Chapter 49 (1/2)

Once again, my mind detaches from my body and I laugh. It’s not an amused laugh; it’s a sad and broken laugh at the irony of what he’s said. He’s asking of me what I’ve asked of him, and he doesn’t even realize it.

“I’ve been begging for the same since I met you,” I softly remind him. I love him and I don’t want to hurt him, but I’ve got to end this cycle once and for all. If I don’t, I won’t make it out alive.

“I know.” His head falls onto my knees, and his body shakes against me. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

He’s hysterical, and the nothing is slipping too fast for me to stop it. I don’t want to feel this, I don’t want to feel him crying against me after promising and offering the things I’ve waited what feels like an eternity to hear.

“We will be okay. When you snap out of this, we will be okay,” I think he says, but I’m not sure, and I can’t ask him to repeat it, because I can’t handle hearing it again. I hate this about us. I hate that no matter what he does to me, I somehow find a way to blame myself for his pain.

I catch a glimpse of movement at the door, and I nod at Noah, letting him know that I’m fine.

I’m not fine, but I haven’t been for a while, and unlike before, I don’t feel the need to be fine. Noah’s eyes move to the broken lamp, and he looks worried, but I nod again, silently pleading with him to leave, to let me have this moment. This last moment to feel Hardin’s body against mine, to feel his head on my lap, to memorize the black swirls of ink across his arms.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t fix you,” I tell him while softly stroking his damp hair.

“Me, too,” he cries against my legs.

Chapter thirty-one

TESSA

Mother, who is paying for the funeral?” I ask.

I don’t want to come off as insensitive or rude, but I have no living grandparents, and both of my parents were born as lone children. I know my mother can’t afford a funeral, especially for my father, and I worry that she has taken this on just to prove a point to her friends at church.

I don’t want to wear this black dress that Mother bought me, I don’t want to wear these black, high-heeled shoes that she surely can’t afford, and most of all I don’t want to see my father buried.