Chapter 47 (1/2)

“You’ll see, Carol, you’ll see . . .” I say and pull an empty glass from the cabinet. Filling it with water for Tessa, I tell myself I can change our course and prove everyone wrong, myself included. I know that I can.

Chapter thirty

TESSA

I feel slightly less insane after the shower, or maybe the short nap in the greenhouse, or maybe the silence I was finally granted. I don’t know, but I can see the world with more clarity, only slightly more, but it’s helping me not feel so delusional and giving me a little hope that each day will bring more clarity, more peace.

“I’m coming in,” Hardin says and opens the door before I can respond. I pull a clean T-shirt down over my stomach and sit on the bed. “I brought you more water.” He places a full glass on the small nightstand and sits on the opposite side of the bed.

I came up with a speech in the shower, but now that he’s here in front of me, I can’t remember any of it. “Thank you” is all I can think to say.

“Are you feeling better?”

He’s being cautious. I must look so frail, so weak to him. I feel it, too. I should feel defeated and angry and sad and confused and lost. The thing is, there’s still nothing. There’s the deep throb of nothing, though I’m growing used to it as each minute passes.

During each long minute in the shower while the water turned cold, I thought of things from a new perspective. I thought of the way my life has turned into this dark hole of absolutely nothing, and I thought about how much I hated feeling that way, and I thought of the perfect solution, but now I can’t get the jumbled words into a proper sentence. This must be what it feels like to lose your mind.

“I hope you are.”

He hopes I’m what . . . ?

“Feeling better,” he adds, answering my thoughts. I hate the way he’s so connected to me, the way he knows what I’m feeling and thinking even when I don’t.

I shrug and focus on the wall again. “I am, sort of.”

The wall is easier to focus on than the brilliant green of his eyes, the green that I was always so terrified of losing. I remember that when we would lie in bed together, I was always hoping I would get another hour, another week, maybe even another month, with those eyes. I would pray that he would come around and want me permanently, the way I wanted him. I don’t want to feel that anymore, I don’t want that desperation rolling off me when it comes to him. I want to sit here with my nothing and be content and quiet, and maybe, one day, I can become someone else, someone I thought I would be before I started college. If I’m lucky, I could at least once again be the girl I was before I left home.