âOh, let me guess how quick you were to unload to Zed about how fucked up I am,â I growl back at her.
âNo! I didnât tell him anything, actually. Iâm sure he already knows it.â
âAre you going to let me explain my side of this?â I ask her.
âSure,â she remarks, attempting to pull her suitcase from the top shelf in the closet. I move to help her.
âMove,â she snaps, obviously out of patience with my bullshit.
I step back and let her get the case down. âI shouldnât have left last night,â I tell her.
âReally?â she sarcastically says.
âYes, really. I shouldnât have left and I shouldnât have drunk so muchâbut I didnât cheat on you. I wouldnât do that. I only slept at her house because I was too drunk to driveâthatâs it,â I explain.
She crosses her arms and gets that classic mad-girlfriend pose. âThen why lie?â
âI donât know . . . because I knew you wouldnât believe me if I told you.â
âWell, cheaters usually donât admit when they cheat.â
âI didnât cheat on you,â I tell her. She sighs, obviously not convinced.
âItâs really hard to believe you when you blatantly lie all the time. This time isnât any different.â
âI know. Iâm sorry for lying before, about everything, but I wouldnât cheat on you.â I put my arms in the air.
She neatly places a folded shirt in her suitcase. âLike I said, cheaters donât admit they cheated. If you didnât have anything to hide, you wouldnât have lied.â
âItâs not that big of a deal, I didnât do anything with her,â I say, defending myself as she adds another article of clothing.
âSo what if I got wasted and stayed the night at Zedâs house? What would you do?â she asks me, and the thought nearly sends me over the edge.
âIâd fucking kill him.â
âSo itâs not a big deal when you do it, only if it were me?â She calls me out on my double standard. âNone of this even mattersâyou made it clear that Iâm only temporary in your life,â Tessa says. She walks out of the room and into the bathroom across the hall to get her toiletries. She really is going with Landon to my fatherâs house. This is bullshit. She isnât temporary to me, how could she even think that? Probably because of all the shit I said to her last night and my lack of words today.
âYou know Iâm not going to let this go,â I tell her when she zips her suitcase.
âWell, Iâm leaving.â
âWhy? You know youâll be back.â My anger speaks for me.
âThatâs exactly why Iâm leaving,â she says, her voice shaky as she grabs her suitcase and leaves the room without looking back.
When I hear the front door slam shut, I lean my back against the wall and slide to the floor.
Chapter seventy-nine
TESSA
Nine days. Nine days have gone by without a single word from Hardin. I didnât think it was possible for me to go a single day without speaking to him, let alone nine. It feels like one hundred, honestly, though each hour does hurt microscopically less than the prior one. It hasnât been easy, not even close to that. Ken made a call to Mr. Vance asking that I be allowed to take the rest of the week off, which only meant missing one day anyway.
I know Iâm the one who left, the one who walked away, but it kills me that he hasnât even tried to get in touch with me. I have always given more in the relationship, and this was his chance to show me how he truly feels. I guess in a way heâs showing meâitâs just that what he feels is the opposite of what I had desperately wanted. Needed.
I know that Hardin loves me, I do. However, I also know that if he loves me as much as I thought he did, he would have made it a point to show me by now. He said he wasnât going to let this go, but he did. He let it go, and he let me go. The part that scares me the most is that the first week I was walking around completely lost. I was lost without Hardin. Lost without his witty comments. Lost without his crude remarks. Lost without his assurance and his confidence. Lost without the way heâd sometimes draw circles on my hand while holding it between his, the way heâd kiss me for no reason and smile at me when he thought I wasnât looking. I donât want to be lost without him; I want to be strong. I want my days and nights to be just the same whether Iâm alone or not. Iâm beginning to suspect I may always be alone, as dramatic as the thought seems; I wasnât happy with Noah, yet Hardin and I didnât work. Maybe Iâm like my mother in that way. Maybe Iâm better off alone.
I didnât want it to be over this way, so cut-and-dried. I wanted to talk about everything, I wanted him to answer my calls so we could come to some sort of agreement. I just needed space, I needed a break from him to show him that Iâm not his doormat. It backfired on me because he obviously doesnât care as much as I thought he did. Maybe this was his plan all along: get me to break up with him. Iâve known a few girls who go that route when leaving their boyfriends.
During the first day I did expect a call, text, or hell, I really expected Hardin to come bursting through the door screaming at the top of his lungs and causing a scene while his family and I sat in the dining room in silence, no one quite sure what to say to me. When that didnât happen, I lost it. Not crying-in-the-corner, feeling-sorry-for-myself lost it. I mean I lost myself. Every second I lived in anticipation of Hardin coming back to grovel for my forgiveness. I almost gave in that day. I almost went back to the apartment. I was ready to tell him to hell with marriage, I donât care if he lies to me every day and doesnât respect me, as long as he never leaves me. Thankfully, I snapped out of that and salvaged some respect for myself.