But all of it leaves me crushed beneath the pressure of the game’s main plotline objective.
The player is supposed to fix the Ridge after the storm.
That meansI’mresponsible for fixing all the damage I can’t stop seeing.
Problem is, I have no idea how to. How does anyone even begin to clean a lake full of tree limbs, mud, and mush?
The rules are all different when I look close enough to see them.
And, despite my astigmatism, they’re not even blurry.
They’re crisp, and sharp, so I close my eyes and pretend they can’t cut, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling their looming presence.
I’m scared.
Of everything.
But I can’t bear the idea of losing the opportunity to have a home where, maybe, I can live a little less afraid.
While I’m frozen in my spiraling thoughts, Samson cocks a look back at me. “You coming, Orange Juice? Or do I gotta throw you over my other shoulder?”
Pleasant as that sounds, I would not survive, so I scramble to my feet and follow him from my pitiful shack to his comfortable abode.
Chapter 11
♥♥
Lemonade.
“Hey.”
I look up off the pears Samson is allowing me to core. After he showed me how to peel them—and I immediately presented myself as a hazard with a knife, blamed my astigmatism, and received a dire look that will haunt my nightmares—he gave me averysafe spoon with which to scoop out the guts of the pearshehas peeled.
His intellect knows no bounds.
“Yes?” I ask.
He lifts a lemon. “You.”
I blink at the fruit. Drag my gaze to his face. Narrow my eyes on the slight tilt of exactly one corner of his mouth. And blink again.
Before I can decide whether or not he’s smiling, he clears his throat, pulls out his knife andcuts me in half.
I watch in horror as he juices the lemon into the water bath he’s been having me put the cored pears in. My heart, it shatters.
A pity I no longer have access to Google. I’d love to search and see if heart conditions are related to astigmatisms. I bet they are. Misshapen eyes are the root of all evil.
Blushing furiously, I go back to my very important task. Scoop the feelings out. Plop them in the compost bucket. Scoop the feeling out…plop them in the compost bucket.
Scoop the feelings out…
Plop…
My wicked eyes glance past an arm of my glasses, toward the blurry—beautiful—profile of the man beside me. He’s squeezinganother lemon into the bowl of cold water while a simple syrup of sugar water heats on the wood stove past his flexing, tattooed arm.
This whole scenario is so…
Husband and wife.
