Before (After, #5)

by Anna Todd

He should have known that that much passion would lead to destruction, to the burning of her soul, and make every ounce of her spirit disintegrate, taking the girl he loved, the girl that he couldn’t and still can’t breathe without, and he would have to watch her drift away, with the last few clouds of gray smoke.

WHERE IS SHE

“Ew. No way. Bianca or Steph, maybe, but that Tessa dud, no way. She’s not even hot, and she’s twice my size nearly.”

Aw Molly I defended you

I take a visual sweep of the room, seeing what else has might have been disturbed.

I see your proofreader was on holiday for this chapter

I walk to the bookshelf and grab Wuthering Heights, opening to the middle of the novel. Catherine is the most infuriating female character I’ve ever read, and I cannot for the life of me understand why Heathcliff puts up with her shit. He’s an asshole, too, but she’s the worst.

Okay.

I hear Steph say. She enters the kitchen, looking like Hurricane Katrina.

What

He couldn’t ruin who she thought he was, but he was terrified of their future, for he learned as a child that every lie made in the dark becomes an evil truth in the light.

Is this meant to be profound

It’s not that I would ever be caught dead hanging out with a bunch of dumb-ass frat boys with too much gel in their hair outside of a party or two.

I'm pretty sure this is a sentence fragment

“I think this will be my favorite class,” Tessa says to him once the professor has dismissed us. Weirdly, it may be my favorite, too, even though I’m sitting in the class for fun, really. I got away with classifying it as an elective even though I’ve taken it before. She turns to me when she realizes that I’m following them. “What do you want, Hardin?” It’s already working. I smile at her, an innocent smile, as if I’m not trying to get under her skin. “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just so glad we have a class together.” My tone is mocking, and she rewards my sarcasm with an eye roll. I continue to stare her way the entire duration of the class, getting a rush each time she huffs or fidgets uncomfortably. She’s so easy to rile up—I love it. The hour is over before I would like it to be, and Tessa starts packing her bag up before the professor dismisses us. Not so fast.

So the professor dismissed you but...... DIDN'T dismiss you?

Her laugh is soft, like cotton.

What

She can hate me after I win the Bet.

Why is this capitalised

Do I care if she’s okay? She’s sick and drunk, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to try and score points against Zed tonight. I don’t want to, and that would be cheating, anyway; she’s far too drunk.

It wouldn't be cheating, it would be *rape*

Overly sensitive, she is, and she pisses me the fuck off.

Just read this in a cockney accent completely unintentionally who talks like this

Steph doesn’t even try to place nice when Tessa’s not around.

She doesn't try to what?

My hand still rests on her cheek, and she’s still staring at me, full lips parted. I bring my metal lip ring between my teeth and tug on it the way I always do.

What a ridiculous image

He was always stubborn from the beginning. She pushed buttons he didn’t know he had and made him think of the world in a different way. He never expected anything to come from this game of his and he never knew how each glance from her, each smile she awarded him with, was changing him. He grew protective of her from early on, and he didn’t recognize when his protection turned to control. He tried to fight it, but he wasn’t strong enough until it was too late.

I hate these blurbs so much

Does the girl even have any friends? She seems like the judgmental type that no one would actually want to be friends with.

Ah, romance

“I’m eighteen, Mother,” Tessa begins, but she already sounds defeated. “I’ve never drunk before, and I didn’t do anything wrong.

Except break the law I guess since the drinking age is 21

“Hey.” I don’t know if I should sit down or walk away. “Have you made any progress with the girl?” he asks. “Yes, a little,” I lie. “You?” I wait impatiently as he takes another drag. “Nah. I’m feeling a little weird about it. Aren’t you?”

Interesting

I smirk at her, wondering if she actually thinks I would comply with her command. Maybe if she agreed to wrap her lips around my cock. Upping the ante, I grab another stack of papers and scatter them to the floor.

I hate you more when you're written from your own POV

I release her wrist but use my other hand to take both of her wrists.

?

She groans into my mouth, and her arms reach up and wrap around my shoulders.

I thought you were holding her wrists

I need to speak. “I don’t know what kind of guys you normally go for, but I think that if Darcy loved her, he wouldn’t have been mean to her,” I say.

And yet....

Tessa doesn’t get to flee from every conflict she creates.

YOU created this conflict!

I’m expected to tell her how I feel, to be more open than I’m comfortable with, and I barely get anything in return. It’s like I’m married without the benefits of sex and dinner every night.

How do you just keep getting WORSE

I have a game to win here, and she’s not being the easiest pawn.

How dare she

I reach up to play with the metal ring above my eye. “What makes you say that?”

