Chapter 9: Cut off
The words left Tessa’s mouth, hard and final, like stones dropped into a still pond. The silence in the concrete stairwell echoed afterwards, dense and suffocating.
“I’m so, so sorry, Mom, that your life didn’t work out the way you wanted it to,” Tessa said, her voice shaking but clear. “I really am. But this is my life. And you have to let me live it.”
Her mother’s face, usually so expressive in its worry, went utterly still. The anger drained away, leaving behind something worse: a cold, stark disappointment that seemed to leach the color from the air. She looked ancient in the fluorescent light, all the struggles of the last decade carved into the lines around her eyes.
“Is that really what you want?” her mother asked, the question barely a whisper.
Tessa’s throat tightened. She felt the phantom weight of ten-year-old responsibility, of forged checks and dark, silent houses. She felt the new, terrifying weight of Hardin’s shirt on her shoulders, smelling of him. She nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion.
Her mother stared at her for a long moment, as if memorizing a stranger’s face. Then she turned. The sound of her practical flats on the steps was methodical, unhurried. She walked down two flights, towards the exit, before she paused. She didn’t look back.
“If I leave now,” her mother called up, the words bouncing off the walls, impersonal as a broadcast, “you’re cut off. Tuition. Rent. Everything.”
Tessa gripped the cold metal railing. She saw the life she was supposed to have—the safe, predictable, approved path—detach itself and float away like a released balloon. A part of her screamed to run after it. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, the sharp pain grounding her. She didn’t say anything.
Her mom waited. The silence stretched, thin and razor-wire taut.
Then the footsteps resumed, quicker now, descending until the sound faded into the murmur of the lobby, and then into nothing.
Tessa stood alone in the stairwell. The fluorescent light buzzed. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor, hugging her knees, Hardin’s oversized shirt swallowing her. She didn’t cry. She just sat there, feeling the immensity of the void where her mother’s presence—her support, her burden, her love—had been.
The campus café hummed the next afternoon, a low-grade anxiety that matched the mood of the students buried in textbooks. Tessa sat across from Landon at a small, sticky table by the window. Outside, the skeletal branches of a dead tree scraped against the glass.
She’d just finished explaining, her words tumbling out in a rushed, jumbled confession about the fight, the ultimatum, the deafening silence that had followed.
Landon stirred his tea slowly, his kind face serious. “If she’s cutting you off because of Hardin…” he began, then hesitated, choosing his words like he was navigating a minefield. “I’m a bit worried.”
“Why?” Tessa asked, wrapping her hands around her cooling mug. The question was defensive, and she knew it.
Landon sighed, setting his spoon down with a soft click. “Hardin is… complicated, Tess.”
“Yeah, I know.” She heard the edge in her own voice. “But he’s different around me.”
Landon’s tone was gentle, but it didn’t soften the blow. He looked at her, really looked, his gaze taking in the shadows under her eyes, the defiant set of her shoulders. “Look, I’ve known him a long time. The anger, the fights, the way he burns through people… it’s not an act. It’s a pattern. I just don’t want you to be the next thing he sets on fire.”
Tessa opened her mouth to argue, to list the moments—the stolen book, the whispered Yeats in the dark, the way he’d held her after she told him about her dad. But the arguments felt flimsy against Landon’s quiet concern. They were secrets, intimacies. They didn’t translate.
Her phone buzzed on the table, screen lighting up.
Hardin: Outside.
A simple, two-word lifeline. The tension in her chest loosened, just a fraction. She looked back at Landon, offering a weak smile. “I have to go.”
Landon just nodded, his expression unreadable. “Be careful, Tessa.”
She gathered her bag, stopping at the counter to buy two large coffees, black, the way Hardin took his. The barista scribbled a sloppy smiley face on the cardboard sleeve. The normalcy of it felt absurd.
Pushing through the café door, the autumn wind snapped at her. Hardin’s was idling at the curb, a cloud of exhaust staining the cold air. He was in the driver’s seat, head tilted back against the rest, eyes closed. Even in repose, he looked tense, a coil of potential energy.
