After Ever Happy (After 4)

I attempt to nod, but my body just won’t respond. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m screaming from the inside out and no one can hear me.

Maybe I’m in shock after all. Shock isn’t a bad place, though. I’d like to stay here as long as I can. It hurts less.

Chapter twenty-two

HARDIN

The apartment is full again, and I’m working on my second drink and first joint. The constant burn of liquor on my tongue and smoke in my lungs is starting to get to me. If being sober didn’t hurt so fucking bad, I wouldn’t touch the shit again.

“It’s been two days, and this shit’s already itching,” I complain to whoever will listen.

“Sucks, man, but next time you won’t be putting holes in walls, will you?” Mark taunts me with a smirk.

“Yes, he will,” James and Janine say at the same time.

Janine holds her hand out to me. “Give me another one of your pain pills.” The fucking junkie has already eaten half the bottle in less than two days. Not that I care—I don’t have a use for them, and I sure as fuck don’t care about what she puts into her body. At first I thought the pills would help me, get me higher than the shit James has, but they don’t. They make me tired, and being tired leads to sleep, which leads to nightmares, which always involve her.

I roll my eyes and stand to my feet. “I’ll just give you the damn bottle.” I walk to Mark’s room to get the pills from under my small pile of clothes. It’s been almost a week, and I have only changed my clothes once. Before she left, Carla, the annoying chick with a savior complex, sewed some hideous black patches over the holes in my jeans. I would have cussed her ass out if James wouldn’t have kicked me out on the spot for doing so.

“Hello, Hardin Scott. Phone!” Janine’s high-pitched voice echoes from the living room.

Fuck! I left my phone on the table in the living room.

When I don’t respond immediately, I hear Janine say cheekily, “Mr. Scott’s busy at the moment; can I ask who’s calling?”

“Give me the phone, now,” I say, darting back into the room and tossing the pills for her to catch. I try to stay calm when she just gives me her middle finger and continues talking, letting the bottle hit the floor. I’m getting fucking tired of her shit.

“Ooohh, Landon sounds like a hot name, and you’re American. I love American men—”

All subtlety lost, I snatch the phone from her hand and press it to my ear. “What the hell do you want, Landon? Don’t you think if I wanted to talk to you, I would have answered the last . . . I don’t know, thirty fucking times you called?” I bark.

“You know what, Hardin?” His voice is equally as harsh as mine. “Fuck you. You’re a selfish asshole, and I should have known better than to call you. She will get through this without you, just the way she always has to.”

The line goes dead.

Get through what? What the hell is he talking about? Do I even want to know?

Who am I kidding—of course I fucking do. I immediately dial him back and push past a couple of people and go into the empty hallway for some privacy. Panic rises within me, and my fucked-up mind travels to the worst possible scenario. When Janine slinks into the hallway, clearly to eavesdrop, I head out to the rental car I’ve been hanging on to still.

“What?” he snaps.

“What are you talking about? What happened?” She’s okay, right? She has to be. “Landon, tell me she’s okay.” I have no patience for his lack of words.

“It’s Richard, he’s dead.”

Whatever I might have been expecting to hear, that was not it. Through the haze I’m in, I feel it. I feel the sting of loss inside me, and I fucking hate it. I shouldn’t feel this, I barely even knew the junk—the man.

“Where’s Tessa?” This is why Landon called me so many times. Not to give me a lecture about leaving Tessa, but to let me know her father’s dead.

“She’s here at the house, but her mother is on her way to get her. She’s in shock, I think; she hasn’t spoken since she found him.”

The last part of his sentence has me reeling and clutching my chest. “What the fuck? She found him?”

“Yeah.” Landon’s voice breaks at the end and I know he’s crying. It doesn’t bother me like it usually does.

“Fuck!” Why did this happen? How could this happen to her just after I sent her away? “Where was she, where was his body?”

“Your apartment. She went there to get the last of her stuff and drop your car off.”

Of course, even after that, and even after how I treated her, she’s considerate enough to think of my car.

I force out the words I both want to and don’t want to say: “Let me speak to her.” I’ve wanted to hear her voice, and I’ve hit rock bottom, falling asleep for the last two nights to the robotic message reminding me that she has changed her number.

“Did you not hear me, Hardin?” Landon says, exasperated. “She hasn’t spoken or moved in two days except to use the restroom, and I’m not even sure about that. I haven’t seen her move at all. She won’t drink anything, she won’t eat.”

All the shit I’ve been pushing back, trying to ignore, floods over me and pulls me under. I don’t care what the repercussions will be, I don’t care if the last shred of sanity I have left disappears: I need to talk to her. I reach the car and get in, immediately clear on what I have to do.