After We Fell (69 page)

He tilts his head to the side in the cockiest way possible. “What type of agreement? Is it another bet?”

“You're really pushing me . . .” I say through my teeth. “Tell me what it'll take for you to leave her alone. What can I give you to make you go away? Name it, and it's yours.”

Zed stares at me, blinking rapidly, as if I've grown another head.

“Well, come on, now. Every man has a price,” I murmur drily. It infuriates me that I have to negotiate with someone like him, but there's nothing else I can do to make him go away.

“Let her see me again, one more time,” he suggests. “I'll be in Seattle on Thursday.”

“No. Absolutely not.”
Is he fucking stupid?

“I'm not asking your permission here. I'm trying to make you feel more comfortable with it.”

“It's not happening. You two have no reason to spend time together; she isn't available to you—or any other man—and she never will be.”

“There you go, getting all possessive.” He rolls his eyes, and
I wonder what Tessa would say if she could see this side of him, the only side I've ever known. What would I be as her man if I weren't possessive, if I was okay sharing her with someone?

I bite my tongue while Zed stares at the ceiling as if he's deliberating his next words. This is such fucking bullshit, pure and utter fucking bullshit. My head is spinning, and I'm honestly beginning to wonder just how much longer I can keep my cool.

Finally, Zed looks at me, a smirk slowly overtaking his features. Then he says simply, “Your car.”

My mouth falls open at his audacity, and I can't help but laugh. “No fucking way!” I take two steps toward him. “I'm not giving you my fucking car. Are you out of your fucking mind?” My hands fly into the air.

“Sorry, then; looks like we can't come to an agreement after all.” His eyes glitter through their thick lashes, and he rubs his fingers over his beard.

Images from my nightmare float through my head, him thrusting into her, making her come . . .

I shake my head to get rid of them.

Then I dig my keys out of my pocket and toss them onto the coffee table between us.

He gapes, bending down to retrieve the key chain. “You're serious?” He studies the keys, turning them over in his palm a few times before looking back up at me. “I was fucking with you!”

He tosses me the keys, but I don't catch them in time; they land only inches from the toe of my boot.

“I'll back off . . . fuck. I didn't expect you to actually give me your keys.” He laughs, mocking me. “I'm not as big an asshole as 
you.”

I glower at him. “You weren't giving me many options.”

“We were friends once, remember?” Zed remarks.

I stay silent as we both remember how everything used to be, before all of this shit, before I actually gave a fuck about
anything . . . before her. His eyes have shifted, his shoulders have tensed along with the air after his question.

It's hard to recall those supposed days. “I was too shit-faced to remember.”

“You know that isn't true!” he exclaims, raising his voice. “You stopped drinking after—”

“I didn't come here to take a walk down memory lane with you. Are you going to back off or not?” I look at him. He's different somehow, harder.

He shrugs. “Sure, yeah.”

But that was too easy . . .
“I'm serious.”

“So am I,” he says with a wave of his hand at me.

“This means absolutely no contact with her. None,” I remind him again.

“She's going to wonder why. I texted her earlier today.”

I choose to ignore this. “Tell her you don't want to be friends with her anymore.”

“I don't want to hurt her feelings like that,” he says.

“I don't give a fuck about hurting her feelings. You need to make it clear that you aren't going to be pining after her anymore.” The momentary calm I felt has ceased, and my temper is rising again. The possibility that Tessa's feelings would somehow be hurt by Zed not wanting to be friends with her drives me fucking crazy.

I walk toward the door, knowing myself well enough that I won't make it another five minutes in this musty apartment. I'm pretty damn proud of myself for remaining peaceful this long in a room with Zed after all the shit he's done to interfere with my relationship.

As my hand touches the rusted doorknob, he says, “I'll do what I have to do for now, but it still isn't going to change the outcome of all this.”

“You're right. It won't.” I agree with him, knowing that he means the exact opposite of what I do.

