Chapter 48 (1/2)

It would surely kill me, and I decided only a little while ago that I want to live. I’m not proud of the dark thoughts that crossed my mind in that greenhouse, but I’m proud that they were brief and that I overcame them on my own, on the floor of a cold shower after the hot water ran out.

“I don’t want to take anything from you. I want to give you exactly what you want!” He gasps for air, and the sound is so troubled that I almost agree with everything he’s saying just so I won’t ever have to hear that sound again.

“Marry me, Tess. Please just marry me, and I swear I’ll never do anything like this again. We could be together forever—we would be husband and wife. I know you’re too good for me, and I know you deserve better, but now I know that you and I, we aren’t like anyone else. We aren’t like your parents or mine; we are different and we can fucking make it, okay? Just listen to me one more time—”

“Look at us.” I wave my hand weakly through the space between us. “Look at who I’ve become. I don’t want this life anymore.”

“No, no, no.” He stands up and paces across the floor. “You do! Let me make it up to you,” he begs, tugging at his hair with one hand.

“Hardin, please calm down. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you, and most of all I’m sorry that I complicated your life, and I’m sorry for all the fighting and back-and-forth, but you have to know this wouldn’t work. I thought”—I smile a pitiful smile—“I thought that we could make it. I thought ours was a love of the novels, a love that no matter how hard and fast and tough it was, I thought we would survive anything and everything and live to tell the story.”

“We can, we can survive it!” he chokes out.

I can’t look at him, because I know what I would see. “That’s just it, Hardin, I don’t want to have to survive. I want to live.”

My words strike something in him, and he stops pacing, stops tugging at his hair. “I can’t just let you go. You know that. I always come back to you—you had to know that I would. I would have come back from London eventually and we—”

“I can’t spend my life waiting for you to come back to me, and it would be selfish of me to want you to spend yours running from me, from us.” But I’m confused again. I’m confused because I don’t remember ever having these thoughts; all of my thoughts have always been geared toward Hardin and what I could do to make him better, to make him stay. I don’t know where these thoughts and words are coming from, but I can’t ignore the resolve I feel when I say them.

“I can’t be without you,” he declares—another sentiment he’s proclaimed a million times, yet he does everything in his power to keep me away, to shut me out.

“You can. You’ll be happier and less conflicted. It would be easier, you said so yourself.” I mean it. He will be happier without me, without our constant back-and-forth. He can focus on himself and his anger toward both of his fathers, and one day he could be happy. I love him enough to want his happiness, even if it’s not with me.

He brings his hands in fists to his forehead and clenches his teeth. “No!”