Songs for this chapter are:

Nothing- The Script

Skinny Love- Birdy

The scientist- Coldplay

Breathe me- Sia

Hardin's POV.

"You have a metacarpal fracture," the pudgy doctor informs me. His glasses are hanging from the bridge of his nose and I can practically smell the judgment radiating off of him. I assume he's still pissed that I flew off the handle after being asked, "Are you sure you hit a wall?" for the tenth time. I know what he's thinking and he can fuck off.

"English please?" I rumble. I've calmed for the most part but I'm still beyond pissed off by his questioning and hard stares. Working in the busiest clinic in London, he has surely seen worse than me, but he still glares at me every chance he gets.

"Broken," he says in a slow voice. "Your hand is broken and you'll need to wear a cast for a few weeks. I'll give you a prescription to help manage the pain but you'll just have to wait it out and wait for the cast to heal the bones."

I don't know which is more laughable, the idea of wearing a cast or the fact that he seems to think I need help managing my pain. There's nothing that any pharmacist can provide to help with my pain. Unless they've got a selfless blonde with grey eyes on their shelf, they've got nothing for me.

An hour later my hand is covered in a thick plaster. I tried not to laugh in the old man's face when he asked me what color cast I wanted to choose. I remember being young and wishing to have a cast for all my friends to sign their names and draw stupid pictures in permanent marker across, too bad I didn't have any friends until I find my place with Mark and James.

They are so different now than they were as teens. Mark is still a dipshit, his brain fried from too many drugs and James is pussy whipped by some med student but the change in both men is evident. Sometime in the last three years they have lost the hardness that used to cover them like a blanket- no a shield. I don't know what caused that change in them but given my current ... situation, I don't welcome the change. I expected the same assholes from three years ago but they are nowhere to be found.

Yes, they still do more drugs than humanly possible but they aren't the same malicious delinquents they were when I left London years ago.

"Stop by the chemist and you'll be good to go." The doctor gives me a quick nod and leaves me alone in the exam room.

"Fuck." I tap on the hard surface of the stupid cast. This is such bullshit. Will I be able to drive? To write?

Fuck no, I don't need to write anything anyway. That shit needs to stop now, it has went on long enough and my sober mind keeps fucking with me, sliding thoughts and memories in when I'm too distracted to keep them out.

Karma keeps fucking with me and true to her bitchy reputation, she continues the mockery as I pull my phone from my pocket to find Landon's name across the screen. I ignore the call and shove the thing back into my jeans.

What a fucking mess I've made.

Tessa's POV.

"How long will she be like this?" Landon asks someone. Everyone is acting like I can't hear them, like I'm not even here, but I don't mind. I don't want to be here and it feels good to be left alone.

"I don't know. She's in shock, honey." Karen's sweet voice answers her son.

Shock? I'm not in shock.

"I should have went inside with her." Landon chokes through a sob and if I could look away from the crème colored wall, I know that I would see him in his mother's arms. "She was up there alone with his body for almost an hour. I thought she was just getting her stuff and maybe even some closure, but I let her sit up there with his dead body for an hour." He's crying so much and I should comfort him, I know I should and I would if I could.

"Oh Landon," Karen's crying too. Everyone seems to be crying except me. What is wrong with me? "It's not your fault, you couldn't have known he was there, you couldn't have known that he left his program."

Sometime during the hushed whispers and sympathetic attempts to get me to move from my spot on the floor, the sun has gone down and the attempts become less often, until finally they stop completely and I'm left alone in the oversized living room with my knees hugged tightly against my chest and my eyes never, ever leaving the wall.

Through the paramedic's and police officer's rushed voices and orders, I learned that my father was in fact dead. I knew it when I saw him, when I touched him, but they confirmed it. He died from his own hand pushing the needle into his vein. The bags of heroine found in the pocket of his jeans spoke of his intent for the weekend. His face was so pale and washed that the image behind my eyelids looks more like a mask than a human face. He was alone in the apartment when it happened and he had been dead for hours when I stumbled onto his body. His life bled out of his veins as the heroine seeped in through the syringe, further damning that hell disguised as an apartment.

