After Ever Happy (After 4)

“?‘There can be no happy end to it,’?” she quotes my previous words.

Fucking Hemingway and his shitty outlook on life. “That was a stupid thing for me to say. I didn’t mean it,” I promise her.

“?‘I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?’?” she quotes the bastard again. Leave it to Tessa to have perfect recall while she’s too drunk to even stand.

“Shh, we can quote Hemingway when you’re sober.”

“?‘All things truly wicked start from innocence,’?” she says against my neck, arms tightening across my back as I push her bedroom door open.

I used to love that line, as I never understood the meaning. I thought I did, but it’s not until now, when I’m living the fucking meaning, that I actually get it.

My mind growing heavy with guilt, I gently lay her on the bed and toss the pillows to the floor, leaving one for her head. “Scoot up,” I softly command.

She doesn’t have her eyes open and I can tell she’s close to sleep, finally. I leave the light off, hoping she will sleep the rest of the night.

“Stayinggg?” she says, drawing the word out.

“Do you want me to stay? I can sleep in another room,” I offer, even though I don’t want to. She’s so off, so detached from herself, that I’m almost afraid to leave her alone.

“Mhmm,” she mumbles, reaching for the blanket. She tugs at the corner and huffs in frustration when she can’t get the fabric loose enough to cover herself.

After I help cover her, I take my shoes off and climb into the bed with her. While I’m debating how much space to leave between our bodies, she wraps a bare thigh around my waist, pulling me closer.

I can breathe. Finally, I can fucking breathe.

“I was scared you weren’t going to be okay,” I admit into the silence of the dark room.

“Me, too,” she agrees in a broken voice.

I push my arm under her head, and she shifts her hips, turning into me and tightening her leg around my body.

I don’t know where to go from here; I don’t know what I did to her that made her this way.

Yes—yes, I do. I treated her like shit and took advantage of her kindness. I used up chance after chance, like the supply would never end. I took the trust she gave me and ripped it up like it meant nothing and threw it in her face every time I felt like I wasn’t good enough for her.

If I would have just accepted her love from the beginning, accepted her trust and cherished the life she tried to breathe into me, she wouldn’t be this way now. She wouldn’t be lying next to me drunk and upset, defeated and destroyed by me.

She fixed me; she glued the tiny fragments of my fucked-up soul into something impossible, something almost attractive even. She made me into something—she made me normal almost—but with each drop of glue she used on me, she lost that drop of herself, and me being the piece of shit I am, didn’t have anything to offer her.

Everything that I feared would happen has happened, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, I see now that I made it worse. I changed her and ruined her, just the way I promised I would all those months ago.

It seems insane.

“I’m truly sorry that I ruined you,” I whisper into her hair as her breathing begins to show signs of sleep.

“Me, too,” she breathes, and regret fills in the little spaces between us as she drifts off.

Chapter fifty-three

TESSA

Buzzing. All I can hear is constant buzzing, and my head feels as if it will explode at any moment. And it’s hot. Too hot. Hardin’s weight is heavy; his cast is pressing down on my stomach, and I have to pee.

Hardin.

I lift his arm and wiggle, literally, out from under his body. The first thing I do is grab his phone off the nightstand to stop the buzzing. Text messages and calls from Christian fill the screen. I reply with a simple We are fine and turn his phone to silent before walking to the bathroom.

My heart is heavy in my chest, and the remnants of last night’s alcohol abuse are swimming through my veins. I shouldn’t have had that much wine; I should have stopped after the first bottle. Or second. Or third.

I don’t remember falling asleep, and I can’t remember how Hardin came to be here. A muddled memory of his voice through the phone surfaces, but it’s hard to make out, and I’m not fully convinced it actually happened. But he’s here now, asleep in my bed, so I suppose the details don’t really matter.

I lean my hip against the sink and turn on the cold water. I splash some across my face, like they do in the movies, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t wake me up or clear my thoughts; it only makes yesterday’s mascara bleed even farther down my face.

“Tessa?” Hardin’s voice calls.

I shut the faucet off and meet him in the hallway.

“Hey,” I say, avoiding his eyes.

“Why are you up? You just fell asleep two hours ago.”

“I couldn’t sleep, I guess.” I shrug my shoulders, hating the awkward tension I feel in his presence.

“How are you feeling? You drank a lot last night.”

I follow him back into the bedroom and close the door behind me. He sits on the edge of the bed, and I climb back under the covers. I don’t feel like facing the day right now; that’s okay, though, since the sun hasn’t even decided to come out yet.

“I have a headache,” I admit.

“I’m sure—you were throwing up half the night, baby.”

I cringe while remembering Hardin holding my hair back, rubbing his hand across my shoulders to comfort me while I emptied my stomach into the toilet.