After We Fell (18 page)

She startles, then pouts when I remove my fingers from her and hook them around her panties, tugging them down as quickly as possible and leaving her to kick them off the end of one foot into the water beside her. I watch for a second as the jets carry them to the other side of the tub; there's something mesmerizing about seeing that final barrier float away so smoothly.

But quickly, Tessa grabs my wrist to force me to touch her again.

“What do you want?” I urge, wanting to hear the words from her.

“You.” She smiles sweetly, then spreads her legs further, showing how dirty she really is.

“Turn around, then,” I tell her.

Without giving her a chance to respond, I turn her body around, and she lets out a yelp. I panic for a moment, but then realize that her little pussy is directly lined up with the jets. Of course, she's moaning. She'll be fucking screaming in a minute.

I kneel behind her—I love taking her this way. I can feel so much more of her, I can touch the creamy skin on her back and pay attention to every muscle moving under her skin—and I watch every breath she fights for as I rock into her.

I move her long hair to the side and move closer, slowly pushing farther into her. Her back arches into me, and I take her breasts in my hands as I begin to move in and out of her slowly.

Fuck, it feels so damn good, better than ever. It has to be the hot water pushing around us as I inch in and out of her. She moans, and I reach down to make sure she's still being hit with the rushing water. Her eyes are screwed shut, and her mouth is wide open. Her knuckles are nearly white from gripping the edge of the tub.

I want to move faster, to pound into her, but I force myself to stay at this slow, torturing pace.

“Har-dinnn,” she moans.

“Fuck, it's like I can finally feel every inch of you.” The moment I say the words, I panic and pull away from her.

A condom.

I didn't even think to use a fucking condom. What has she done to me?

“What's wrong?” she pants, a thin layer of moisture covering her face.

“I don't have a condom on!” I run my hands over my wet hair.

“Oh,” she says calmly.

“Oh? What do you mean, Oh?”

“So put a condom on?” she suggests with a doe-eyed look.

“That's not the point!” I stand up in the tub. She doesn't say anything. “If I hadn't thought about it, you could have gotten pregnant.”

She nods understandingly. “Okay, yeah, but you did remember.”

Why is she so calm about this?
She has this grand plan to move to Seattle—a baby would definitely fuck that up.
Wait
 . . .

“Is that your plan or something? If I get you pregnant, you think I'll go with you?” I sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist, but it does make sense.

She turns around, laughing. “You aren't serious!” And when she tries to wrap her arms around me, I move out of the way.

“I am.”

“Come on, that's insane. Come here, babe.” She tries to grab me again, but I dodge her, moving to the opposite side of the Jacuzzi.

Hurt flashes as clear as a goddamn neon sign across her face, and she covers her boobs with her hands. “
You're
the one who forgot about a condom, and now you're saying that I'm trying to trap you by getting pregnant?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Just
listen
to yourself.”

Well, it wouldn't be the first time some crazy chick did that.
I slide over to get a little closer now, but she quickly rises onto her knees on the bench. I give her an impassive look, saying nothing.

Watching me, her eyes brim with tears as she stands up in the water and climbs out of the tub. “I'm going to take a shower.” She disappears into the bedroom, slamming first the door to the deck and then the bathroom as she goes.

“Fuck!” I yell, smacking a palm at the bubbling water, wishing it could hit me back. I
do
need to listen to what I'm saying—this isn't some random crazy bitch. This is Tessa. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm so fucking paranoid. My guilt over this
Seattle shit is causing me to lose my fucking mind. What's left of it, anyway.

I have to fix this, or at least try to. I owe it to her, especially after I just accused her of the dumbest shit possible.

Ironically, in a twisted way, I almost wish I hadn't remembered the condom myself . . .

No. No, I don't. I just don't want her to leave me, and I don't know what else to do to get her to stay. A baby isn't the answer, that's for damn sure. I've done everything I possibly can except lock her in the apartment. Sure, it's an idea that's actually crossed my mind a few times, but I don't think she would like it too much. Plus she'd probably get a vitamin-D deficiency. And stop going to yoga . . . and so stop wearing those pants.

I need to go inside and apologize for embarrassing her and being a dick to her before the entire gang returns. Maybe I'll get lucky, and they'll get lost in the woods for a few hours.

But first, I have something else I need to do. I climb out of the hot tub and walk into the room; it's cold as hell now that I'm only wearing soaked boxers. I glance back and forth between my phone and the bathroom door connected to our room. The shower's still running, so I grab my phone and a blanket from the back of the chair before stepping back out onto the balcony.

I scroll through my contacts and find the name Samuel; real fucking clever decoy, there. I don't know why I saved this woman's number anyway; I guess I knew somehow I'd get tangled in a fucking web and have to call the bitch back. I changed the name in case Tessa went snooping through my shit, which I knew she would do. I thought she'd caught me when she asked about my deleted history and heard me yelling at Molly on the phone.

In some ways, I'm sure she'd rather see Molly on my call log than this person.

I
can't believe Hardin had the nerve to accuse me of trying to get myself pregnant, or even
thinking
that there's even a small chance that I would do something like that to him . . . or to myself. The whole thing's just absurd and stupid all around.

Everything was going so great—incredible, really—until he mentioned the condom. He should have just gotten out of the water and grabbed one; I know he has a pile of them in the top of his suitcase. I watched him shove them in there after I neatly packed our bags.

He's probably just frustrated over this whole Seattle mess, so he overreacted, and maybe I did, too. As a result of my annoyance with Hardin's rude comments and his ruining our . . . moment in the hot tub, I need a hot shower. Seconds later the water begins to work against my strained muscles, relaxing my nerves and clearing my head. We both overreacted, him more than me, and the argument was so unnecessary. I reach for the shampoo. And then realize I was so rattled while getting away from him that I forgot to grab my toiletry bag. Great.

