After (After 1)

“I do, though; go home,” he tells me and raises the bottle to take another drink. Reaching across the table, I snatch it from him and toss it into the yard.

“What the hell?” he yells, but I ignore him and walk toward the back door.

I hear him scramble and then he steps in front of me. “Where are you going?” His face is inches from mine.

“I am going to help Landon clean up the mess you made and then I am going home.” My voice comes out much calmer than I feel.

“Why would you help him?” The disgust in his voice is clear.

“Because he, unlike you, deserves for someone to help him,” I say and his face falls. I should be saying much more to Hardin. I should scream at him for the hurtful things he just said to me, but I know that is what he wants. This is what he does: he hurts everyone near him and he gets a kick out of the chaos that comes out of that.

Hardin quietly steps out of my way.

When I go inside, I find Landon crouched over, pulling the cabinet upright.

“Where’s the broom?” I ask when he’s done. Landon looks at me with a thankful smile.

“Right over there,” he says, motioning to the broom. “Thank you for everything.”

I nod and begin sweeping up the smashed dishes. There are just so many. I feel terrible that when Landon’s mom comes back she’ll find all of her dishes gone. I hope they didn’t have any sentimental value to her.

“Ouch!” I gasp when a small piece of glass digs into my finger. Droplets of blood fall onto the wooden floor, and I jump up to reach the sink.

“Are you okay?” Landon asks, worried.

“Yeah, it’s just a little piece, I don’t know why there is so much blood.” It really doesn’t hurt that bad. I close my eyes as the cold water runs over my finger, and after a couple of minutes I hear the back door open. I snap my eyes open and turn to see Hardin standing in the doorway.

“Tessa, can I talk to you, please?” he asks.

I know I should say no, but something about the redness around his eyes makes me nod. His eyes look to my hand and then the blood on the floor.

He walks over to me quickly. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“It’s nothing, just a little glass,” I tell him.

He reaches for my hand and pulls it out from under the water. And when he touches my arm, I feel the electricity. Looking at my finger, he frowns, then lets it go, walking over to Landon. He was just calling me pathetic, now he is acting all concerned about my health? He is going to make me crazy, literally crazy, as in locked in a padded room.

“Where are the Band-Aids?” he practically demands of Landon, and Landon tells him they’re in the bathroom. Within a minute Hardin is back and he grabs my hand again. First he squeezes some antibacterial gel onto my cut, then he wraps a Band-Aid around my finger gently. I stay quiet, as confused by Hardin’s actions as Landon looks.

“Can I talk to you, please?” he asks again, and thought I know I shouldn’t, since when do I do what I should when Hardin is involved?

I nod, and he wraps his fingers around my wrist and leads me outside.

Chapter thirty

Back at the patio table, Hardin lets go of my wrist and pulls out the chair for me. Feeling like my skin is literally burning from his touch, I rub my fingers over it as he grabs the other chair and drags it across the concrete to sit directly in front of me. When he sits, he’s so close that his knees are almost touching mine.

“What could you possibly want to talk about, Hardin?” I ask him in the harshest tone I can muster.

He takes a deep breath and pulls his beanie off again and places it on the table. I watch as his long fingers run through his thick hair and he looks into my eyes.

“I am sorry,” he says with an intensity that makes me look away and focus on the large tree in the backyard. He leans in close. “Did you hear me?” he asks.

“Yeah, I heard you,” I snap and stare back at him. He is crazier than I thought if he thinks he can just say sorry and I will forget the horrible things he continues to do to me on an almost daily basis.

“You’re so damned difficult to deal with,” he says and sits back on his chair. The bottle I tossed into the yard is now in his hand, and he takes another drink from it. How is he not passed out yet?

“I am difficult? You have to be kidding me! What do you expect me to do, Hardin? You are cruel to me—so cruel,” I say and pull my bottom lip between my teeth. I will not cry in front of him again. Noah has never made me cry; we have been in a few fights over the years, but I have never been upset enough to cry.

His voice is low and almost feels like it’s part of the night air “I don’t mean to be.”

“Yes, you do, and you know it. You do it purposefully. I have never been treated this poorly by anyone in my entire life.” I bite my lip harder. I can feel the knot in my throat. If I cry, he wins. That’s what he wants.

“Then why do you keep coming around? Why not just give up?”

“If I . . . I don’t know. But I can assure you that after tonight I am not going to. I am going to drop Literature and just take it next semester.” I hadn’t planned on doing that until now, but it is exactly what I should do.

“Don’t, please don’t do that.”

“Why would you care? You don’t want to be forced to be around someone as pathetic as me, right?” My blood is boiling. If I knew what to say to hurt him as bad as he always hurts me, I would.

“I didn’t mean that . . . I’m the pathetic one.”