After Ever Happy (After, #4)

by Anna Todd

We are truly fucking inevitable; even time cannot come between us.

Everything in my life revolves around this woman, and some people may say it’s unhealthy or obsessive, crazy even, but you know what? I don’t give a flying fuck, not a single fucking one. I love her, and she is everything to me. If people have shit to say, they can take their judgmental bullshit elsewhere, because no one is fucking perfect, and Tessa brings me as close to perfect as I will ever be.

“You had to know that I would always love you. You made me… me, Tessa, and I will never forget that.”

This is the longest I’ve gone without fucking someone, and I would gladly have gone another year waiting for her.

“You know,” I begin, as I roll off her and lie next to her, “by making love to me, you just agreed to marry me.”

“Therapy only works for my anger, not my obsession with having you forever.”

My chest tightens; I fucking need to spend my life with this woman. I need to tell her everything that I’ve been doing since she left me, but now isn’t the time. Tomorrow, I’ll tell her tomorrow.

We needed this time apart. We needed to be able to stand alone before we could stand together, and I’m so thankful that we made it through the darkness, the fighting, the pain, and emerged hand in hand, stronger than ever.

he has crawled into my soul and marked it as his, never to be forgotten.

AFTER: BY HARDIN SCOTT I flip to the second page. It was the fall when he met her. Most people were obsessing over the way the leaves were turning and the smell of burning wood that always seems to linger in the air during this time of year; not him, he was only worried about one thing. Himself.

If his life would become one from the novels, his kind gesture would bring his Elizabeth back to his arms.

Even though she was unable to bear children of her own, she couldn’t let go of the dream of them. He knew that, and he loved her even so. He tried his hardest not to be selfish, but he couldn’t help thinking about the little versions of him that she couldn’t give him. He felt for her more than himself, but he couldn’t help but cry over their loss many more nights than he could remember.

“I started it after we kissed.”

When she was in my head, there didn’t seem to be room for anything else. She became an obsession,

She stared down at the floor when she spoke her name for the first time—“Um, yeah… my name is Tessa”—and I remember thinking she had an odd name.

More memories flood my mind, and I wish I could just plug her into my head, so she could read my thoughts and decipher my intentions.

“It’s you. You’re the person that I love the most in the world.” It was true, as embarrassing and uncomfortable as it was to admit. He loved her, and he knew from then on that his life would never be the same after her.

If she left him, if she spent the remainder of her life absent from his, he would still never be the same. She had altered him, and there he stood, bloody knuckles and all, wanting to be better for her.

“How sad are we? A couple of recovering alcoholics, negotiating to read a life story.”

It shows that if you have someone to lean on, someone who loves you and doesn’t give up on you, you can find your way out of the darkness.

“It’s about my journey, after meeting you.”

One of my greatest wishes in life would be for her to understand, to truly understand, that she is rare.

That’s when he knew. That moment was when he fucking knew that he wanted to spend his life with her, that his life would be meaningless and empty without the light that Tessa brings into it. She gave him hope. She made him feel as if maybe, just maybe, he could be more than his past.

He hopes that she will read this someday and that she will understand just how broken he was. He doesn’t ask for her pity, or her forgiveness; he only asks that she see just how much she affected his life. That she, the beautiful stranger with a kind heart, turned into his lifeline and made him into the man he is today. He hopes that with these words, no matter how harsh some of them are, she will be proud of herself for dragging a sinner from the pits of hell and raising him into her heaven, allowing him redemption and freedom from the demons of his past. He prays that she will take every single word to heart, and that maybe, just maybe, she will still love him after everything they have gone through. He hopes that she will be able to remember why she loved him, why she fought so hard for him. Lastly, he hopes that wherever she may be as she reads the book that he wrote for her, she will read it with a light heart and that she will reach out to him, even if these words find her years from now. She has to know that he hasn’t given up. Tessa has to know that this man will always love her, and that he will be waiting for her for the rest of his life, whether she returns to it or not. He wants her to know that she was his savior and that he could never repay her for everything she has done for him, and that he loves her with his entire soul and nothing will ever change that. He wants to remind her that whatever their souls are made of, his and hers are the same. Their favorit...

