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She looks slightly offended, but her voice remains soft and raspy. “I’m just wondering why you would want to drive all the way to Haworth to see the moors.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and takes a deep breath. “Hardin, I know you enough to know when you’re brooding and withdrawing from me.” She unbuckles her seat belt and shifts her body to face me. “You wanting to take me to the moors that inspired Wuthering Heights, rather than some place from an Austen novel, has me on edge, more than I already am.”
She can see right through my bullshit. How does she always do that?
“No,” I lie. “I was simply thinking you would like to see the moors and Brontë Country. Sue me.” I roll my eyes to avoid that damn look in hers, not willing to admit that she’s right.
Her fingers play with the wrapper of a breakfast bar. “Well, I’d rather not go there, really. I just want to go home.”
I let out a deep breath and grab the bar from her hands, tearing open the wrapper. “You need to eat something. You look like you’ll pass out any moment.”
“I feel that way,” she says quietly, more to herself than me, it seems.
I’m considering shoving the damned thing into her mouth, when she takes it from me for a bite.
“You want to go home, then?” I finally ask her. Not wanting to ask where exactly home will be for her.
She grimaces. “Yes, your father was right. London isn’t as I imagined.”
“I ruined it for you, that’s why.”
She doesn’t deny it, but she doesn’t confirm it either. Her silence and the way she’s vacantly staring out at the trees pushes me to say what I need to say. It’s now or never.
“I think I should stay here for a while . . .” I say into the open air between us.
Tessa’s mouth stops its chewing, and she turns, narrowing her eyes at me. “Why?”
“It doesn’t make sense for me to go back there.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense for you to stay here. Why would you even consider that?”
Her feelings are hurt, just like I knew they would be—but what other choice do I have?
“Because my father isn’t my actual father, my mum is a lying”—I stop myself from calling her the name I want to—“and my biological father is going to jail because I caught her house on fire. It’s a ridiculous drama series on its own.” Then, to try to get a reaction out of her, I wryly add, “All we need is a cast of young girls with too much makeup and impractical clothes, and we would have a hit.”
Her sad eyes study mine. “I’m still not seeing why any of this would make you want to stay here. Here, as in away from me—that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to be away from me.” She says the last part as if saying it aloud verifies it as truth.
“It’s not that . . .” I start, but stumble. I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words—that’s always been my biggest fucking problem. “I just think if we had some time apart, you could see what I’m doing to you. Just look at yourself.” She flinches, but I force myself to continue. “You are dealing with problems that you would’ve never be faced with if it wasn’t for me.”
“Don’t you dare act like you’re doing this for me,” she snaps, her voice as cold as ice. “You are as self-destructive as they come, and that’s your only motive behind this.”
I am. I know I am. It’s what I do: I hurt other people, and then I hurt myself before anyone can hurt me back. I’m fucked-up; that’s just the way it is.
“You know what?” she says after getting tired of waiting for me to speak up. “Fine. I’ll let you hurt both of us in this self-depriving mission of your—”
My hands are on her hips and she’s back on my lap before she can finish. Tessa tries to climb off me, scratching at my arms when I won’t let her move an inch.
“If you don’t want to be with me, then get off of me,” she seethes. No tears, only anger. Her anger I can handle; it’s the tears that kill me. The anger dries them away.
“Stop fighting me.” I gather both of her wrists behind her back and hold them in only one of my hands. She glares, her eyes warning me.
“You don’t get to do this every time something makes you feel bad. You don’t get to decide that I’m too good for you!” she shouts in my face.
I ignore her and bring my mouth to the curve of her neck. Her body jolts again, this time out of pleasure, not anger.
“Stop it . . .” she says with absolutely no conviction. She’s trying to deny me because she thinks she should, but we both know that this is what we need. We need the physical connection that brings us to an emotional depth that neither of us can explain or deny.
“I love you, you know I do.” I suck at the tender skin at the base of her neck, reveling in the way it turns pink from the suction of my lips. I continue to suck and nibble at the skin, just enough to create a cluster of markings, but not hard enough to make them stay for longer than a few seconds.
“You sure aren’t acting like it.” Her voice is thick, and her eyes follow my free hand as it moves across her exposed thigh. Her dress is bunched up at her waist in the most maddening way possible.
“Everything I do is because I love you. Even the stupid shit.” I reach the lace of her panties, and she gasps when I run a single finger across the moisture already collected between her thighs. “Always so wet for me, even now.”