Chapter 124 (1/2)

“I can walk to the shower!” She is laughing now, giggling and screeching like a schoolgirl, and I fucking love it. I love that I can still make her laugh, that she grants me such beautiful sounds.

I finally place her, as gently as possible, on the bathroom floor and turn on the water.

“I’ve missed you.” She stares up at me from the floor.

My chest tightens; I fucking need to spend my life with this woman. I need to tell her everything that I’ve been doing since she left me, but now isn’t the time. Tomorrow, I’ll tell her tomorrow.

Tonight, I will enjoy her sassy remarks, savor her laughs, and try to earn as many forms of affection from her as possible.

Chapter seventy-two

TESSA

When I wake up on Monday morning, Hardin isn’t in my bed. I know he has some sort of interview or meeting, but he hasn’t mentioned exactly what it’s about or which part of the city it’s in. I have no clue if he will return before I have to leave for work.

I roll over, clinging to the sheets that still smell of him, and press my cheek against the mattress. Last night . . . well, last night was amazing. Hardin was amazing; we were amazing. The chemistry, explosive chemistry, between us is still as undeniable as ever, and now we are finally at a place in our lives where we can see our faults, each other’s faults, and accept them and work through them in a way we couldn’t in the past.

We needed this time apart. We needed to be able to stand alone before we could stand together, and I’m so thankful that we made it through the darkness, the fighting, the pain, and emerged hand in hand, stronger than ever.

I love him, Lord knows that I love this man; through all the separations, through all the chaos, he has crawled into my soul and marked it as his, never to be forgotten. I couldn’t have if I tried, and I did try. I tried for months to move along, day by day, keeping myself busy in an attempt to keep my mind from him.

Of course, it didn’t work, and thoughts of him never strayed too far from my mind. Now that I have agreed to work things out, in our own way, I finally feel as though everything could work out for us. We could be what I once wanted more than anything else.

“You had to know that I would always love you. You made me . . . me, Tessa, and I will never forget that,” he’d said while pushing inside me.

He was breathless, gentle, and passionate. I was lost in his touch, in the way his fingers traveled down the length of my spine.

The sound of the front door opening finally brings me out of my daydreaming and remembering last night. I climb out of bed, reach for my shorts from the floor, and pull them up my legs. My hair is a matted mess; letting it air-dry after the shower with Hardin was a terrible idea. It’s tangled and frizzy, but I brush my fingers over it the best I can before pulling it back into a ponytail.

Hardin is standing in the living room, his phone pressed to his ear, when I reach the entrance. He’s dressed in his usual style of all black, and his long hair is a wild mess, like mine, yet it looks perfect on him.