Hardin visits Tessa in Seattle after a nightmare about Zed makes phone calls and text messages feel inadequate. The visit briefly turns their separation into a joyful reunion, but the fear that brings Hardin there soon intrudes on their intimacy: he confesses the dream and links his distress to Tessa’s willingness to let Zed visit. Her offer to cancel that visit comforts him, while leaving visible the unresolved tension between his need for reassurance and her independence.

Background and Decision

Before leaving, Hardin arranges for Landon to watch Richard, who is asleep on Hardin’s couch. Landon resists the task because he barely knows Richard, but Hardin insists that he knows him better than Hardin does. Landon then points out that Richard could someday be his father-in-law if Hardin were not so foolish. The remark jolts Hardin: the prospect sounds strange to him even as he looks at the sleeping man. His immediate concern is that he wants to see Tessa.

Landon agrees to stay for one night only after Hardin invokes Tessa’s name. Hardin recognizes that the trip disregards the agreement they made to give each other space, but tells himself that one short night with her is what he needs. Their calls and messages have been enough during the week; after the nightmare, he wants to see her in person and reassure himself that no one has left marks on her body other than him. That desire is protective in his own account, but its possessive edge is already apparent in the way he frames reassurance as something he must confirm by seeing her.

Twenty minutes later, Hardin is ready to leave for Seattle while Richard remains asleep and Landon continues to tease him about his tight jeans. Hardin tells Landon he can choose how to handle Richard when he wakes, even suggesting that Landon pretend to be Hardin or deny knowing why Richard is there. The joking exchange gives way to the purpose of the trip: Hardin is going to see Tessa, despite the boundaries they had agreed to observe.

The Reunion

Tessa is at Kimberly’s home when Hardin arrives unexpectedly. Kimberly calls attention to the visitor, and Tessa recognizes him, crosses the room, and throws herself into his arms. Her socks slide on the hardwood, nearly sending her tumbling, but she catches herself and embraces him tightly. The spontaneous welcome overturns Hardin’s expectation that she would greet him with discomfort and a smile that did not reach her eyes. Instead, she clings to him, and he buries his head in her hair, overwhelmed by the chance to hold her again.

Tessa asks whether he is really staying, and Hardin checks that his presence is all right with her. She says she has missed him. For a moment, the reunion appears to answer the uncertainty of their separation through physical closeness: Tessa has run to him, and neither hides the longing behind the embrace. But Hardin recalls that the last time they saw each other at their apartment, she was effectively throwing him out. The memory changes her expression; he sees her smile become false and the emotional distance return. His attempt to name what happened reopens the hurt rather than resolving it.

Intimacy Interrupted

When Tessa goes to watch Smith, Hardin says he wants to be wherever she is. She smiles, and their reunion becomes physical: Tessa takes hold of his shirt and kisses him, and he responds by drawing her toward the bed. Their desire is mutual, and Hardin experiences her closeness as an intense relief after the week apart. Yet the moment cannot remain separate from the fear that motivated his visit. As they kiss, an image of Zed having sex with Tessa flashes into Hardin’s mind. He gets to his feet abruptly.

Tessa asks what is wrong. Hardin initially tries to pass off the interruption and suggests they return to Smith, but the sudden break has exposed what his reassurance-seeking could not settle. The nightmare has followed him into the room and made intimacy with Tessa vulnerable to an imagined rival. Rather than letting the encounter continue, he withdraws from it; the reunion’s warmth and its insecurity occupy the same scene.

The Nightmare and Its Consequences

Hardin eventually tells Tessa that he had a nightmare about her and Zed. In the dream, he returned to their apartment to find Zed between her legs, and Zed taunted him as he had sex with her. Tessa covers her ears as Hardin describes the scene, then asks why he thinks he had the dream. Hardin connects it to Tessa agreeing that Zed could visit her in Seattle. The disclosure makes clear that the visit was not only an expression of longing: it was also a response to a disturbing imagined betrayal that he cannot stop replaying.

Hardin admits that he does not want Zed near Tessa and cannot tolerate the prospect of her having an emotional relationship with him. He calls Zed a limit he will not move, even with the reassurance that Tessa has not seen him since the night he took her to her mother’s home. Hardin’s declaration that Tessa is only for him, sexually and emotionally, lays bare how his fear becomes a claim over her choices. The dream was not an actual event, but its emotional force is real to him, and he treats the possibility of Zed’s visit as its cause.

Tessa remains just out of reach as she answers him. She says she had not known what else to say when Zed proposed visiting, given the uncertain state of her relationship with Hardin. Still, she offers to tell Zed not to come if doing so will stop Hardin from dwelling on the nightmare. He is surprised that she does not resist, and she explains that she does not want the distress weighing on him. Her offer eases his immediate fear, but it does not settle the larger question the scene raises: whether closeness between them can coexist with Tessa making her own decisions. The visit ends this exchange in reassurance, not in a demonstrated resolution of their conflict over Zed or their agreement to give each other space.