“Hardin?” I call. I doubt he can hear me over the shower and hot tub, but I pull the floral shower curtain back and watch for him just in case. When he doesn't appear in the doorway after a few seconds, I grab my towel and wrap it around my body. Trailing water into the bedroom, I reach the suitcases lying on the bed, when I hear Hardin's voice.

I can't quite hear what he's saying, but I catch his tone of false
niceness, which tells me he's trying to be polite and not show his frustration. Which tells me that this conversation is something he deems important enough to not act like himself.

I pad quietly across the wooden floor, and since he's on speaker, I hear someone say, “Because I'm a Realtor, and my job is to fill empty apartments.”

Hardin sighs. “Well, do you have any more empty apartments to fill?” he asks.

Wait, Hardin's trying to get me an apartment? I'm as shocked as I am excited at the thought. He's finally coming around to the idea of Seattle, and he's actually trying to help me instead of push against me. For once.

The woman on the other end, who, I realize, has a very familiar voice, replies, “You gave me the impression that your friend Tessa was not someone I should be wasting my time giving an apartment to.”

What? Wait . . . is that . . . ?

He wouldn't.

“Here's the thing . . . she isn't as bad as I made her out to be. She hasn't actually trashed any apartments or left without paying,” he says, and my stomach turns.

He
did
.

I burst through the doors to the deck. “You sick, selfish bastard!” I scream, the first words that come to mind.

Hardin spins to me, face paling, mouth opening wide. His phone tumbles to the floor, and he just stares at me like I'm some terrible creature who's come to destroy him.

“Hello?” Sandra's voice says through the speaker, and he reaches down to grab his phone to silence her.

Anger courses through me. “How could you? How could you do that?”

“I—” he begins.

“No! Don't even waste my time with an excuse! What the hell were you thinking?”
I yell with one arm sweeping in his direction violently.

I storm back into the bedroom, and he follows me, pleading, “Tessa, listen to me.”

I turn around, feeling wounded, and strong, and hurt, and enraged. “No! You listen to me, Hardin,” I say through my teeth, trying to lower my voice. But I can't. “I'm so sick of this, I'm sick of you trying to sabotage everything in my life that doesn't revolve around you!” I scream, balling my fists tightly at my sides.

“That's not what I—”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up! You are the most
selfish
,
arrogant
—you're just . . . ugh!” I can't think straight; angry words fly from my mouth, my hands moving through the air in front of me.

“I don't know what I was thinking. I was trying to clear it up just now.”

I shouldn't be so surprised, really. I should have known that Hardin was behind Sandra's sudden disappearance. He doesn't know when to stop meddling in my life, my career, and I'm sick of it.

“Exactly; this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're always doing something. You're always hiding something. You're always finding new ways to try to control every single thing I do, and I can't take it anymore! This is too much.” I can't help but pace back and forth across the room, and Hardin watches me with cautious eyes. “I can handle you being a little overprotective, and I can handle you getting in a fight now and then. Hell, I can even handle you being a complete asshole half the time, because deep down I always knew you were doing what you thought was best for me. But not this. You're trying to ruin my future—and I
won't fucking have it.
”

“I'm sorry,” he says. And I know that he means it, but—

“You're always fucking sorry! It's always the same shit: you do something, hide something, say something, I cry, you say you're
sorry, and
bam!
All is forgiven.” I point a harsh finger at him. “But not this time.”

I have the urge to slap Hardin right across his face, but I look around for something to take my anger out on instead. I grab a frilly pillow from the bed and throw it onto the floor. Then I throw a second one. It doesn't do much for the anger flaming inside me, but I'd feel even worse if I destroyed anything of Karen's.

This is so exhausting. I don't know how much more I can take before I break.

Fuck that, I won't break. I'm sick of breaking—that's all I ever do. I need to pick up my own pieces, put them back together neatly, and hide them away from Hardin to keep them from ending up in a pile at his feet again.

“I'm sick of the endless cycle. I've told you before, and you don't listen. You find new ways to continue the cycle, and I'm done, I'm so fucking done!”

I don't know if I've ever been this angry at him. Yes, he's done worse things, but I've always moved on from that. We were never in a place like this before, a place where I thought he was done hiding things from me, and I thought he understood that he can't mess with my career. This chance means everything to me. I've spent my life watching what happens to a woman who has nothing of her own. My mother never had anything that she herself earned, anything that was hers, and I need that. I need to do this. I need this chance to prove that even though I'm young, I can make a life for myself that my mother never could make for herself. I can't let anyone take this from me, the way my mother let it slip from her.

“Done . . . with me?” His voice is shaky, and it cracks. “You said you're done . . .”

I don't know what I'm done with. It should be him, but I know myself better than to answer that right now. Normally I
would be crying by this point and forgiving him with a kiss . . . but not tonight.

“I'm so fucking exhausted, and I can't stand it. I can't keep doing this like this! You were going to let me move to Seattle without anywhere to live just to try to force me not to go!”

Hardin stands before me in silence, and I take a deep breath, expecting my anger to diminish, but it doesn't. It grows and grows until I am literally seeing red. I grab the rest of the pillows, imagining that they're actually glass vases that shatter to the floor, leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. The problem is that I would be the one doing the cleaning—he wouldn't take the chance of cutting himself in order to spare me.

“Get out!” I scream at him.

“No, I'm sorry, okay, I—”

“Get the fuck out.
Now
,” I spit, and he looks at me like he has no idea who I am.

Maybe he hasn't.

He hunches over and leaves the room—and I slam the door behind him before going back out to the balcony. I sit down on the wicker chair and stare out at the sea, trying to calm myself down.