Chapter 288.

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Songs for this chapter are:

North- Sleeping at Last

Raining in Paris- The Maine

Visions- The Maine

Haywire- Bootstraps

Lost Without You- Adam Jensen

(So many of you wanted the last chapter from Hardin's POV, so here it is! There is new stuff at the end too though, and if you have time, read my authors note please, (it's long but I love you! lol)

Hardin's POV.

As Ken falls asleep in his chair next to the television, I can practically hear his mind gushing over seeing me walk during graduation. He will get to do some shit speech, bore a few people, me included, to sleep, and then he will get to watch me prance across the damn stage.

Tessa is leaning against the frame of the dining room wall. I only came into the living room because I was in the way of the cleaning up part of dinner. My least favorite part of course. Tessa is staring at Landon and Stacey and now she just turned to look at me. She's a little surprised that I'm looking at her, I'm not sure why. When am I not looking at her?

The troubled look on her face has me on my feet in seconds and I cross the living room to stand in front of her.

"What is it?" I ask her.

"I need to talk to you about something," Tessa quietly responds.

"Okay, what is it?" I lean my body into hers, cornering her against the wall. She gasps under her breath and I lean a few inches closer. I love the way she reacts to me, even now. Tessa coughs and then coughs again and again. She raises her hand to cover her mouth and I leave her to get a glass of water. Karen is moving around the kitchen, as usual, and I reach around her to fill the glass with water.

"What is going on? Your mind is moving a mile a minute. I can tell," I press for her to speak now that's she gulped down the entire glass of water. I can see it, some thought, some damn problem, floating around in her head, making her nervous and break into a coughing fit.

"Can we go outside to talk?" Tessa asks as she leads the way through the kitchen and out to the deck. I gently reach for her hand, wrapping my fingers around hers, and smile when she doesn't pull away.

"Spill." I encourage her. She's standing awkwardly near the door and I sit down at the table. I place my hand on hers when she starts to fidget, moving her hands up and down like a maniac, finally resting them on the tabletop.

"Relax," I try to soothe her nerves, even if only by a fraction. I'm getting more and more anxious as the seconds of silence fill the air between us. I don't like seeing her this nervous, it freaks me the fuck out.

"I have been keeping something from you and it's driving me insane. I  need to tell you now and I know this isn't the time but you have to know before you find out another way," her words are rushed, frantic really.

"What did you do?" I try to remain as calm as possible as my mind starts going fucking haywire.

"Nothing, nothing like what you are assuming."

"You haven't..you weren't.. with anyone else, were you?" I know better than to ask but I just can't seem to stop the words and the paranoia inside of my mind.

"No!" Tessa shakes her head.  "No, nothing like that. I've just made a decision about something and I've kept it from you. It doesn't involve me being with anyone else."

"Okay, it couldn't be that bad then." I rub my neck to ease some of the tension there. Nothing could be as bad as her being with another man. Nothing.

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