Chapter 3: Chapter 3

I utterly shrink. I’ve never felt so naked and small. I didn’t want Ken and Karen to know . . . but it may not make much of a difference, since after tonight they surely won’t really want to see me again.

“Do you want to go with him?” Ken asks, interrupting my downward spiral.

I shake my head meekly.

“Well, I’m not leaving here without you,” Hardin snaps. He steps toward me, but I cringe away.

“I think you need to go, Hardin,” Ken surprises me by saying.

“Excuse me?” Hardin’s face is a deep shade of red that expresses what I can only describe as rage. “You’re lucky I even come here to your house—and you dare to kick me out?”

“I’ve been very happy with how our relationship has grown, son, but tonight you have to go.”

Hardin throws his hands into the air. “This is bullshit, who is she to you?”

Ken turns to me, then back to his son. “Whatever you did to her, I hope it was worth losing the only good thing you had going for you,” he says and then drops his head.

I don’t know if it was the shock of Ken’s words, or just that he’d hit a point where all the rage peaked and flowed out of him, but Hardin just stills, looks at me briefly, and marches out of the room. We all remain quiet while we listen to him walk down the stairs at a steady pace.

When the sound of the front door slamming cuts through the now-quiet house, I turn to Ken and sob, “I’m so sorry. I’ll go. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“No, you stay as long as you need. You’re always welcome here,” Ken says, and both he and Karen hug me.

“I didn’t mean to come between you,” I say, feeling terrible for the way Ken had to kick his son out.

Karen grabs hold of my hand and gives it a squeeze. Ken looks at me with exasperation and weariness. “Tessa, I love Hardin, but I think we both know that without you, there isn’t anything to come between,” he says.

Chapter two

TESSA

I stayed in as long as I could, letting the water roll over me. I wanted it to clean me, reassure me somehow. But the hot shower didn’t help me relax like I had hoped. I can’t think of anything that’s going to calm the ache inside of me. It feels infinite. Permanent. Like an organism that’s come to live within me, but also like a hole growing steadily larger.

“I feel terrible about the wall. I offered to pay for it, but Ken refuses to let me,” I tell Landon as I brush out my wet hair.

“Don’t worry about that. You have a lot going on.” Landon frowns and rubs his hand across my back.

“I can’t comprehend how my life came to this, how I ever got to this point.” I stare ahead, not wanting to meet my best friend’s eyes. “Three months ago, everything made sense. I had Noah, who would never do something like this. I was close with my mother and I had this idea of how my life would be. And now I have nothing. Literally nothing. I don’t even know if I should go to my internship anymore because Hardin will either go there, or he’ll convince Christian Vance to fire me just because he can.” I grab the pillow on the bed and grip the material hard in my fist. “He had nothing to lose, but I did. I let him take everything from me. My life before him was so simple and decided. Now . . . after him . . . it’s just . . . after.”

Landon looks at me with wide eyes. “Tessa, you can’t give up your internship; he’s taken enough from you. Don’t let him take that, please,” he practically pleads. “The good thing about this afterlife without him is that you can make it whatever you please, you can start all over.”

I know he’s right, but it isn’t that simple. Everything in my life is tied to Hardin now, even the paint on my damn car. He somehow became the string that held everything in my life together, and in his absence I’m left with the rubble that once was my life.

When I relent and give Landon a halfhearted nod, he smiles a little and says, “I’ll let you get some rest.” He hugs me and starts to leave.

“Do you think this will ever stop?” I ask, and he turns around.

“What?”

My voice almost a whisper: “The pain?”

“I don’t know . . . I’d like to think it will, though. Time heals . . . most wounds,” he answers and gives me his most comforting half smile, half frown.

I don’t know if time will heal me or not. But I do know that if it doesn’t, I won’t survive.

WITH HEAVY-HANDED INTENT, yet enacted with his unfailing politeness, Landon forces me out of bed the next morning to make sure I don’t miss my internship. I take a moment to leave a note of thanks to Ken and Karen, and to apologize again for the hole Hardin put in their wall. Landon is quiet, and keeps looking over at me as he drives, trying to give me encouraging smiles and little slogans to remember. But I still feel terrible.

Memories begin to creep into my mind as we pull into the parking lot. Hardin on his knees in the snow. Zed’s explanation of the bet. I quickly unlock my car, jumping inside to get away from the cold air. When I get into my car, I cringe at my reflection in the rearview. My eyes are still bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles. Bags have swollen up under them, completing the horror-movie look. I will definitely need more makeup than I thought.

Going to Walmart, the only nearby store open at this hour, I buy everything I need to mask my feelings. But I don’t have the strength or the energy to make a real effort on my appearance, so I’m not sure I look much better.

Case in point: I arrive at Vance, and Kimberly gasps when she sees me. I try to muster a smile for her, but she jumps up from her desk.