After (After 1)

“Well, maybe you should stop messing around with her,” I suggest and roll onto my back so he can’t see my face.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t mess around with her?”

“No. I mean, if you think she is annoying, then why keep doing it?” I know I don’t want the answer to this, but can’t help it.

“To keep me occupied, I guess.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Talking about Hardin messing around with Molly hurts me worse than it should.

His smooth voice interrupts my jealous thoughts. “Come lie with me.”

“No.”

“Come on, just lie with me. I sleep better when you’re near me,” he says like it’s a confession.

I sit up and look at him. “What?” I can’t hide my surprise at his words. Whether he means them or not, they make my insides melt.

“I sleep better when you’re with me.” He breaks eye contact and looks down. “Last weekend I slept better than I have in a while.”

“It was probably the scotch, not me.” I try to make light of his confession. I don’t know what else to do or say.

“No, it was you.”

“Good night, Hardin.” I turn over. If he keeps saying these things and I keep listening, I will be putty in his hands yet again.

“Why don’t you believe me?” he almost whispers.

“Because you always do this: you say a few nice things and then you flip the switch and I end up crying.”

“I make you cry?”

How doesn’t he know that? He has seen me cry more than anyone else I know.

“Yeah, often,” I say, gripping Steph’s blanket tight.

I hear his bed squeak lightly and I close my eyes, out of fear, out of something else, too. Hardin’s fingers graze my arm as he sits on the edge of Steph’s bed, and I tell myself it’s too late—well, early—for this at 4 a.m.

“I don’t mean to make you cry.”

I open my eyes and look up at him. “Yes. Yes, you do. That’s your exact intention every time you say hurtful things to me. And when you forced me to tell Noah about us. And when you humiliated me in your bed last week because I couldn’t say exactly what you wanted me to. Tonight you tell me you sleep better when I am around, but if I was to lie with you, the second we woke up you would just tell me I am ugly, or that you can’t stand me. After we went to the stream, I thought that . . . never mind. There are only so many times I can have this talk with you.” I take in a couple of deep breaths, panicked at my unloading on him.

“I’m listening this time.” His eyes are unreadable, but they make me want to continue.

“I just don’t know why you love this cat-and-mouse game you play with me so much. You’re nice, then mean. You tell Steph you’ll ‘ruin’ me if I come around you, then you want to drive me home. You are just all over the place.”

“I didn’t mean that. That I would ruin you, I just . . . I don’t know. I just say things sometimes,” he says, running his hands through his hair.

“Why did you drop Literature?” I finally ask.

“Because you want me to stay away from you, and I need to stay away from you.”

“So why don’t you, then?” I am slightly aware of the shift in energy around us. Somehow we have moved closer, our bodies only inches apart.

“I don’t know,” he huffs. He rubs his hands together, then rests them on his knees.

I want to say something—anything—but I can’t without telling Hardin that I don’t want him to stay away, that I think about him every second of every day.

Finally, he breaks the silence. “Can I ask you something and you will be completely honest?”

I nod.

“Did you . . . did you miss me this week?”

That was the last thing I expected him to ask me. I blink a few times to clear my frantic mind. I told him I would answer truthfully, but I’m afraid to.

“Well?”

“Yeah,” I mumble and hide my face in my hands, only to have him pull them away, his touch on my wrists setting fire to my skin.

“Yeah, what?” His voice is strained, like he is desperate for my answer.

“I missed you,” I gulp, expecting the worst.

What I did not expect is his sigh of relief, and the smile that stretches across his beautiful face. I want to ask him if he missed me, but he begins to speak before I get the chance.

“Really?” he asks, almost like he doesn’t believe me.

I nod in reply and he gives me a shy smile. Hardin shy? More likely he’s pleased by my admittance because it tells him he has me wrapped around his finger.

“Now can I go back to sleep?” I whine. I know he isn’t going to reciprocate my confession with one of his own, and it is really late.

“Only if you sleep with me. As in, in the same bed, of course.” He smiles.

I sigh and mumble, “Oh, Hardin, can we just go to sleep?” as I roll over, careful not to touch him. But a sudden yank on my legs makes me yelp in surprise, and I quickly find Hardin lifting me off the bed and throwing me over his shoulder. He ignores my kicking and pleas to put me down until he reaches my bed, rests one knee on it, and lays me down gently on the side against the wall before lying down next to me. I glare at him silently, afraid that if I fight him too hard he’ll leave, which I know I don’t want.

He reaches down and picks up the pillow that I tossed at him earlier and places it between us as a barrier with a smirk on his face. “There, now you can sleep, safe and secure.”