After Ever Happy (The After Series) Read online

  “He’s not helping you take a shower.”

  I don’t respond. I don’t have the energy to. Of course he’s not going to—why would he?

  Hardin walks past me, trailing mud behind him. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to happen.”

  My mind is disconnected from me, or maybe it just feels that way, but I laugh ruefully at the mess he’s left behind him. Not only in my mother’s house but everywhere he goes, he leaves a mess behind. Including me—I’m the biggest mess of all.

  He disappears into the bathroom and says to Noah, “She’s half-naked and you’re running her a shower. Fuck no. You aren’t going to stay in here while she bathes. Nope, not going to fucking happen.”

  “I’m only trying to help her, and you’re causing a problem when—”

  I step into the doorway and push past the two brooding men. “Both of you leave.” My voice is monotone, robotic and flat. “Go fight somewhere else.”

  I push them out and shut the door. As the lock clicks into place, I pray that Hardin won’t add this thin bathroom door to his list of destruction.

  Stripping the rest of the way down and stepping into the water, I find it hot, so hot, against my back. I’m covered in filth, and I hate it. I hate the way the mud is crusted under my nails and into my hair. I hate the way that no matter how furiously I scrub, I can’t seem to get clean.

  chapter twenty-nine

  HARDIN

  I can’t help that she was undressed. All of this stuff going on, and you’re concerned about me seeing her body?” The judgment in Noah’s tone makes me want to strangle him with my good hand.

  “It’s not just . . .” I take a deep breath. “It’s not that.” It’s a whole lot of shit that I’m not going to tell him. I fold my hands over my lap, then go to put them in my pockets before realizing the cast isn’t going to fit. Awkwardly, I fold my hands over my lap again.

  “I don’t know what happened between you two, but you can’t blame me for wanting to help her. I’ve known her my whole life, and I’ve never seen her like this.” Noah shakes his head in disapproval.

  “I’m not discussing anything with you. You and I aren’t on the same team here.”

  He sighs. “We don’t have to be rivals either. I want the best for her, and so should you. I’m not a threat to you. I’m not stupid enough to think she would ever choose me. I’ve moved on. I still love her, because, well, I think I always will, but not in the way you love her.”

  His words would be much more acceptable if I hadn’t despised his ass for the past eight months. I stay quiet, my back leaning against the wall in front of the bathroom while I wait for the shower to shut off.

  “You two broke up again, right?” he asks nosily. He doesn’t know when to shut up.

  “Obviously.” I close my eyes and let my head fall back slightly.

  “I’m not getting into your business, but I do hope you’ll tell me about Richard and how he ended up in your apartment. I don’t get it.”

  “He was staying at my place after Tessa left for Seattle. He didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I let him stay with me. When we left for London, he was supposed to go to rehab, so imagine the surprise when he ends up dead as a fucking doornail on the bathroom floor.”

  The bathroom door clicks open, and Tessa walks straight past both of us, dressed only in a towel. Noah has never seen her naked before—no other man has—and selfishly I’d like to keep it that way. I know I shouldn’t be worried about shit like that, but I can’t help it.

  I GO INTO THE KITCHEN for some water, and am enjoying the silence when I hear Carol’s soft, timid voice: “Hardin, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I’m already confused by her tone, and the woman has barely started speaking.

  “Uhm, sure.” I stand back a little, keeping a safe distance from her. My back is against the wall in the small kitchen by the time I stop moving.

  Her expression is tight, and I know this is just as awkward for her as it is for me. “I just wanted to talk about last night.”

  I pull my eyes from her and glance at my feet. I don’t know how this is going to go, but she’s already pinned her hair back and cleaned the mess of makeup that was smeared under her eyes last night.

  “I don’t know what got into me,” she says. “I should have never acted that way in front of you. It was incredibly stupid, and I—”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupt, hoping she’ll just stop.

  “No, it’s really not fine. I want to be clear that nothing has changed here—I still feel strongly about you staying away from my daughter.”

  I look up to meet her eyes. It’s not like I expected anything different from her. “I wish I could say I will listen to you, but I can’t. I know you don’t like me.” I pause and can’t help but laugh at my understatement. “You hate me, and I get that, but you know your opinion doesn’t mean shit to me. I mean that in the nicest way possible. That’s just the way it is.”

  She catches me off guard by laughing along with me. Like mine, hers is a pained, low-ringing sound. “You’re just like him—you speak to me the same way he spoke to my parents. Richard never cared what anyone thought about him either, but look where that got him.”

  “I’m not him,” I snap. I really am trying to be as nice to her as possible, but she’s making it difficult. Tessa has been in the shower for so long, and it’s taking everything in me not to check in on her, especially given Noah’s presence.

  “You have to try to see this entire thing from my perspective, Hardin. I was in the same type of toxic relationship, and I know how these things end. I don’t want that for Tessa, and if you loved her the way you claim, you wouldn’t want that for her either.” She looks at me, seeming to expect a reaction from me, but then continues. “I want the best for her. You may not believe me, but I always raised Tessa not to depend on a man, the way I did, and look at her now. She’s nineteen years old, and she’s reduced to nothing each and every time you decide to leave her—”

  “I—”

  She holds up her hand. “Let me finish.” She sighs. “I envied her, actually. It’s pathetic, but a part of me was envious that you always came back for her the way Richard never came back for me. But the more you left, the more I realized that you two will have the same ending that we did, because even though you come back, you never stay. If you want her to end up like me—alone and hateful—then you keep doing what you’re doing, and I can assure you that’s exactly what will happen to her.”