The worst part of being okay is that okay is far from happy.

Her happiness is the most important thing, and not just to me; the world simply isn’t the same when Tessa Young isn’t happy.

“Your doctor boyfriend cleans up nicely,” Hardin taunts me.

You shouldn’t date someone if your heart is owned by someone else. It doesn’t work, trust me.

Hardin smiles at me as we reach the altar, and I try, I really do try, to focus on my best friend’s wedding. But I can’t keep my eyes or mind off the best man.

trying not to stare at the beautiful girl who stole my heart all those years ago. She didn’t just steal the damned thing. She found it; she was the one to discover that I even had a heart to begin with, and she dug it out. Struggle after struggle, she never gave up. She found my heart, and she kept it safe. She hid it from the fucked-up world. Most important, she hid it from me, until I was ready to care for it myself.

I should be nice to the guy—he is dating the woman that I will spend my life loving.

“When’s the release date for your next book?” “Next month—did you read it? I had an early copy sent to you.”

“I’m so happy for you, Hardin. You’re an incredible author, an activist for self-recovery and alcohol addiction. I saw that interview you did with the Times about dealing with abuse as a child.”

“You won’t know how lucky you are to be able to spend your life with the other half of your soul until you have to spend your life without them.”

Her mouth tastes like home to me, and I’ve been away from home, living in Chicago alone, for so long.

“Yes, no one else. Only you.”

Each kiss holds a confession: I love you, I try to show her; I need you, I suck at her bottom lip; I can’t lose you again, I push my cock inside her and moan with her as I fill her.

I never lost hope because Tessa is my hope. She always has been and always will be.

“I hate that you didn’t try harder, but it’s unfair of me to even say that because we both know that I pulled away from you. I kept pushing and pushing, expecting too much from you, and I was so angry over the book and all of the attention that I didn’t want, and I let that rule my mind. I felt as if I couldn’t forgive you because of other people’s opinions, but now I’m angry with myself that I would even listen to that. I don’t care what people say about us, or me. I only care what the people I love think of me, and they love and support me. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for listening to voices that didn’t belong in my head.”

“Maybe that you still want to marry me?” Her eyes are wide, and mine feel as if they are going to pop straight from their sockets. “What?” She flushes. “You heard me.” “Marry you? You hated me like ten minutes ago?” She’s truly going to be the death of me.

“ ‘Romance is overrated, realism is in,’ ” she quotes from my latest novel.

“Vegas, let’s go to Vegas right now.” I dig into my pocket and pull my keys out of it. “No way; I’m not getting married in Vegas. You’re crazy.” “We’re both crazy; who gives a shit?” “No way, Hardin.” “Why not?” I plead, taking her face between my palms. “Vegas is a fifteen-hour drive.” She glances at me, then at her reflection in the mirror. “Don’t you think a fifteen-hour drive is long enough to think about it?” I joke, pulling the chairs away from the door. Then Tessa truly shocks me by cocking her head and saying, “Yeah, I guess so.”

I stood back for a moment, just staring at the woman in front of me. The woman that would be my wife in just a few hours. My wife.

At twenty-three, I would become someone’s husband—Tessa’s husband—and I couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly make me happier.

I wanted our families to be there. I wanted my little brother and little Abby to be a part of it, walking down the aisle, throwing flowers and rice and doing whatever crap people make the youngest family members do during weddings.

I wanted everything to be perfect for my Tessa,

when I told her I wanted Smith to throw rice at our wedding, she laughed, pointing out that he’d probably do it very precisely, grain by grain.

I kept my job at Vance in New York City because I needed the income. Hardin moved to New York with me, and I refused to let him pay all of my bills while I tried to figure out what the hell to do, because though I was so proud of my college degree, I just no longer wanted to work in the field. I will always love reading—books are forever tied to my soul—but I simply changed my mind. Just like that.

Landon already had his job lined up: fifth-grade teacher at a public school in Brooklyn. Hardin, a New York Times bestseller at the young age of twenty-five, had four books published, and me, well, I was still working on figuring out my own path,

I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her onto the counter. I laid my head on her stomach and promised that baby that I would be a better father than either of mine had ever been. Better than anyone had ever been.