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“Don’t you threaten me. I could just as easily leave with someone else,” he says, only inches from my face.
    A sting of jealousy pains me, but I ignore it. “Go ahead. Go home with Judy, then. I know you slept with her before. I can tell.” I keep my back straight and my voice steady as I challenge him.
    He looks at me, then to her, and smiles a little. I flinch, and he frowns. “It wasn’t anything too impressive. I barely remember it.” He’s attempting to make me feel better, but his words have the opposite effect.
    “Well? What’s it going to be?” I raise my brow.
    “Damn it,” he grumbles, then half stumbles back to the bar to pay for his drinks. It looks like he just empties his pockets on the bar, and after the bartender extracts some bills, he shoves the rest in Judy’s direction. She looks at him and then over at me, sinking a little as if something has deflated her spine.
    As we exit the bar, Hardin says, “Judy says bye,” and it makes me want to explode.
    “Don’t talk to me about her,” I snap.
    “Are you jealous, Theresa?” he slurs, wrapping his arm around me. “Fuck, I hate this place, this bar, that house.” He gestures toward the small house across the street. “Oh! You want to know something funny? Vance lived there.” Hardin points to the brick house directly next to the bar. A dim light is on upstairs, and a car is parked in the driveway. “I wonder what he was doing the night that those men came into our fucking house.” Hardin’s eyes scan the ground, and he bends down. Before I realize what’s happening, his arm is raised behind his head, a brick in his hand.
    “Hardin, no!” I yell and grab his arm. The brick falls to the ground and skids across the concrete.
    “Fuck this.” He tries to reach for it, but I stand in front of him. “Fuck all of this! Fuck this street! Fuck this bar and that fucking house! Fuck everyone!”
    He stumbles again and walks into the street. “If you won’t let me destroy that house . . .” His voice trails off, and I pull my shoes from my feet and follow him across the street and into the front yard of his childhood home.

chapter six
TESSA
    I trip over my bare feet while rushing behind Hardin into the front yard of the house where he spent his painful childhood. One of my knees lands on the grass, but I quickly steady myself and get back on my feet. The front screen door is pulled open, and I hear Hardin fumbling with the doorknob for a moment before he pounds his fist against the wood in frustration.
    “Hardin, please. Let’s just go to the hotel,” I try to convince him as I approach.
    Ignoring my presence completely, he bends down to grab something from beside the porch. I assume it’s a spare key but am quickly proven wrong when a fist-size rock is pushed through the glass pane on the center of the door. Hardin snakes his arm through, thankfully avoiding the sharp ridges of the broken glass, and unlocks the door.
    I look around the quiet street, but nothing seems amiss. No one is outside to notice our disruption, and no lights have flickered on at the sound of the breaking glass. I pray that Trish and Mike aren’t staying next door at Mike’s house tonight, that they’ve gone off to some fancy hotel for the night, given that neither of them are well-off enough to go on an extravagant honeymoon.
    “Hardin.” I’m walking on water here, trying my hardest to keep from sinking under. One slipup, and we both will drown.
    “This fucking house has been nothing but a tormentor of mine,” he grumbles, stumbling over his boots. He catches himself on the arm of a small couch before he falls. I survey the living room, and I’m grateful that most of the furnishings have been packed into boxes or have already been removed from the house in preparation for the demolition following Trish’s move.
    He narrows his eyes and focuses on the couch. “This couch here”—he presses his fingers against his forehead before