Chapter 186: Chapter 186

Chapter one hundred and twenty-one

HARDIN

I’ll see you at home, Tessa,” Landon says as Tessa and I climb out of my dad’s car and walk toward mine.

I look back at him and mumble a nice “fuck you” under my breath.

“Leave him alone,” she warns and disappears into my car.

When I get inside, I turn the heat up and look at her with thankfulness in my eyes. “Thanks for coming home with me, even if it’s just for the night.”

Tessa just nods and leans her cheek against the window.

“You okay? I’m sorry about today, I—” I begin.

She sighs, cutting me off. “I’m just tired.”

Two hours later, Tessa is fast asleep on the bed, her arms hugging my pillow and her knees curled up to her chest. She’s breathtaking even when she’s exhausted. It’s still too early for me to go to sleep, so I go into the closet and grab the copy of Pride and Prejudice she gave me. Bright yellow marker covers much more of the book than I expected, so I lie next to her once again and begin to read the marked passages. One catches my eye:

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”

This one is certainly from our earlier days. I can picture her now, annoyed and flustered, sitting on her tiny bed in that dorm with a highlighter and novel in hand.

I glance over at her and chuckle lightly at her expense. Flipping through the pages, I see a pattern here; she despised me. I knew that then, but being reminded of it is pretty damn strange:

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Her mother and Noah.

“Angry people are not always wise.”

Isn’t that the truth . . .

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

I didn’t understand my own damn self and still don’t, really.

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

She did this the day I told her I loved her and took it back. I know she did.

“I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”

Easier said than done, Tess.

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step toward falling in love.”

The wedding. I know it. I remember the way she beamed up at me and pretended not to be in pain as I stepped all over her shoes.

“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

This still applies. Landon would say some shit like this to Tessa, he probably has before.

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

I’m not sure which of us this applies to more.

“?‘There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.’

“?‘And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.’

“?‘And yours,’ he replied with a smile, ‘is willfully to misunderstand them.’?”

Each part holds more truth than the last as I skip back to the front section of the familiar novel.

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

I had once told Tessa she wasn’t my type—what a fucking idiot I was. I mean, look at her: she’s everyone’s type, even if they’re too damn stupid to see it at first. My hands work the pages, and my eyes skim over countless marked lines that relate to the two of us and how she feels about me. This is the best gift I’ll ever receive, that’s for damn sure.

“You have bewitched me, body and soul.”

One of my favorite lines, I used it on her once when we first moved into this place. She scrunched up her nose at my corny use of the line, laughed at me, and tossed a piece of broccoli at me. She’s always throwing shit at me.

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever.”

I have changed for the better, for her, since I met her. I’m not perfect, fuck, nowhere near, but I could be one day.

“How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.”

I don’t like this one at all. I know exactly what was going through her mind as she highlighted it. Moving on . . .

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

At least it isn’t just Tessa’s mind that does this crazy shit.

“Only the deepest love will persuade me into matrimony.”

She left the rest of the sentence out, the part that says “which is why I shall end up and old maid.”

Only the deepest love can persuade me into matrimony. Hmm . . . I’m not sure even that will do it for me. There is no possible way that there is a love deeper than what I feel for this girl, but it doesn’t change my opinion on marriage. People don’t get married for the right reasons anymore, not that they ever did. In the past it was for status or money, and now it’s only to be sure you won’t be lonely and miserable—two things nearly every married person still feels anyway.