are again, in the middle of our same old back-and-forth, push-and-pull. I can’t ignore that it feels different this time, but I also know that I can’t be trusted to judge this. It always seemed to feel different each time he made a promise that he couldn’t keep.

“Do you want to talk about what happened last night? Because I hated seeing you that way. You weren’t yourself. It really scared me when I was on the phone with you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You were plastered. You drank yourself to sleep outside on the patio, and there are empty bottles across the entire house.”

“It’s not fun finding someone that way, huh?” I feel like a jerk as soon as the words are out.

His shoulders drop. “No. It’s really not.”

I’m reminded of the nights (and sometimes even the days) when I found Hardin drunk. Drunk Hardin always brought along with him broken lamps, holes in walls, and nasty words that were sure to cut deep.

“That won’t ever happen again,” he says, answering my thoughts.

“I wasn’t—” I begin to lie, but he knows me too well.

“Yes, you were. It’s okay, I deserve it.”

“Either way, it wasn’t fair of me to throw it in your face.” I need to learn to forgive Hardin or neither of us will ever have peace in our lives after this.

I didn’t realize it had been vibrating, but he lifts his phone from the nightstand and presses it to his ear. I close my eyes to relieve some of the throbbing as he curses Christian out. I wave my hand, trying to get him to stop, but he ignores me, rushing to tell Christian what an asshole he is.

“Well, you should have fucking answered. If something would have happened to her, I would have held you fucking responsible,” Hardin growls into the phone, and I try to block his voice out.

I’m fine, I drank a little too much because I had a bad day, but I’m fine now. What’s the harm in that?

When he hangs up, I feel the mattress dip next to me, and he pushes my hand away from my eyes. “He says he’s sorry for not coming home to check on you,” Hardin says, inches from my face.

I can see the stubble across his jaw and chin. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still a little intoxicated, or just plain crazy, but I reach up and run my finger across the line of his jaw. My action surprises him, and his eyes glaze over, almost crossing, as I caress his skin.

“What are we doing?” He leans even closer.

“I don’t know.” I answer with the only truth that I know. I have no clue what we are doing, what I am doing, when it comes to Hardin. I never have.

Inside, I’m sad and hurt, and I feel betrayed by my own body and the essential nature of karma and life in general, but on the surface, I know that Hardin can make it all go away. Even if only temporarily, he can make me forget all of the worries; he can clear all of the chaos from my mind, the way I used to do for him.

Now I get it. I get what he meant when he said he needed me all of those times. I get why he used me the way he did.

“I don’t want to use you.”

“What?” he asks, confused.

“I want you to make me forget everything, but I don’t want to use you. I want to be close to you right now, but I haven’t changed my mind about the rest,” I ramble out, hoping he will understand what I don’t know how to say.

He leans up on one elbow and looks down at me. “I don’t care how or why, but if you want me in any way, you don’t need to explain. I’m already yours.”

His lips are so close to mine, and I could so easily just lift my head slightly to touch them.

“I’m sorry.” I turn my head. I can’t use him this way, but mostly I can’t pretend that that’s all it would be. It wouldn’t just be a physical distraction from my problems—it would be more, much more. I love him still, even though I sometimes wish I didn’t. I wish I were stronger, that I could brush this off as a simple distraction, no feelings, no wanting more, only sex.

But my heart and conscience won’t allow it. As hurt as I am by my ideal future’s being ripped away from me, I can’t use him this way, especially now that he seems to be making such an effort. It would hurt him so bad.

While I’m battling myself, he rolls his body onto mine and collects both of my wrists into one of his hands. “What are you—”

He lifts my hands above my head. “I know what you are thinking.” He presses his lips to my neck, and my body takes over. My neck rolls to the side, giving him easier access to the sensitive skin there.

“It’s not fair to you,” I gasp when his teeth pull at the skin just under my ear. He releases his grip on my wrists—only long enough to pull my T-shirt over my head and toss it onto the floor.

“This isn’t fair. Your even allowing me to touch you after all I’ve done isn’t fair to you, but I want it. I want you, I always want you, and I know you’re fighting it, but you want me to distract you. Let me.” He pushes his weight onto me, his hips pinning me to the mattress in a dominating and demanding way that has my head swimming faster than last night’s wine.

His knee slides between my thighs, and he opens them. “Don’t think about me. Only think about you and what you want.”

“Okay.” I nod, moaning when his knee rubs between my legs.

“I love you—don’t ever feel bad about letting me show you that.” He speaks such soft words, but his hands are rough as one of them keeps both of my hands pinned to the bed and the other pushes into my panties. “So wet,” he groans, moving his finger up and down the moisture there. I try to hold still as he brings his finger to my mouth, pushing it past my lips. “So sweet, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t allow me to respond before he frees my hands and positions his head between my legs. His tongue swipes across me, and I push my fingers into his hair. With each stroke of his tongue across my clit, I am lost in this place with him. I’m no longer clouded by darkness, I’m no longer pissed off—I’m not focusing on regrets and mistakes.

I’m only focused on my body and his. I’m focused on the way he groans against me when I pull his hair. I’m focused on the way my nails leave angry little lines across his shoulder blades as he pushes two fingers inside me. I can only focus on his touching me, every part of me, inside and out, in a way that no one else ever could.

I focus on the sharp intake of his breath as I beg him to turn around and let me please him while he pleases me, the way he pushes his jeans to the floor and nearly rips his shirt off in his hurry to touch me again. I focus on the way he lifts me on top of him, my face opposite his cock. I focus on the way we’ve never done this before, but I love the way he moans my name when I take him into my mouth. I focus on the way his fingers dig into my hips as he licks me and I suck him. I focus on the way I can feel the pressure building inside me, and I focus on the dirty things he’s saying to bring me over the edge.