This has to look insane right

Admittedly, I imagine Tessa as one of those girls, spread out beneath me, her mouth open in pleasure. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. I imagine stealing her breath as she comes from my fingers and my mouth at the same time. I’m sure she’s never had someone teasing her clit with their tongue while slowly sliding—

What does this paragraph achieve

She shrugs. “I set an alarm for a lot of things; it’s just something I do.” This behavior makes her shy, as if she should be embarrassed that she does such a thing. Why would she think that? Someone in her life must make her feel like she needs to justify her strange behavior.

I mean, you?

My idea of fun is much different. My idea of fun is sitting on the bed, my back against a headboard while Tessa wraps her mouth around my cock. I would love to add a cold glass of whiskey, one ice cube floating in the dark liquid, clicking against the glass as she draws me deeper into her mouth.

Why

“Really, though, you could use some fun, and since we are new friends, we should do something fun.” Before Tessa can refuse me, I turn my back to her and start off. “Good, I’m glad you’re aboard. See you tomorrow.” When I cross the street, I look back to see her sitting on the curb. She didn’t try to refuse me, she agreed to see me tomorrow,

She did try and she didn't agree?

Dating rituals were so much less complicated in the past. If we lived in an Austen novel, I would court her and take her on chaperoned dates where we would walk through the woods, and if I felt brave, I would brush her gloved hand with mine. She would blush and put a finger to her full lips, looking to our chaperone with a warning in her gray eyes. Modern dating is much different, and now, if I felt brave, I would reach down and tease her nipples through her top and she would move my hand to the warmth between her thighs. No chaperone, no rules.

WHY

The only problem with my beautiful 1970 Ford Capri is that it doesn’t connect to Bluetooth.

This car is ugly as fuck

I don’t know what to call this meeting with Tessa. It’s not a date. We’re friends. Friends until I fuck her, I remind myself.

Cool

“Well, I’ve always found nature walks a surefire bet,” Vance says. And just like that, I’m reminded of the Bet for the first time in a few hours.

You literally thought about it like 6 sentences ago

The curve on the front of women’s thighs, on the side of the hips, is one of my favorite parts of a female body—it’s just so sexy.

This sounds so gross when you say it tho

She’s getting too close to me now; her nosiness has gone to a personal level, and I’m not fucking okay with that. She probably probed him for answers to other questions about me, too. Why I don’t live with Ken and his new family, why I never talk to my dad—she probably even asked what I was like as a child, and Landon probably spilled all that he’d heard about me. She’s already judging me, I can tell.

Ohmygod grow up

When I open the door, Tessa is on Steph’s bed with Zed, with her own bed empty. A small bed, with Zed. And with Steph and Tristan, too, and Tessa’s only sitting, nothing more, but still. She’s with Zed. On a bed. On a bed with Zed.

Okay Dr Seuss

And it has me seeing red.

PLEASE

Her thighs are a little thick.

AND?????

Judgmental hypocrite, she is.

There's that cockney accent again

And why would Tessa threaten me with hanging out with Zed? Does she somehow know about the Bet? Is she in on it with Steph?

You are exhausting

but a calm filled with stillness.

As opposed to the other, non-stillness kind of calm

I smile at the thought of her CD player as a teen: ’N Sync, Jessica Simpson, and doubtless some of the horrendous girl groups Mother England spits out on the regular fills the entire thing.

Sorry but "Mother England" girl groups don't break into the American market very often. Also gtfo with your NSYNC slander

“Well, I like Bon Iver, and the Fray,” she says after contemplating the matter for a few seconds. “Of course you do.” One Christian-based band and one über-hipster band. Not remotely surprising.

Neither of these are Christian bands??

that’s perfect for me. Especially on a nice, rare day like today when it’s not raining in the Olympic Peninsula.

But you're not..... on the Olympic Peninsula

“Don’t worry, I didn’t bring you out here to kill you,” I say, attempting to evoke a laugh from her as we get out of the car.

Tbf that's exactly what a killer would say

What’s my problem? I’m never this much of a horny frat boy. Is it her innocence and sinful body, or is it the competitive drive to win her body, to beat Zed?

:(

She’s too intuitive and way too pushy. I don’t even know her, and she sure as hell doesn’t know me. Why does she keep thinking that she can ask such personal shit?

That's how you get to know someone, peanut.

I find myself unsure what to do with her. She’s still staring at my skin… Why is she still staring at my skin? More importantly, why does it bother me so much? I got my tattoos for me, not for some judgmental chick. Why the fuck am I justifying myself right now? I never give a shit what women think of me; I only think about fucking them and how they come undone from my touch, in a mutually distracting kind of way.

Dude what is happening

It dawns on me that she’ll never tell him any of what happened today. Not a word. She’s going to kiss me, get out of my car, and go call her preppy little boyfriend the moment she gets into her room. She’s going to tell him she loves him. He’ll say it back, and she’ll smile the way she did when I kissed her. She licks her lips and leans across the center console to kiss me again. No, no.

I mean.... why do you care