“What about me? And Landon?” Noah pulls at the tab of a can of soda, and it opens with a loud pop. Even the way he opens soda is obnoxious.

I don’t want to tell Noah that what I’m really worried about is that Tessa will run back to him, wanting the safe relationship instead of giving me another chance. And when it comes to Landon, well, I’ll never admit it, but I sort of need him to be my friend. I have none, and I kind of need him, in a way. A little.

A lot. I need him a fucking lot, and except for Tessa, I have no one else, and I barely have her, so I can’t lose him, too.

“I still don’t understand. If he likes her, why would you want him around her? You’re obviously the jealous type, and you know about stealing people’s girlfriends better than anyone.”

“Ha-ha.” I roll my eyes and glance out the expansive windows covering the front wall of the house. The Porters’ house is the biggest on this street, probably the biggest in this entire shithole of a town. I don’t want him getting the wrong impression here. I still hate his ass, and I’m only allowing him to be around me because I need to give Tessa her space without going too far. “Why do you care anyway? Why are you suddenly playing nice with me? I know you despise me, just the way I do you.” I look over at him, dressed in his stupid fucking cardigan and brown dress shoes that should have a penny stuck on the top of them.

“I don’t care about you; I care about Tessa. I just want her to be happy. It took me a long time to come to terms with everything that happened between us because I was so used to her. I was comfortable and conditioned to be that way, so I couldn’t understand why she would possibly want someone like you. I didn’t get it, and I still don’t, really, but I see how much she has changed since she met you. Not in a bad way either, it’s a really good change.” He smiles at me. “Excepting this week, obviously.”

How could he think that? I have done nothing but hurt her and tear her down since I crashed into her life.

“Well”—I shift uncomfortably in the chair—“that’s enough bonding for today. Thanks for not being a dick.”

I stand and walk toward the kitchen, where I can hear Noah’s mum working the blender. In my stay here, I’ve found vast entertainment in the way she fumbles with words and traces her fingernails over the cross around her neck each time I’m in the same room with her.

“Leave my mom alone, or I’ll kick you out,” Noah warns mockingly, and I almost laugh. If I didn’t miss Tessa so damn much, I would laugh along with the asshole. “You’re going to the funeral, right? You can ride with us if you want; we aren’t leaving for another hour,” he offers, which makes me stop.

I shrug my shoulders and pick at the fringe along the bottom of my cast. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? You did pay for it. You were his friend, kind of. I think you should go.”

“Stop talking about it, and remember what I said about spreading it around that I paid for the shit,” I threaten. “I.e., don’t fucking do it.”

Noah rolls his stupid blue eyes at me, and I leave the room to torture his mum and get my mind off Zed’s being in the same house as Tessa.

What was I thinking?

Chapter thirty-three

HARDIN

I can’t remember the last time I attended a funeral. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been to one.

When my mum’s mum died, I simply didn’t feel like going. I had booze to drink and a party that I just couldn’t miss. I never had the urge to say a final goodbye to a woman I barely knew. One thing I did know about the old woman was that she didn’t care much for me. She could barely stand my mum, so why would I spend my time sitting in a pew, pretending to be upset about a death that, in reality, didn’t affect me at all?

Yet here I sit years later in the back of a tiny church, mourning the death of Tessa’s father. Tessa, Carol, Zed, and what appears to be half the damn congregation all crowd the front rows. Only me and an old woman, who I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually know where she is, sit in the lone pew near the back wall.

Zed is sitting on one side of Tessa and her mother on the other.

I don’t regret calling him . . . Well, I do, but I can’t ignore the flicker of life that seems to have been revived since his arrival earlier today. She still doesn’t look like my Tessa, but she is getting there, and if that asshole is the key to that light, then so fucking be it.

I’ve done a lot of fucked-up shit in my life, a lot. I know this, Tessa knows this, hell, everyone in this church probably fucking knows it thanks to her mother, but I will make this right with my girl. I don’t give a fuck about making amends with any of the other shit from my past or present; I only care about fixing what was broken within her.

I broke her . . . she says she couldn’t fix me . . . that she will never be able to. But my damage wasn’t caused by her. I was healed by her, and while she was healing me, I was splintering her beautiful soul into too many pieces. Essentially, I single-handedly broke her, broke her fucking brilliant spirit, while selfishly being stitched back together. The most fucked-up part of this massacre is that I refused to see just how much I was hurting her, just how much of her light I had dimmed. I knew it; I knew it all along, but it didn’t matter, it only mattered when I finally got it. When she denied me, once and for all, I got it. It hit me like a damn truck, and I couldn’t move out of the way even if I tried.

It took her father’s death to make me see just how stupid my plan to save her from me actually was. If I had thought about it, really thought this mess through, I would have known how stupid it all was. She wanted me—Tessa has always loved me more than I deserve, and how did I repay her? I pushed and pushed until she was finally done with my shit. Now she doesn’t want me; she doesn’t want to want me, and I have to find a way to remind her how much she loves me.