She approached the passenger side, the two coffees held out before her like a peace offering or a shield.
He opened his eyes and leaned over, pushing the door open for her. The car’s interior smelled of old leather, cigarettes, and him.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gravelly from silence. His eyes searched her face, missing nothing—the tightness around her mouth, the faint shadows from a sleepless night.
“Yeah.” She handed him a coffee, sliding into the passenger seat. The warmth seeped through the cardboard into her cold hands. “Where have you been?”
He took a long sip, staring out the windshield at the dead tree scraping the café window. A muscle in his jaw worked. “Jump in and I’ll show you,” he said finally, putting the car in gear.
They drove in a tense, quiet bubble. The familiar campus streets gave way to rows of narrow, brick-faced townhouses, then to a neighborhood of larger, older homes set back behind iron fences and mature trees. He didn’t speak. His hand rested on the gear shift, the ‘K’ and ‘Q’ on his fingers a silent mystery she was too exhausted to decode.
He pulled into the driveway of a modest, grey stone house, its garden neat but sleeping for winter. He killed the engine. The silence was absolute.
“Come on,” he said, getting out.
She followed him up the flagstone path. At the front door, he didn’t ring a bell or use a key. Instead, he pulled a small keypad from his pocket, punched in a code with quick, practiced jabs. A green light flickered. He pushed the door open into a dim foyer.
“Wait,” he said, turning to face her. He raised his hands, his palms hovering near her temples. “Close your eyes.”
“Hardin—”
“Just close them.”
She did. The world went dark. His hands, warm and slightly rough, settled gently over her eyes, blotting out the last slivers of light. He guided her forward, one step at a time, over a threshold, across a smooth, cool floor.
“You ready?” he asked, his breath stirring her hair.
“Yes,” she whispered, her other senses straining. She smelled furniture polish and the faint, clean scent of lemons.
He removed his hands. She blinked against the sudden flood of light.
She was standing in a living room. Sun streamed through large windows onto gleaming hardwood floors. The furniture was modern, minimalist—a low grey sofa, a sleek glass coffee table, abstract art on neutral walls. It was quiet, pristine, and utterly empty of life.
“Whose place is this?” she asked, her voice echoing slightly in the spacious silence.
“A friend of my father’s,” he said, watching her reaction. He shoved his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen. “Some business associate.”
“Where are they?” She walked further in, her boots clicking on the floor. She ran a finger along the back of the sofa; not a speck of dust.
“She’s in Italy. For two years.” His tone was casual, too casual. “I’m meant to be watering the plants.”
Tessa turned to look at him. He was studying her, his blue eyes intense, cataloging her every flicker of emotion. She walked over to the large window that overlooked a private, walled garden, its branches bare and sculptural. The light was perfect. The stillness was profound. It felt like a place where the mess of her life couldn’t reach her.
She turned around. Her heart was beating a strange, thick rhythm in her chest. She crossed the room back to him, placed her hand flat on his chest, and pushed. He yielded, walking backwards until his legs hit the low platform of a large, upholstered bed in an adjoining alcove. He sat down with a soft thump.
“It’s really nice,” she said, her voice low.
She climbed onto his lap, straddling him, her knees sinking into the soft duvet on either side of his hips. She cupped his face, her thumbs tracing the line of his cheekbones. He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing for a second.
“Imagine if it were our place,” he said, his hands settling on her waist.
“Sure,” she whispered, bending to kiss the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. She was playing along, lost in the fantasy of clean light and empty, peaceful rooms.
“It can be.”
She went still. She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes. “What do you mean?” The playful lilt was gone from her voice.
He smiled then, a slow, deliberate unlocking of his usual guarded expression. “When you told me your mum was gonna cut you off, I had to do something.” His grip on her hips tightened, possessive, anchoring. “We can stay here. For the next two years. Just you and me.”
