place. His lips touch mine, and his tongue tries to push through my lips but I refuse.
He eases his head back slightly. “Kiss me back, Tess,” he demands.
“No.” I push at his chest.
“Tell me you don’t feel the same, and I will go.” His face is inches from mine, his breath hot on my face.
“I don’t.” It hurts to say the words but he has to go.
“Yes, you do,” he says, his tone desperate. “I know you do.”
“I don’t, Hardin, and neither do you. You can’t possibly think that I bought that?”
He lets go of me. “You don’t believe that I love you?”
“Of course not, how stupid do you think I am?”
He stares at me for a second before he opens his mouth and closes it again. “You’re right,” he says.
“What?”
He shrugs. “You’re right, I don’t. I don’t love you, I was just adding to the drama of the whole thing.” He laughs lightly. I know he didn’t mean it, but that doesn’t make his honesty hurt any less. A part of me, a larger part than I want to accept, hopes that he actually did.
He stands against the wall as I walk out of the room, my bag in hand.
As I reach the stairs, Karen smiles up at me. “Tessa, sweetheart, I didn’t know you were here!” Her smile fades as she notices my distressed state. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
“No, I’m good. I was locked out of my room last night and I . . .”
“Karen,” Hardin’s voice says from behind me.
“Hardin!” Her smile slightly returns. “Would you two like something to eat, some breakfast? Well, lunch, it’s noon.”
“No, thank you, I was just going back to the dorms,” I tell her as I descend.
“I could eat,” Hardin says behind me.
She seems surprised as she looks at me and then back at him. “Okay, great! I will be in the kitchen!”
After she disappears, I head for the door.
“Where are you going?” He grabs my wrist. I struggle for a second before he releases it.
“The dorms, like I just said.”
“You’re just going to walk?”
“What is wrong with you? You act like nothing is happening, like we haven’t just been fighting, like you haven’t done anything. You are seriously insane, Hardin—I’m talking mental institution, medicated, padded-walls insane. You say horrible things to me and then try to offer me a ride?” I can’t keep up with him.
“I didn’t say anything horrible, actually; all I said was that I don’t love you, which you claim you already knew. And secondly, I wasn’t offering you a ride. I was simply asking if you were going to walk back.”
His smug expression makes me dizzy. Why would he even come here to find me if he doesn’t care about me? Doesn’t he have anything better to do than torture me?
“What did I do?” I finally ask. I have been wanting to ask this for a while, but I’ve always been afraid of his answer.
“What?”
“What did I do to make you hate me?” I ask, trying to keep my voice down so Karen doesn’t hear me. “You can have practically any girl you want and you continue to waste your time—and mine—to find new ways to hurt me. What’s the point? Do you dislike me that much?”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t dislike you, Tessa. You just made yourself an easy target—it’s all about the chase, right?” he says boastfully. Before he can say anything else, Karen calls his name and asks if he wants pickles on his sandwich.
He walks to the kitchen and answers her; I walk out the door.
On the way to the bus stop, I figure that I’ve already missed so many classes lately I might as well miss the rest of the day and get a car. Luckily, the bus pulls up minutes later and I find a seat in the very back.
As I slump down in the seat, I think back to what Landon said about heartbreak, that if you don’t love the person, they can’t break your heart. Hardin repeatedly breaks my heart, even when I don’t think there are any more pieces to break.
And I love him. I love Hardin.
chapter sixty-three
The salesman is a creep and smells like stale cigarettes, but I can’t be picky any longer. After an hour of negotiating, I write him a check for the down payment and he gives me the keys to a decent 2010 Corolla. The white paint is chipped in a few places, but I managed to talk him