That's exactly what that place is, it has been from the moment I entered. Bookshelves and a brick wall veiled the evil there, an evil that every demon in my life seems to point back to. If I would have never stepped my foot across that threshold I would still have everything.

I would have my virtue, I wouldn't have given it away to a man who would never love me enough to stick around.

I would still have my mother, she's not much but she's the only family I have now.

I would still have a place to live, and I would have never reconnected with my father only to find his lifeless body on the bathroom floor two months later.

I'm well aware of the dark place that my thoughts are dragging me into but I don't have the strength to fight anymore. I've been fighting for something, for what I thought was everything, for too damn long and I can't do it anymore.

...

"Has she slept at all?" Ken's voice is low and cautious. The sun has come up now and I can't find the answer to Ken's question. Have I slept? I don't remember falling asleep or waking up but it doesn't seem possible that an entire night has passed while staring at the blank wall.

"I don't know, she hasn't moved much since last night," the sadness in my best friend's voice is deep and painful.

"Her mum called again an hour ago. Have you heard from Hardin?"

That name coming from Ken's mouth would have just killed me if I wasn't already dead.

"No, he won't answer my calls and I called the number you gave me for Anne but she hasn't answered either. Must be on her honeymoon or something. I don't know what to do, she's so.."

"I know." Ken sighs. "She just needs time, that had to be traumatizing for her. I'm still looking into what the hell happened and why I wasn't informed when he left the facility. I gave them strict orders along with too much money, to call me if something happened."

I want to tell Ken and Landon to stop blaming themselves for my father's mistakes. If anyone is to blame it's me. I should have never went to London, I should have been there to keep watch over him. Instead, I was across the world dealing with another loss, and Richard Young fought and lost the battle with his own demons, all alone.

...

"Tessa, please have some water. It's been two days, dear." Karen's voice wakes me. Was I even asleep? I don't know.

"Your mom is coming here to get you sweetheart. I hope that's okay," the closest person I consider to a mother tries to get through to me. I attempt to nod but my body just won't respond. I don't know what's wrong with me but I'm screaming from the inside out and no one can hear me.

Maybe I am in shock after all. Shock isn't a bad place though, I'd like to stay here as long as I can. It hurts less.

Hardin's POV.

"It's been two days and this shit is already itching." I complain to whoever will listen.

"Sucks man, but next time you won't be putting holes in walls, will you?" Mark taunts me with a smirk.

"Yes he will," James and Janine say at the same time.

The apartment is full again and I'm working on my second drink and first joint. The constant burn of liquor on my tongue and smoke in my lungs is starting to get to me. If being sober didn't hurt so fucking bad, I wouldn't touch the shit again.

"Give me another one of your pain pills." Janine holds her hand out to me. The fucking junkie has already eaten half the bottle in less than two days. Not that I care, I don't have a use for them and I sure as fuck don't care about what she puts into her body.

At first I thought the pills would help me, get me higher than the shit James has, but they don't. They make me tired and being tired leads to sleep which leads to nightmares, that lead to her.

I roll my eyes and stand to my feet. "I'll just give you the damn bottle." I walk to Mark's room to get the pills from under my small pile of clothes. It's been almost a week and I have only changed my clothes once. Before she left, Carla, the annoying chick with a savior complex, sewed some hideous black patches over the holes in my jeans. I would have cussed her ass out if James wouldn't have kicked me out on the spot for doing so.

"Hello, Hardin Scott phone!" Janine's high-pitched voice echoes from the living room.

Fuck! I left my phone on the table in the living room.

"He's busy at the moment, can I ask who's calling?"

"Give me the phone, now." I try to stay calm as Janine gives me her middle finger. I'm getting really fucking tired of her shit.