Before his fucking mouth can utter another word, I get out of his apartment and walk down the staircase as quickly as possible.

BY THE TIME
I pull into my father's driveway, the sun is setting, and I still haven't been able to reach Tessa, each call going straight to voicemail. I've even called Christian twice, but he's yet to answer or return my calls.

Tessa's going to be mad that I went to Zed's apartment; she feels something for him that I'm never going to understand or tolerate. After today, I pray that I won't have to worry about him any longer. Unless she clings to him . . .

No.
I stop myself from doubting her. I know Steph was feeding me bullshit, and it seeped into every insecure crack in my stone facade. If Zed had actually fucked Tessa, he'd have used this afternoon as the perfect opportunity to throw it in my face.

I walk into my father's house without knocking and search the downstairs for Karen or Landon. Karen is in the kitchen, standing over the stove with a wire whisk in her hand. She turns and greets me with a warm smile but also with troubled, tired eyes. An unfamiliar feeling of guilt spreads through me as I remember the planter I accidentally broke in her greenhouse.

“Hi, Hardin. Are you looking for Landon?” she asks, placing the whisk on a plate and wiping her hands on the bottom of her strawberry-print apron.

“I . . . I don't know, really,” I admit. What
am
I doing here?

How pathetic is my life right now, that I find comfort in coming to this house, of all places? I know it's because of the memories that were created when I was here with Tessa.

“He's upstairs, on the phone with Dakota.”

Something about Karen's tone throws me off.

“Is . . .” I'm not very good at interacting with people besides Tessa, and I'm particularly bad at dealing with other people's
emotions. “Is he having a bad day or something?” I ask, sounding like a dumb-ass.

“I think so. He's having a hard time, I think. He hasn't spoken to me about anything, but he seems upset lately.”

“Yeah . . .” I say, but I haven't noticed anything different about my stepbrother's mood. Then again, I've been too busy forcing him to babysit Richard to notice.

“When does he leave for New York again?”

“Three weeks.” She tries to hide the pain in her voice that comes along with the words but fails miserably.

“Oh.” I'm growing more and more uncomfortable by the minute. “Well, I'm going to go . . .”

“Don't you want to stay for dinner?” she asks eagerly.

“Uh, no. I'm okay.”

Between the talk with my father this morning, the time I spent with Zed, and now this awkward shit with Karen, I'm on overload. I can't take the chance that something is actually wrong with Landon. I won't be able to deal with him being all emotional and shit, not today. I already have to go home to a recovering drug addict and an empty fucking bed.

K
imberly is waiting in the kitchen for me when I arrive home from school. Two wineglasses, one full, one empty, sit in front of her, letting me know that she took my silence as confirmation that I, in fact, didn't know about Hardin's plan to fly to England.

She offers me a sympathetic smile when I drop my bag on the floor and sit on the stool next to her. “Hey, girl.”

I swing my head dramatically to face her. “Hey.”

“You didn't know?” Her blond hair is expertly curled today, resting perfectly on her shoulders. Her black, bow-shaped earrings glitter under the bright lighting.

“Nope. Didn't tell me.” I sigh, reaching for the full glass of wine in front of her.

She laughs and grabs the bottle to fill the empty glass that was originally intended for me. “Christian said Hardin hasn't given Trish a definite answer yet. I shouldn't have said anything until I knew, but I had a feeling he wouldn't have mentioned the wedding to you.”

I quickly swallow the white wine in my mouth before I spit it out.
“Wedding?”
I hurry to take another sip before I have to speak again. A wild thought shoots through me . . . that Hardin's going back to get married. Like an arranged marriage; they do those in England, don't they?

No,
I know they
don't.
But the horrible thought electrifies me while I wait for Kimberly's next words. Am I drunk already?

“His mom's getting married. She called Christian this morning to invite us.”

I quickly look down at the dark granite. “That's news to me.”