  I hate the way Carol sees me, but even more than that, I hate the way that she’s right. I do always leave Tessa, and even though I come back, I wait until she’s comfortable and then I leave again.

  “It’s up to you. You’re the only person she seems to listen to, and my daughter loves you too much for her own good.”

  I know she does—she loves me, and because she loves me, we won’t end up like her parents.

  “You can’t give her what she needs; you’re only holding her back from finding someone who will,” she says, but mostly what I hear is Tessa’s old bedroom door closing, meaning that she’s out of the shower.

  “You’ll see, Carol, you’ll see . . .” I say and pull an empty glass from the cabinet. Filling it with water for Tessa, I tell myself I can change our course and prove everyone wrong, myself included. I know that I can.

  chapter thirty

  TESSA

  I feel slightly less insane after the shower, or maybe the short nap in the greenhouse, or maybe the silence I was finally granted. I don’t know, but I can see the world with more clarity, only slightly more, but it’s helping me not feel so delusional and giving me a little hope that each day will bring more clarity, more peace.

  “I’m coming in,” Hardin says and opens the door before I can respond. I pull a clean T-shirt down over my stomach and sit on the bed. “I brought you more water.” He places a full glass on the small nightstand and sits on the opposite side of the bed.

  I came up with a s
peech in the shower, but now that he’s here in front of me, I can’t remember any of it. “Thank you” is all I can think to say.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  He’s being cautious. I must look so frail, so weak to him. I feel it, too. I should feel defeated and angry and sad and confused and lost. The thing is, there’s still nothing. There’s the deep throb of nothing, though I’m growing used to it as each minute passes.

  During each long minute in the shower while the water turned cold, I thought of things from a new perspective. I thought of the way my life has turned into this dark hole of absolutely nothing, and I thought about how much I hated feeling that way, and I thought of the perfect solution, but now I can’t get the jumbled words into a proper sentence. This must be what it feels like to lose your mind.

  “I hope you are.”

  He hopes I’m what . . . ?

  “Feeling better,” he adds, answering my thoughts. I hate the way he’s so connected to me, the way he knows what I’m feeling and thinking even when I don’t.

  I shrug and focus on the wall again. “I am, sort of.”

  The wall is easier to focus on than the brilliant green of his eyes, the green that I was always so terrified of losing. I remember that when we would lie in bed together, I was always hoping I would get another hour, another week, maybe even another month, with those eyes. I would pray that he would come around and want me permanently, the way I wanted him. I don’t want to feel that anymore, I don’t want that desperation rolling off me when it comes to him. I want to sit here with my nothing and be content and quiet, and maybe, one day, I can become someone else, someone I thought I would be before I started college. If I’m lucky, I could at least once again be the girl I was before I left home.

  That girl is long gone, though. She took a ticket straight to hell, and here she sits, silently burning.

  “I want you to know how sorry I am for everything, Tessa. I should have come back here with you. I shouldn’t have ended things with you because of my own problems. I should have let you be there for me like I want to be for you. Now I know how you must feel, constantly trying to help me when I pushed and pushed you away.”

  “Hardin,” I whisper, not sure what I will say next.

  “No, Tessa, let me say this. I promise you, this time it will be different. I’ll never do that again. I’m sorry that it took your dad dying to make me realize how much I need you, but I won’t run off again, won’t neglect you again, won’t disappear into myself again—I swear it.” The desperation in his voice is all too familiar: I’ve heard this same tone and these same words many, many times from him.

  “I can’t,” I say calmly. “I’m sorry, Hardin, but I really can’t.”

  He moves to my side in a panic and drops to his knees in front of me, ruining the carpet there. “Can’t what? I know it will take some time, but I’m prepared to wait for you to come out of this, this state of grief you’re in. I’m willing to do everything; I mean everything.”

  “We can’t, we never could.” My voice is flat again. I guess robotic Tessa is here to stay. I don’t have enough energy to push any emotion into my words.

  “We can get married . . .” he rambles, then seems surprised by his own words, but he doesn’t take them back. His long fingers wrap around both of my wrists. “Tessa, we can get married. I’ll marry you tomorrow, if you’ll agree. I’ll wear a tux and everything.”

  The words that I’ve been hysterically wishing and waiting for have finally fallen from his lips, but I can’t feel them. I heard them clear as day, but I can’t feel them.

  “We can’t.” I shake my head.

  He grows more desperate. “I have money, more than enough money to pay for a wedding, Tessa, and we could have it wherever you choose. You can get the most expensive dress and flowers, and I won’t complain about any of it!” His voice is loud now, echoing through the room.

  “It’s not about that—it’s not right.” I wish I could engrave into my heart his words and the way his voice sounds so frantic—excited even—and take them with me into the past. A past where I couldn’t see how destructive our relationship really was, when I would have given anything to hear those words from him.