"Ooohh Landon sounds like a hot name, and your American. I love American men-" I snatch the phone from her hand and press it to my ear.

'What the hell do you want, Landon? Don't you think if I wanted to talk to you I would have answered the last... I don't know, thirty fucking times you called?" I bark through the line.

"You know what Hardin?" His voice is equally as harsh as mine, "fuck you. You're a selfish asshole and I should have known better than to call you. She will get through this without you, just the way she always has to." The line goes dead.

Get through what?

What the hell is he talking about? Do I even want to know?

Who am I kidding, of course I fucking do. I'm dialing him back and walking into the empty hallway within seconds. Panic rises within me and my fucked up mind travels to the worse possible scenario.

"What?" He snaps.

"What are you talking about? What happened?" She's okay, right? She has to be. "Landon, tell me she's okay," I have no patience for his lack of words.

"It's Richard, he's dead."

I don't know what I was expecting to hear, but that was not it. Through the haze I'm in, I feel it. I feel the sting of loss inside of me and I fucking hate it. I shouldn't feel this, I barely even knew the junk- the man. "Where is Tessa?" I ask.

This is why Landon called me so many times. Not because he wanted to give me a lecture about leaving Tessa, but because her father is dead.

"She's here at my house but her mother is on her way here to get her. She's in shock I think, she hasn't spoken since she found him." The last part of his sentence has me reeling and clutching my chest.

"What do you mean she found him?" Please, don't let him say what I think is coming.

"Tessa's the one who found his body," his voice breaks at the end and I know he's crying. It doesn't bother me like it usually does. For once, I wish I could be emotional the way he is.

"Fuck!" Why did this happen? How could this happen to her just after I sent her away?

"Where was she, where was his body?"

"In your apartment. She went there to get the last of her stuff and drop your car off," Landon explains. Of course she would still be kind enough to drop my car off after the way I treated her.

"Let me speak to her," I force the words. I've wanted to hear her voice and I've hit rock bottom, falling asleep for the last two nights to the robotic message reminding me that she changed her number.

"Did you not hear me? She hasn't spoken or moved in two days except to use the restroom and I'm not even sure about that. I haven't seen her move at all, she won't drink anything, she won't eat."

All the shit I've been pushing back, trying to ignore, floods over me and pulls me under. I don't care what the repercussions will be, I don't care if the last shred of sanity I have left disappears, I need to talk to her.

"Just try to put the phone to her ear, listen to me and just do it." I'm in my rental car now, shifting into drive and silently pleading with whoever is listening up there, that I don't get pulled over on the way to the airport.

"I'm just worried that hearing your voice may make it worse.." his voice sounds through the speaker. I turn the volume all the way up and sit the phone on the center console.

"God damn it, Landon!" I hit my cast against the steering wheel. It's hard enough to drive with a fucking cast as it is. "Put the phone to her ear, please." I try to keep my voice calm, despite the cyclone ripping me apart from the inside out.

"Fine, but don't say anything to upset her, she's already been through enough."

"Don't talk to me like you know her better than I do," my anger toward him has reached a new high and I nearly run off of the road.

"I may not but you know what I do know? I know that you're a freaking idiot for whatever you did to her this time and you know what else I know? That if you weren't so dang selfish, you would have been here with her and she wouldn't be in the state she's in now," he spews. "Oh and one more thing-"

"Enough!" I hit my cast against the steering wheel again. "Just put the phone to her ear, being an asshole isn't going to help anything. Now give her the fucking phone."

Silence is followed by Landon's gentle voice, "Tessa? Can you hear me?" he asks her. "Of course you can," he half laughs. I can hear the pain in his voice as he tries to coax her to speak. "Hardin is on the phone and he-"

Soft chanting comes through the speaker and I lean toward the phone in an attempt to hear the noise. What is that?