Hardin's mother is getting married in two weeks, yet he didn't mention it to me at all. Then I remember . . . when he was being weird earlier.

“That's
why she was calling so much!”

Kimberly looks at me with wide, questioning eyes as she takes a sip of her wine.

“What should I do?” I ask her. “Just pretend that I don't know? Hardin and I have been communicating so much better lately . . .” I trail off. I know that it's only been a week of improvement, but it's been one amazing week for me. I feel like we've made more progress in the last seven or so days than we have in the last seven months. Hardin and I both have been talking through issues that previously would have turned into massive fights, yet here I am being transported back in time to when he kept things from me.

I always find out. Doesn't he know this by now?

“Do you want to go?” she asks.

“I couldn't, even if I were invited.” I rest my cheek against my hand.

Kimberly moves her stool to the side and grips the edges of mine to turn it to face her. “I asked if you
want
to go,” she corrects me, a hint of wine on her breath.

“It would be lovely, but I—”

“Then you should
go!
I'll bring you as a guest, if I have to. I'm sure Hardin's mom would love you there. Christian says she absolutely adores you.”

Despite my mood over Hardin's secrecy, her words thrill me. I absolutely adore Trish.

“I can't go, I don't have a passport,” I say. And I could never afford a plane ticket on such short notice.

She waves off my objection. “Those can be expedited.”

“I don't know . . .” I say. The butterflies I'm feeling in my belly at the mention of England make me want to rush down the hall to my computer and research how to get a passport—but the unwelcome knowledge of Hardin's purposely keeping the wedding from me forces me to stay in my seat.

“Don't doubt it. Trish would love to have you come along, and Lord knows Hardin could use a push toward commitment.” She sips on her wine, leaving a deep red print of her full lips on the rim of the glass.

I'm sure he has his reasons for not telling me. If he's going, he probably doesn't want me to tag along all the way to England. I know his past haunts him, and crazy as it sounds, his demons could easily be stalking the streets of London and find us both.

“Hardin doesn't work that way,” I say. “The more I push, the harder he pulls.”

“Well then . . .” She moves her red-toed high heel and gently taps her foot against mine. “You need to dig your heels in the damn dirt and not let him pull you anymore.”

I seize on her words and save them to analyze later, when I'm not under her watchful gaze. “Hardin doesn't like weddings.”

“Everyone likes weddings.”

“Not Hardin. He thoroughly hates them and the entire concept of marriage,” I tell her and watch with a peculiar amusement as her eyes widen and she carefully places her wineglass back onto the countertop.

“So . . . then, what . . . I mean . . .” She blinks. “I don't even have anything to say, and that's really saying something!” Kimberly bursts out laughing.

I can't help but laugh along. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Kimberly's laugh is contagious, regardless of my mood, and
I love that about her. Certainly, she can be excessively nosy at times, and I don't always feel comfortable with the way she speaks about Hardin, but her openness and honesty happen to be the things I love the most about her. She tells it like it is, and she's very easy to read. There's not a layer of guile there, unlike so many people I've met of late.

“So you'll what? Just date forever?” she asks.

“I said the same thing.” I can't help but giggle. Maybe it's the glass of wine I finished, or the fact that Hardin's refusal of any type of permanent commitment had slipped my mind in the last week . . . I don't know, but it feels good to laugh with Kim.

“What about your children? You don't mind having them out of wedlock?”

“Children!” I laugh again. “He doesn't want any children.”

“This just keeps getting better and better.” She rolls her eyes and picks up her glass to finish it off.

“He says that now, but I'm hoping . . .” I don't finish the wish. It's too desperate sounding when said out loud.

Kimberly winks. “Ahh—gotcha,” she says knowingly, and I'm thankful when she changes the subject to this redhead in the office, Carine, who has a crush on Trevor. And when she describes a hypothetical sexual encounter between the two of them as being like watching lobsters awkwardly bumping into each other, I start laughing all over again.