The songs for this chapter are:

Clarity- Andrew Garcia cover

Tell me why- Taylor Swift

Wrecking Ball- Jayme Dee cover (if you haven't heard of her, you'll love her, literally she's so talented. )

Tessa's POV.

I can't believe Hardin had the nerve to accuse me of trying to get myself pregnant by him, or even mentioning that there is even a small chance that I would ever do that to him, or myself. Everything was going so great, incredible really, in that hot tub until he mentioned the condom. He should have just gotten out of the water and grabbed one, I know he has a pile of them in the top of his suitcase. I watched him shove them in there after I neatly packed his bags.

He's probably just frustrated over this whole Seattle mess, he overreacted and maybe I did too.

Due to my annoyance toward Hardin's rude comments and ruining our .. moment in the hot tub, I need a hot shower. Moments after the water begins to work against my strained muscles, I reach for the shampoo.

I was so quick to get away from him that I forgot to grab my toiletry bag, great.

"Hardin?" I call, I doubt he can hear me over the jets but I pull the floral shower curtain back and watch for him just in case.

When he doesn't appear in the doorway after a few seconds I reach for the towel hanging on the rack and wrap it around my body. Just as I reach the suitcases lying on the bed, I hear Hardin's voice.

"Do you have any more apartments to fill?" He says.

He's trying to get me an apartment?

I'm as shocked as I am excited over the thought, he's finally coming around to the idea of Seattle and he's actually trying to help me instead of push against me. For once.

I pad quietly across the wooden flooring of the room, careful not to be discovered as I continue my eavesdropping.

"You gave me the impression that your friend Tessa was not someone I should be wasting my time giving an apartment to, if she can't pay me, I can't give her a place to live." A woman says on the line.

What?

Is that?

He wouldn't.

"Here's the thing.. she isn't as bad as I made her out to be, she hasn't actually trashed any apartments or left without paying," He says and my stomach turns.

He did.

"You sick, selfish, bastard," are the first words that come to mind.

He quickly turns to me, face paling, and mouth opening wide. His phone tumbles to the floor and he continues to stare at me.

"Hello?" Sandra's voice says through the speaker and he reaches down to grab his phone to silence her.

"How could you? How could you do that?" Anger courses through me.

"I.." he begins.

"No! Don't even waste my time with  an excuse! What the hell were you thinking?" I storm through the doors and back into the bedroom.

"Tessa, listen to me," he says,

Listen to him?

"No! You listen to me Hardin," I say through my teeth, trying to keep my voice low, "I'm so sick of this, I'm sick of you trying to sabotage everything in my life that doesn't revolve around you!" I scream, balling my fists tightly at my sides.

"That's not what I.."

"Shut up! Shut the hell up, you're the most selfish, arrogant, you're just.. ugh!" I can't think straight, angry words fly from my mouth, my hands move through the air in front of me.

"I don't know what I was thinking, I was trying to clear it up just now,"

I shouldn't be this surprised really, I should have known that Hardin was behind Sandra's sudden disappearance. He doesn't know when to stop meddling in my life, my career, and I'm sick of it.

"Exactly, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're always doing something, you're always hiding something, you're always finding new ways to try to control every single thing I do and I can't take it anymore! This is too much," I can't help but pace back and forth across the room, Hardin watches me with cautious eyes.

"I can handle you being a little overprotective and I can handle you getting in a fight now and then, hell, I can even handle you being a complete asshole half the time because deep down I always knew you were doing what you thought was best for me but not this. You're trying to ruin my future and I won't fucking have it."

"I'm sorry,"

"You're always fucking sorry! It's always the same shit, you do something, hide something, say something, I cry, you say you're sorry and bam! All is forgiven, not this time." I look around for something to take my anger out on, I have the urge to slap Hardin right across his face. Instead, I grab a pillow from the bed and throw it onto the floor.

It doesn't do much for the anger flaming inside of me but I would feel even worse if I destroyed anything of Karen and Ken's.

This is so exhausting, I don't know how much more I can take before I break.

Fuck that, I won't break. I'm sick of breaking, that's all I ever do. I need to pick up my own pieces, put them back together neatly, and hide them away from Hardin to keep them from ending up in a pile at his feet, again.