  “What is it, then? I know you want this, Tessa; you’ve told me so many times.” I can see the battle behind his eyes, and I wish I could do something to ease his pain, but I can’t.

  “I don’t have anything left, Hardin. I don’t have anything left to give you. You’ve already taken it all, and I’m sorry, but there’s just nothing left.” The hollowness inside me grows, taking my entire being with it, and I’ve never been so thankful to feel nothing. If I could feel this, any of this, it would kill me.

  It would surely kill me, and I decided only a little while ago that I want to live. I’m not proud of the dark thoughts that crossed my mind in that greenhouse, but I’m proud that they were brief and that I overcame them on my own, on the floor of a cold shower after the hot water ran out.

  “I don’t want to take anything from you. I want to give you exactly what you want!” He gasps for air, and the sound is so troubled that I almost agree with everything he’s saying just so I won’t ever have to hear that sound again.

  “Marry me, Tess. Please just marry me, and I swear I’ll never do anything like this again. We could be together forever—we would be husband and wife. I know you’re too good for me, and I know you deserve better, but now I know that you and I, we aren’t like anyone else. We aren’t like your parents or mine; we are different and we can fucking make it, okay? Just listen to me one more time—”

  “Look at us.” I wave my hand weakly through the space between us. “Look at who I’ve become. I don’t want this life anymore.”

  “No, no, no.” He stands up and paces across the floor. “You do! Let me make it up to you,” he begs, tugging at his hair with one hand.

  “Hardin, please calm down. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you, and most of all I’m sorry that I complicated your life, and I’m sorry for all the fighting and back-and-forth, but you have to know this wouldn’t work. I thought”—I smile a pitiful smile—“I thought that we could make it. I thought ours was a love of the novels, a love that no matter how hard and fast and tough it was, I thought we would survive anything and everything and live to tell the story.”

  “We can, we can survive it!” he chokes out.

  I can’t look at him, because I know what I would see. “That’s just it, Hardin, I don’t want to have to survive. I want to live.”

  My words strike something in him, and he stops pacing, stops tugging at his hair. “I can’t just let you go. You know that. I always come back to you—you had to know that I would. I would have come back from London eventually and we—”

  “I can’t spend my life waiting for you to come back to me, and it would be selfish of me to want you to spend yours running from me, from us.” But I’m confused again. I’m confused because I don’t remember ever having these thoughts; all of my thoughts have always been geared toward Hardin and what I could do to make him better, to make him stay. I don’t know where these thoughts and words are coming from, but I can’t ignore the resolve I feel when I say them.

  “I can’t be without you,” he declares—another sentiment he’s proclaimed a million times, yet he does everything in his power to keep me away, to shut me out.

  “You can. You’ll be happier and less conflicted. It would be easier, you said so yourself.” I mean it. He will be happier without me, without our constant back-and-forth. He can focus on himself and his anger toward both of his fathers, and one day he could be happy. I love him enough to want his happiness, even if it’s not with me.

  He brings his hands in fists to his forehead and clenches his teeth. “No!”

  I love him, I’ll always love this man, but I’ve run out. I can’t continue to be the fuel to his fire when he’s constantly coming back with bucket upon bucket of water to extinguish it. “We’ve fought so hard
but I think it’s time to stop.”

  “No! No!” His eyes search the room, and I know what he’s going to do before he does it. That’s why I’m not surprised when the small lamp goes flying across the room and shatters against the wall. I don’t move. I don’t even blink. It’s all too familiar, and this is why I’m doing what I’m doing.

  I can’t comfort him, I can’t. I can’t even comfort myself, and I don’t trust myself enough to wrap my arms around his shoulders and whisper promises into his ear.

  “This is what you wanted, remember? Go back to that, Hardin. Just remember why you didn’t want me. Remember why you sent me back to America alone.”

  “I can’t be without you; I need you in my life. I need you in my life. I need. You. In my life,” he chants.

  “I can still be in your life. Just not like this.”

  “You’re seriously suggesting we be friends?” he spits out venomously. The green of his eyes is almost gone now, replaced by black as his anger builds. Before I can respond, he continues: “We can’t go back to being friends after everything. I could never be in the same room as you and not be with you. You are everything to me, and you’re going insult me by suggesting we be friends? You don’t mean that. You love me, Tessa.” He looks into my eyes. “You have to. Don’t you love me?”

  The nothing begins to chip away, and I fight desperately to hold on to it. If I begin to feel this, it will take me down. “Yes,” I breathe.

  He kneels down in front of me again.

  “I love you, Hardin, but we can’t keep doing this to each other.”

  I don’t want to fight with him, and I don’t want to hurt him, but the weight of this is on his back. I would have given him everything. Hell, I did give him everything, and he didn’t want it. When times got hard, he didn’t love me enough to fight his demons for me. He gave up, each and every time.

  “How will I survive without you?” He’s crying now, right in front of my face, and I blink back my own tears and swallow the heavy lump of guilt in my throat. “I can’t. I won’t. You can’t just throw this away because you’re going through some shit. Let me be here for you, don’t push me away.”