After Ever Happy (After 4)

“Tessa. Answer me.”

“I’m fine. I’m allowed to drink, right, Dad?” she tries to joke, but the way she says that last word gives me a chill.

“If you want to get technical, you aren’t actually allowed to drink. Not legally, anyway.” I’m the last person to lecture her; it’s my fault she started drinking so regularly anyway, but this burning paranoia is clawing at the pit of my stomach right now. She’s drinking alone, and she sounds sad enough that I jump to my feet.

“Yeah.”

“How much did you drink?” I text Vance, hoping he’ll respond.

“Not too much. I’m fine. You know what’sss weird?” Tessa slurs.

I grab my keys. Damn Seattle for being so fucking far. “What’s that?” I push my feet into my Vans. Boots take too much time, and time is something I can’t afford right now.

“It’s weird how someone can be a good person but bad things just keep happening to them. You know?”

Fuck. I text Vance again, this time telling him to get his ass home—now.

“Yeah, I do know. It’s not fair the way that works.” I hate that she’s feeling this way. She’s a good person, the best I’ve ever met, and she somehow ended up being surrounded by a bunch of fuckups, me included. Who am I kidding? I’m the worst offender.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be a g-good person anymore.”

What? No. No, no, no. She shouldn’t be talking like this, thinking like this.

“No, don’t think like that.” I wave an impatient hand at Karen, who is standing in the doorway of the kitchen—wondering where I am running off to this late, I’m sure.

“I try not to, but I can’t help it. I don’t know how to stop.”

“What happened today?” It’s hard to believe that I’m talking to my Tessa, the same girl who always sees the best in everyone—herself, too. She has always been so positive, so happy, and now she’s not.

She sounds so hopeless, so defeated.

She sounds like me.

My blood runs cold in my veins. I knew this would happen; I knew she wouldn’t be the same after I got my claws into her. I somehow knew that after me she would be different.

I hoped it wouldn’t be true, but tonight it sure as hell seems that way.

“Nothing important,” she lies.

Vance still hasn’t answered me. He better be driving home.

“Tessa, tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

“Nothing. Just karma catching up to me, I guess,” she mumbles, and the sound of a cork’s being popped echoes through the silence on the line.

“Karma for what? Are you insane? You’ve never done anything to deserve any of the shit that’s happened to you.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Tessa, I think you should stop drinking for the night. I’m on my way to Seattle. I know you need space, but I’m getting worried about you and I . . . well, I can’t stay away, I never could.”

“Yeah . . .” She isn’t even listening.

“I don’t like you drinking this much anymore,” I say, knowing she won’t hear me.

“Yeah . . .”

“I’m on my way. Get a bottle of water. Okay?”

“Yeah . . . a little bottle . . .”

THE DRIVE TO SEATTLE has never seemed this fucking long, and because of the distance between us, I finally see it, this cycle that Tessa always bitches about. It’s a cycle that ends here—this is the last damn time I’ll be driving to another city to be close to her. No more endless fucking bullshit. No more running from my problems, and no more fucking excuses. No more long-ass drives across the damn state of Washington because I ran far away.

Chapter fifty-two

HARDIN

I’ve called forty-nine times.

Forty-nine fucking times.

Forty-nine.

Do you know how many rings that is?

A fucking lot.

Too many to count, or at least I can’t think clearly enough to count them. But if I could, it would be a massive amount of fucking rings.

If I make it through the next three minutes, I plan on ripping the front door off the damn hinges and smashing Tessa’s phone—the one she apparently doesn’t know how to answer—against the wall.

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t smash her phone against the wall. Maybe I’ll accidently step on it a few times until the screen cracks under my weight.

Maybe.

She’s going to get a goddamn earful, that’s for fucking sure. I haven’t heard from her in the last couple hours, and she has no fucking idea how torturous the last few hours of driving have been. I go twenty over the speed limit to make it to Seattle as fast as possible.

When I near the place, it’s three in the damn morning, and Tessa, Vance, and Kimberly are all on my shit list. Maybe I should smash all three of their phones, since they obviously have forgotten how to answer the fucking things.

As I reach the gate, I begin to panic, even more than I already have been. What if they decided to close their security gate? What If they changed the code?

Do I even remember the fucking code? Of course not. Will they answer when I call to ask the code? Of course not.

What if they aren’t answering because something happened to Tessa and they took her to the hospital and she isn’t okay and they don’t have service and . . .

But then I see the gate is open, and I’m a little annoyed by that, too. Why wouldn’t Tessa turn on the security system when she’s here alone?

As I drive up the winding road, I see that hers is the only car parked in front of the massive house. Good to know that Vance is here when I need him . . . Some fucking friend he is. Father, not friend. Fuck—right now he’s neither, really.