“What is it?” I ask, Zed’s face surfacing in my demented thoughts. “Tell me, please.”

“It’s Karen.” She rolls onto her side, and I force my eyes away from her perfect tits on display.

Why the hell are we discussing Karen while naked? “Okay . . . what about her?”

“She’s . . . well . . .” Tessa stops for a moment, and my chest fills with an unexpected panic for the woman, for Ken, too.

“She’s what?”

“She’s pregnant.”

What? The fuck? “By who?”

This obliviousness amuses Tessa, and she laughs. “Your father,” she says, but quickly corrects herself, “by Ken. Who else?”

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but Karen’s being pregnant was sure as hell not it. “What?”

“I know it’s a little surprising, but they’re very happy about it.”

A little surprising? This is more than a little fucking surprising.

“Ken and Karen are having a baby?” I speak the ridiculous words.

“Yes.” Tessa eyes me carefully. “How do you feel about it?”

How do I feel about it? I don’t fucking know. I barely know the man, we are just starting to build something here, and now he’s having a baby? Another kid he’ll actually be sticking around to help raise.

“I guess it doesn’t matter how I feel, does it?” I say in a vain attempt to shut both of us up. I lie on my back and close my eyes.

“Yes, it does. It matters to them. They want you to know that the baby won’t change anything, Hardin. They want you to be part of the family. You’ll be a big brother again.”

A big brother?

Smith and his weird, adultlike personality come to mind, and I feel nauseated. This is too much for anyone to handle, and it’s sure as hell too much for someone as fucked-up as me.

“Hardin, I know it’s hard to wrap your head around, but I think—”

“I’m fine. I need a shower.” I climb out of the bed and grab the shorts from the floor.

Tessa sits up, confused and hurt, as I pull the shorts up my legs. “I’m here if you want to talk about it. I wanted to be the one to tell you about all of this.”

It’s too much. She doesn’t even want me.

She refuses to marry me.

Why can’t she see what we are? What we are together? We cannot be apart. Ours is a love of the novels, better than any Austen or Bront? she has memorized.

My heart is pounding out of my chest—I can barely breathe.

She feels as if she isn’t living? I can’t understand that. I just can’t. I only live when it comes to her. She’s the only breath of life inside of me, and without it I will be nothing. I will neither survive nor live.

I wouldn’t want to even if I could.

Fuck, the dark thoughts are fighting their way back into my head, and I’m overwhelmed by the struggle to hold on to the little bit of light Tessa has given back to me.

When will this end? When will shit not keep popping up each and every fucking time I finally feel like I have a grasp on my own mind?

Chapter forty-five

TESSA

Here I am, here we are, in this endless loop of happiness, lust, passion, overwhelming love, and pain. The pain seems to win, it always wins, and I’m tired of fighting.

I watch, forcing myself not to care, as he crosses the room. The moment the door closes, I smack my hands to my forehead and rub at my temples. What is wrong with me that I can’t seem to see anything but him? Why did I wake up this morning ready to face life without him, only to find myself in his bed hours later?

I hate that he has this power over me, but for the life of me I can’t stop it. I can’t blame him for my weakness, but if I was going to, I would have to argue that he makes it difficult to see the clear lines of right and wrong. When he smiles at me, those lines blur and mix and it’s literally impossible to fight the sensation that pulls at my whole body.

He makes me laugh just as often as he makes me cry, and he makes me feel again when I was convinced that my fate was the nothingness inside me. I fully believed that I would never feel anything again, but Hardin pulled me out of that; he grabbed my hand when no one else seemed to care enough to do so, and he pulled me up onto the surface.

Not that any of this changes that we just can’t be together. We simply don’t work, and I can’t allow myself to get my hopes up again, only to be crushed when he pulls back again, when he takes back everything he has confessed, and I refuse to be ripped apart, again and again, by the only hand that helps me.

Here I am, face in hands, obsessively overthinking the mistakes made—my mistakes, his mistakes, our parents’ mistakes—and how mine seem to be eating away at me, refusing to allow me any peace.

I got a hint of it, a hint of serenity and calm when his hands were on me, his mouth hot on mine, his fingers digging into the sensitive skin covering my hips, but minutes later the fire’s extinguished, and I’m alone. I’m alone and hurt and embarrassed, and it’s the same story, only with an even more pathetic ending than the last installment.

I get to my feet, refasten my bra, and tug Landon’s sweatshirt over my head. I can’t be here when Hardin returns. I can’t spend the next ten minutes preparing myself for whichever Hardin decides to make an appearance. I’ve done this too many times, and I finally got myself to a place where my need for him wasn’t so overpowering. Where he wasn’t consuming my every thought, he wasn’t responsible for my every breath, and I was finally able to see a life after him.