It continues, low and haunting, and it takes me too long to realize it's Tessa's voice repeating the same word over and over and over. "No, no, no," she says, not stopping, not slowing. "No, no, no,"

What was left of my heart snaps into too many pieces to count. "No, please, no." She cries on the end of the line. Oh god.

"Okay, it's okay. You don't have to talk to him-" the line goes dead and I call back, knowing that no one is going to pick up.

Tessa's POV.

"I'm going to pick you up now," the familiar voice I haven't heard in too long tries to comfort me as strong arms lift me from the floor and cradle me like a child. I bury my head into his solid chest and close my eyes.

"What's wrong with her? Why isn't she talking?" My mother's voice is here too. I don't see her but I can hear her.

"She's just in shock, she will come around soon." Ken says.

"Well what am I supposed to do with her if she won't even speak?" My mother bites back.

"Carol, she just found her dad's body a few days ago. Be easy on her," Noah deals with my callous mother in a way that no one else can.

I've never been so relieved to be near him in my entire life. As much as I love Landon and as thankful as I am for his family right now, I need to be taken away from this house.

I'm going crazy, I know I am. My mind hasn't been functioning properly since my foot hit the solid and very dead, body of my father. I haven't been able to process a single rational thought since I cried his name and shook his body so hard that his jaw fell open and the needle popped out of his arm, landing with a clinking noise that still echoes inside of my broken mind.

I felt something inside of me snap when my father's hand jerked in mine, an involuntary muscle spasm that I still can't decide if actually happened, or if was my mind creating a false sense of hope for me. That hope quickly vanished when I checked his still pulse again only to feel nothing, and stared into his dead eyes.

"I'll call her phone later to check on her, please answer so I can see how she's doing." Landon softly requests. I want to know how Landon is, I hope he didn't see what I saw, I just can't remember.

I know I was holding my father's head in my hands and I think I was screaming or crying, or both, when I heard Landon enter the apartment. I remember him trying to fight with me to let go of the man who I was only beginning to build a relationship with, but after that my mind jumps straight to when the ambulance arrived and blanks out again until I was sitting on the floor at the Scott' home.

"I will." Noah assures him and I hear the screen door opening. Cool drops of rain land on my face, washing days worth of tears and filth away.

"It's okay. We're going home now, it's all going to be okay." Noah whispers to me, his hand pushing back my rain-soaked hair off of my forehead. I keep my eyes closed and rest my cheek against his chest, the heavy beat of it only reminds me of when I pressed my ear against my father's chest, no heartbeat or breathing could be found.

"It's okay," he says again. This is just like old times, Noah coming to my rescue after my father's addictions wreck havoc. There is no greenhouse to hide in, not this time. This time there is only darkness and no escape in sight.

"We're going home now," Noah repeats as he places me into a car. Doesn't he know that I have no home?

...

"You're not going in there. The last thing we need is you setting her off. She's sleeping for the first time in days." I hear my mother say. Who is she talking to? I'm not sleeping, am I? I lean up on my elbows and the blood rushes to my head. I'm so tired, so tired. Noah is here, in my childhood bed with me. I don't remember much of the drive, just that the colors and lights were making me dizzy and my mother kept complaining, asking Noah if she should take me back to the hospital.

"I'm not here to hurt her Carol. You should know that by now. You should also know that I still don't give a fuck what you say." My bedroom door opens and the last person I thought I'd see pushes past my irate mother.

Noah's grip tightens on my waist in his sleep and my empty stomach attempts to get sick at the sight of him. He crosses the room and forcefully yanks Noah's arm from my body and I scramble across the twin bed and my back hits the wall, hard. Hard enough to knock the wind from me but I still try to get away from him.

Why is he here? He can't be here, I don't want him here. He's done enough damage and he doesn't get to just show up here and pick at the scraps.

"Fuck! Are you okay?" He takes another step toward me and I do the first thing that comes to my twisted mind. I scream. I put all the pain and anger into my lungs and just scream.

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