The magnitude of it crashed over her, cold and exhilarating. This wasn’t a fantasy. This was a plan. He had seen the wreckage of her life and, instead of offering sympathy, he had presented a fortress. A beautiful, borrowed, solitary fortress.
She looked up at him, her mind reeling through the implications—the secrecy, the dependency, the utter severing from any other path. “You did this for me?”
He didn’t answer with words. He just looked at her, and in his stormy eyes, she saw the terrifying, all-consuming truth of it. This was his solution. This was his claim.
She kissed him. It was a deep, searching, desperate kiss, full of gratitude and surrender and a shiver of fear she swallowed down. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her flush against him, as if he could fuse their futures together through sheer force of will. The house was silent around them, holding its breath.
The offer hung in the air between their mouths, a tangible, dangerous thing. Tessa pulled back just an inch, her breath coming fast. “We can’t just… live here.”
“Why not?” His voice was low, a vibration she felt through her palms on his chest. “It’s empty. It’s safe. No one would know.” His thumb stroked the jut of her hip bone through her jeans. “You wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”
The word ‘safe’ echoed, twisting in her mind. It wasn’t safety he was offering; it was isolation, a gilded cage with him as the sole keeper. She thought of Landon’s worried eyes in the café. I don’t want you to be the next thing he sets on fire. She looked at Hardin—at the desperate hope barely hidden beneath the usual brooding control—and knew she was already alight.
“Okay,” she whispered. The word was a key turning in a lock. His entire body relaxed, a slow release of tension she hadn’t fully perceived. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his exhale hot against her skin.
Later that night, they spread white cardboard containers across the glass coffee table, the rich smells of garlic and soy cutting through the sterile lemon scent. Hardin stole a prawn cracker from her fingers. She retaliated by flicking a grain of fried rice at him. It landed in his hair.
“You’re dead,” he said, but a grin was breaking through.
He launched a cushion from the grey sofa. It caught her square in the shoulder, knocking her back onto the plush rug. She scrambled up, grabbing two pillows, and the war began. They were breathless, laughing about nothing, throwing accusations with the pillows—“You cheated!” “You started it!”—until they collapsed in a heap of limbs and feathers and leftover noodles.
He drove them to the aquarium after, the city lights streaking past the windows. Inside, the world was blue and hushed, a cathedral of slow-moving shadows. They walked holding hands, their footsteps silent on the wet concrete. He pointed at a grotesque, wide-mouthed fish drifting past. She nudged him towards a tank of delicate, pulsing jellyfish, their forms like lost ghosts.
In the vast, dark room of the main ocean tank, the only light came from the watery blue glow. A slow-moving ray drifted by, then a shark, its silhouette effortless and menacing. Tessa stood before the towering wall of glass, her face painted in undulating aqua light.
Hardin stepped back. He lifted the vintage camera he’d brought, the one he used for his photography class. The shutter clicked, a soft, definitive sound in the quiet.
She turned around, looking at him laughing. “Did you just take my picture?”
He lowered the camera, holding her gaze across the dim space. The blue light played over the sharp planes of his face, catching the intensity in his eyes. “I still can’t believe it,” he said, his voice softer than the water’s murmur.
“Believe what?” She took a step toward him.
He closed the distance, the camera hanging loosely from its strap at his side. He turned to face her fully, looking down at her. The playful energy from the pillow fight was gone, replaced by something stark and solemn. “That you’re mine,” he said. The words weren’t a question. They were a raw, awestruck confession. “I don’t deserve you.”
She looked up at him, the jellyfish pulsing silently in her peripheral vision. She thought of the borrowed house, the stolen book, the way he’d traced her lifeline. She thought of her mother’s retreating footsteps. This was her choice. This tangled, imperfect, all-consuming reality.
“Nothing could ever change the way I feel about you,” she said. She meant it as a comfort, a promise, but it landed between them like a vow with weight, a chain with strength.
He smiled then, a real, unguarded smile that momentarily erased the shadows from his eyes. He leaned down and kissed her, there in the blue dark, as ancient creatures swam endlessly behind the glass.