"I'm sick of the endless cycle, I've told you before and you don't listen. You find new ways to continue the cycle and I'm done, I'm so fucking done!" I throw another pillow to the floor.

I don't know if I've ever been this angry at him. Yes, he's done worse things but I have moved on from that. We were never in a place like this before, a place where I thought he was done hiding things from me and I thought he understood that he can't mess with my career.

"Done with me?" He asks, his voice shaky.

"Did I say that?"

He always assumes the worse and honestly, that's even more frustrating.

"You said you're done," his voice cracks.

I don't know what I'm done with, it should be him but I know myself better than to answer that right now.

"I said I'm done with this cycle, I'm so fucking exhausted and I can't stand it. I can't keep doing this like this! You were going to let me move to Seattle without anywhere to live just to try to force me not to go!" Normally I would be crying by now and forgiving him with a kiss, not tonight.

He stands in front of me in silence and I take a deep breath, expecting my anger to decrease but it doesn't. It grows and grows until I am literally seeing red. I grab the rest of the pillows, imagining that they are actually glass vases that shatter to the floor, leaving a mess for someone else to clean. The problem is that I would be the one to clean it, he wouldn't take the chance of cutting himself to spare me.

"Get out!" I scream at him.

"No, I'm sorry okay, I.."

"Get the fuck out. Now." I spit and he looks at me like he has no idea who I am, maybe he doesn't.

He leaves the room and I slam the door behind him before going back out to the balcony. I sit down on the wicker chair and stare out onto the water, trying to calm myself down before I say something even worse to him.

No tears come, only memories. Memories and regrets.

Hardin's POV.

I don't know where the fuck I'm supposed to go but I know it's not a good idea to go back in there and make her even more pissed at me.

I know she's exhausted, I can see it on her face each time I fuck up. The fight with Zed, the lie about the expulsion, every infraction takes a toll on her and she thinks I don't notice but I do.

Why did I have to put Sandra on the speaker phone? If I wouldn't have done that I could have cleaned this shit up and told her about my fuck up after I fixed it that way she couldn't be as pissed off.

True to my nature, I take a swing at the wall next to the staircase.

"Fuck!" It's not drywall, it's real fucking wood and I forgot how much fucking stronger that is.

I grip my fist with my other hand and stop myself from repeating my idiotic reaction. I'm lucky it didn't break the skin, sure it will bruise but what else is new.

"I'm sick of the endless cycle, I told you before and you didn't listen," 

I stomp down the stairs and throw myself on the couch like a temperamental child. That's what I am really, a fucking child. She knows it, I know it, hell everyone fucking knows it. I should just print the shit on a god damn t-shirt.

I should just go up there and try to explain myself again but honestly, I'm a little scared. I've never seen her so pissed off before. She cussed at me more in the last three minutes than she has since the day I met her. I suspect if those pillows wouldn't have been there she would have back handed me right there, I wish she would have. I sure as hell deserve it.

I need to get the hell out of here, if Tessa wouldn't have forced me to ride with the entire fucking Partridge family, I could leave now and end this stupid ass trip early. I didn't even want to come in the first place.

The boat was sort of okay...

But the trip in general is bullshit and now that she's pissed at me, there is literally no point in me being here.

Except to make her see that I meant well, well I didn't at the time, but now I do. I know it's fucked up for me to mess with her apartment in Seattle but I'm grasping at straws here trying to get her not to leave me. I know what will happen in Seattle, and it's not going to end well.

I stare up at the ceiling, unsure what I'm supposed to do now. I can't just sit here and I know if I do I will end up back upstairs pushing Tessa further.

I'll take a walk, that's what normal people do when they are pissed off.

Not punch walls and break shit.

I need to get some damn clothes on before I do anything. If I wasn't so confused by Tessa's behavior I would care more about what I'm about to do.

The door to Landon's room opens and my eyes roll immediately. His clothes are stacked neatly on the bed, he must have been planning to put them away before his mum and my dad dragged him along to the neighbor's cabin.

I sift through the hideous crap and desperately search for something that doesn't have a fucking collar. Finally, I find a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. Fucking lovely.

I've now resorted to sharing clothes with Landon. I hope Tessa's rage doesn't last long, but for once I don't know what will happen next. I hadn't expected her to react half as bad as she did, it wasn't really the words she used towards me, it was the way she looked at me after dismissing me from the room.

