“None of this was ever supposed to happen.”
“You wrote a book about us and shopped it around to publishers. How was that not intentional?”
“No, I mean all of this. You and I, everything.” The air is humid, and I’m finding it harder than I expected to get the words out. “This year has been an entire lifetime for me. I have learned so much about myself and about life and about how life should be. I had this fucked-up view of everything. I hated myself, I hated everyone around me.”
She remains silent, but I can tell by the trembling of her bottom lip that she’s doing her best to keep a straight face.
“I know you don’t understand, not many people do, but the worst feeling in the entire fucking world is hating yourself, and that’s what I dealt with every single day. That wasn’t an excuse for the shit I pulled. I should have never treated you the way that I did, and you had every damn right to leave me the way you did. I only hope that you will read the entire book before making your decision. You can’t judge a book without reading from cover to cover.”
“I’m trying not to judge, Hardin, I’m really not, but this is too much. I fell out of this pattern, and I didn’t see this coming, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.” Her head shakes as if she’s trying to clear the rapid thoughts that I see firing behind those beautiful eyes.
“I know, baby. I know.” When I reach for one of her hands and wrap my fingers around it, she winces. I gently turn her hand over to examine the welts covering the skin of her palm. “You okay?”
She nods, allowing me to trace the wound with my fingertip.
“Who would even want to read it? I can’t believe so many publishers want it.” Tessa looks away from me, focusing on the city that somehow keeps moving around us, as busy as ever.
“A lot of people.” I shrug, stating the truth.
“Why? It’s so . . . not a typical love story. I’ve only read a little bit of it, and I can see how dark it is.”
“Even the damned need their stories told, Tess.”
“You aren’t damned, Hardin,” she says, despite the betrayal she must still be feeling.
I sigh, slightly agreeing with her. “In hopes for redemption, maybe? Maybe not, maybe some people only want to read about happiness and cliché love stories, but there are millions of people, people who aren’t perfect and have been through shit in their lives, and maybe they want to connect with it? Maybe they would see some of themselves in me, and, hell”—I rub my shaking hand over the back of my neck—“hell, maybe someone could learn something from my mistakes, and yours.”
She’s looking at me now as I vomit the words onto the concrete stairs. Uncertainty is still clear in her eyes, pushing more words from my mouth.
“Maybe sometimes everything isn’t so black-and-white, and maybe not everyone is fucking perfect. I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, to you, and to others, that I regret and I would never, ever repeat or condone. This isn’t about that. This book was an outlet for me. It was another form of therapy for me. It gave me a place where I could just write whatever the fuck I wanted and what I felt. This is me and my life, and I’m not the only person out there who has made mistakes, an entire fucking book of them, and if people judge me for the dark content of my story, then that’s on them. I can’t possibly please everyone, and I know there will be more people, people like us, Tessa, that relate to this book and want to see someone admit their issues and deal with them in a real way.”
Her lips turn up at the corners, and she sighs, shaking her head slightly. “What if people don’t like it? What if they don’t even take the chance to read it, but they hate us for what’s inside of it? I’m not ready for that type of attention. I don’t want people talking about my life and judging me.”
“Let them hate us. Who gives a fuck what they think? They weren’t going to read it anyway.”
“This is just . . . I can’t decide how I feel about this. What type of love story is this?” Her voice is shaky and unsure.
“This is the type of love story that deals with real fucking problems. It’s a story about forgiveness and unconditional love, and it shows how much a person can change, really change, if they try hard enough. It’s the type of story that proves that anything is fucking possible when it comes to self-recovery. It shows that if you have someone to lean on, someone who loves you and doesn’t give up on you, you can find your way out of the darkness. It shows that no matter what type of parents you had, or addictions you were faced with, you can overcome anything that stands in your way and become a better person. That’s the type of story After is.”
“ ‘After’?” She tilts her chin up, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.
“That’s what it’s called.” I look away, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the name. “It’s about my journey, after meeting you.”
“How much of it is bad? God, Hardin, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I honestly say. “Not as much as you think is bad. You read the worst of it. Those pages that you didn’t see, the ones that are the true essence of the story, they are about how much I love you, how you gave me a purpose in life, and how meeting you was the best thing that has ever happened to me. The unread pages share our laughs along with my struggles, our struggles.”
She covers her face with her hands out of frustration. “You should have told me that you were writing this. There were so many hints, how did I not see it?”