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Chapter eighty-one
TESSA
The moment Karen leaves to take Landon to the airport, I instantly feel it. I feel the loneliness creeping in, but I have to ignore it. I have to. I’m fine by myself. I walk downstairs to the kitchen after my stomach’s refusal to stop growling reminds me how hungry I am.
Ken is leaning against the kitchen counter, tearing back the foil wrapper on a light blue frosted cupcake. “Hey, Tessa.” He smiles, taking a small bite. “Grab one.”
My grandmother used to tell me that cupcakes are food for the soul. If I need anything, it’s something for my soul.
“Thank you.” I smile before licking a stripe across the top.
“Don’t thank me, thank Karen.”
“I will.” This cupcake tastes incredible. Maybe it’s because I’ve barely eaten in the last nine days, or maybe it’s because cupcakes truly are good for the soul. Regardless of the reason, I finish it in less than two minutes.
After the glow of the treat washes away, I can feel that the pain is still present, steady as my heartbeat. But it’s no longer overwhelming me, no longer pulling me under.
Ken surprises me by saying, “It’ll get easier, and you’ll find someone who is capable of loving another person besides themselves.”
My stomach churns from his sudden subject change. I don’t want to backtrack, I want to move forward.
“I treated Hardin’s mum terribly. I know I did. I would leave for days at a time, I would lie, I would drink until I couldn’t see straight. If it weren’t for Christian, I don’t know how Trish and Hardin would ever have made it through . . .”
With his words, I remember my anger toward Ken when I heard about the origin of Hardin’s nightmares. I remember wanting to slap him right across his face for ever letting anything hurt his son in that way, so when he says this, it stirs my stored anger. I ball my fists.
“I will never be able to take any of that back, no matter how hard I wish that I could. I wasn’t good for her and I knew it. She was too good for me and I knew that, too. So did everyone else. Now she has Mike, who I know will treat her the way she deserves to be treated. There’s a Mike for you, too, I know it,” he says, looking at me in a fatherly way. “My son hopefully will be lucky enough to find his Karen later in life when he grows up and stops fighting everything and everyone along the way.”
At the mention of Hardin with “his Karen,” I swallow and look away. I don’t want to imagine Hardin with anyone else. It’s way too soon. I do wish that for him, though; I would never wish for him to be alone for the rest of his life. I just hope he finds someone who he loves as much as Ken loves Karen so that he can have a second chance to love someone more than he loved me.
“I hope he does, too,” I finally say.
“I’m sorry that he hasn’t contacted you,” Ken says quietly.
“It’s okay . . . I stopped expecting it a few days ago.”
“Anyway,” he says with a sigh, “I better get upstairs to my office. I have some phone calls to make.”
I’m glad he’s excusing himself before we get any deeper into the conversation. I don’t want to talk about Hardin anymore.
WHEN I PULL UP in front of Zed’s apartment building, he’s waiting outside with a cigarette behind his ear.
“You smoke?” I ask and crinkle my nose.
He seems puzzled as he climbs into my small car. “Oh, yeah. Well, sometimes. And you saw me smoke that night at the frat house, remember?” He pulls the cigarette from behind his ear and smiles. “I found this one in my room.”
I laugh a little. “Yeah, after the beer pong and Hardin yelling at us that night, I guess the smoking thing slipped my mind.” I give him a smile but then realize something. “But wait, so not only do you plan to smoke, you plan to smoke an old cigarette?”
“I guess so. You don’t like cigarettes?”
“No, not at all. But hey, if you want to smoke, you can. Well, not in my car, obviously,” I say.
His fingers move to the door, and he presses one of the small buttons. When the window is half down, he tosses the cigarette out the window.
“Then I won’t smoke.” He smiles and rolls it back up.
As much as I despise the habit, I have to admit there was something about the way he looked with his hair styled nearly straight up, his dark sunglasses, and his leather jacket that made that cigarette look stylish.
Chapter eighty-two
HARDIN
Here you go,” my mum says when she walks into my old bedroom.
She hands me a small porcelain cup on a saucer, and I sit up from the bed. “What is it?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“Warm milk and honey,” she says as I take a sip. “Remember when you were little and I used to make it when you were sick?”
“Yeah.”
“She’ll forgive you, Hardin,” she tells me, and I close my eyes.
I finally moved on from sobbing to dry-heaving to numbness. That’s all it is, is numb. “I don’t think so . . .”
“She will, I saw the way she looked at you. She’s forgiven you for much worse, remember?” She brushes the matted hair away from my forehead, and I don’t flinch away for once.
“I know, but this time isn’t like that, Mum. I ruined everything that I spent months building with her.”
“She loves you.”
“I can’t do it anymore, I can’t. I can’t be who she wants me to be. I always fuck everything up. That’s who I am and always will be, the guy who fucks everything up.”