That look said more than she ever could and in turn, scared me more than she ever could.

I glance at the door to what was our  room up until twenty minutes ago, head back down the stairs, and out the door.

I barely make it down the damn driveway before my favorite step-brother appears. At least he's alone.

"Where's my dad?" I ask him.

"Are you wearing my clothes?" he asks me, clearly confused.

"Uhm, yeah. I didn't have a choice, don't make a big deal of it," I shrug, knowing by the smile on his face he was planning on doing just that.

"Okay? Where is Tessa?"

"She's inside,"

"What did you do now?"

What the hell?

"What makes you think I did something?" I ask, and his brow arches.

"Okay.. so I did something, something really fucking stupid but I don't want to hear your shit so don't worry about it," I huff.

"Fine," he shrugs and begins to walk away from me.

I was hoping for a few words from him, he's okay with advice sometimes.

"Wait!" I call and he turns around, "you're not going to ask me what it was?"

"You just said you don't want to talk about it," he replies.

"Yeah, but I .. well," I don't know what to say and he's looking at me like I've grown two heads.

"You want me to ask you?" He looks pleased but thankfully he's not being too much of an asshole about it.

"I'm the reason," I begin just as Karen and my dad start to walk up the driveway.

"The reason what?" Landon asks, looking back at them.

"Nothing, never mind." I sigh, running my fingers through my damp hair in frustration.

"Hey Hardin! Where's Tessa?" Karen asks.

Why does everyone always ask me that as if I can't be more than five feet away from her?

The building ache in my chest reminds me of just that, I can't.

"She's sleeping inside," I lie and turn to Landon, "I'm going for a walk, can you make sure she's okay?" I ask him and he nods.

"Where are you going?" My father's voice calls as I walk past them.

"Out," I snap and walk faster.

By the time I reach a stop sign a few roads over I realize I have no fucking idea where I'm going or even how to get back to where I came from.

I officially hate this damn place.

It didn't seem so bad while I was watching Tessa's hair blow lightly in the wind, her eyes focused on the water, her lips turned up in a small, satisfied smile. She looked so relaxed, like the calm waves far from the shore, undisturbed until our boat intruded on their peace.

"Are you lost or something?" A girls voice interrupts the image of Tessa's sun-kissed skin.

When I turn around I'm surprised to find a girl, around my age I think. Her brown hair is as long as Tessa's and she's alone. I look around us, there's nothing. Only an empty gravel road and land.

"Are you?" I ask her, taking notice to her long skirt.

She smiles at me, and walks closer. She must be lacking brain cells to be out here in the middle of no where asking a complete stranger, a tattooed one at that, if I'm lost.

"No, I'm escaping." She says, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"You're running away?" She better keep her ass moving down this street then. The last thing I need is some angry father looking for his over-dressed teenage daughter.

"No," she laughs, "I'm visiting my parents from college and they were boring me to death,"

"Oh, good for you," I reply and begin to walk away from her.

"You're going the wrong way,"

"Don't care," I shrug and groan when I hear her footsteps crunching against the gravel as she follows me.

Tessa's POV.

"Tessa?" Landon's voice carries through the room and out to the balcony.

"Out here," I reply, thankful that I put a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt on.

Hardin always teases me when I do that but it's comfortable in times like this, not too hot but not too cold.

"Hey," he says and sits down in the chair next to me.

"Hey," I glance over at him before staring back at the water.

"Are you okay?"

I take a moment to think over his question, am I okay? No. Will I be? Yes.

"Yeah, this time I think I am," I bring my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, I don't want to ruin the trip with all my drama, I'm fine, really."

"Okay, just know if you want to talk I'll listen,"

"I know," I look over at him and he gives me an assuring smile.

I don't know what I'll do without him.

"Are those?" His eyes go wide and I look to where his finger is pointing.

"Oh god!" I jump from my seat and grab the floating red panties from the top of the water and shove them into the front pocket of my sweatshirt.

Landon bites down on his bottom lip to stifle his laugh but I can't keep mine in. We both burst into laughter, his genuine, mine out of humiliation, but I'll take this laughter over my usual crying after a fight with Hardin any day.