“What? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” My heart thunders wildly. “Meemaw, tell me you’re okay. I can’t see anything.”
Silence stretches on, then Meemaw clears her throat. “N…nothing. You’ve… you’ve just got blood on your face, sugarplum. It just gave me a fright, is all.”
“I…what?” I touch my face, and my fingers come away tacky.
“It’s fine. Probably just a scratch,” Meemaw says. “You know how it is when you get a bump on the head. Darn thing takes a while to ease up.”
But something in her voice makes me uneasy. The smell of burned rubber and airbag chemicals twists my stomach, but I don’t think it’s just that. I have a terrible, foreboding feeling.
And then everything goes black.
The ache in my back tells me I’ve been awake for a while, ruminating on things I know better than to stew on. It always happens after a nightmare, and instead of getting out of bed and starting my day, I fall into the same trap.
If I told my therapist this, I bet I could hear her eyeroll.
“All right, Violet. That’s enough. We need coffee and sunshine to shake the mood.”
I swing my legs off the side of the bed and take a few shaky breaths. An hour is a long time to replaythatday. To relive the emotions that came after the wreck. To let my mind run riot on the what-ifs I shouldn’t torture myself with but do.
Mental self-flagellation. My brain’s favorite hobby.
Carefully, I make my way down the steps and out the front door on shaky legs. It takes me much longer these days to get to where I need to be, but as Meemaw says, “It’s all in the journey.”
The sun feels warm on my face. It’s soft at first, like a hand cupping my cheek, then brighter, seeping past my closed lids in a slow bloom of heat. I tip my chin toward it, greedy for that simple proof of morning. And like every day since the accident, I let myself linger in this one stolen moment where everything is quiet and still and mine.
I relish the silence.
Not the hollow, echoing kind that used to mean loneliness, but this new version that’s gentle and contained, a soft cocoon wrapping around the edges of my life. No blaring alarms. No frantic scrambling for shoes and keys and the travel mug of coffee I always forgot to fill properly. No racing breath, no missed meals, no calendar screaming at me from my phone.
Just… warmth.
The house settles behind me with a soft groan. A bird screeches in a tree. Somewhere down the street, a car door slams, sharp and jarring.
And that’s all it takes.
The quiet snaps, and reality returns.
Not a nightmare.
Not anymore.
I am blind.
Chapter 2
Jason
Fuck.
It’s like watching dominoes fall, except these aren’t harmless little blocks. These are Eustace bikes. Eight of them, slamming into each other in a snarling, metal-on-metal chain reaction. My stomach drops as the last bike tips, the whole line collapsing like the universe just decided to fuck us personally.
“Oh shit!” Beauford exclaims, folding in on himself, his big hands disappearing into those wild brown curls that refuse to behave for anyone but me. I learned to tame that mess when we were kids. I braided it, twisted it, shoved it back with spit and hope just so he could see out of his damn eyes. Seeing him yank at it now makes me glad I’m not the one who has to get the knots out of it anymore.
Beauford, fondly known as Beau or Buff depending on the day or mood, is built like someone crossed a linebacker with a grizzly bear, then gave him the emotional age of a golden retriever. His shirts never fit right. His shoulders are too broad for anything short of XXXL, and his face is way too honest to ever hide a lie. Which is how we keep landing in shit like this. Well, that and the reddish umber of his skin and the slightly darker freckles he inherited from his light-skinned mother. Itgives him the whole innocent, yet protective thing he’s got going for him, which makes the girls drop their clothes like they’re allergic to staying dressed.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he repeats, each word hitting like a punch to my spine.
Shitdoesn’t even begin to cover it. It feels like a whole damn sewage plant just detonated over our heads. The stench, the panic, the you’re-so-fucked-you-can-taste-it-in-your-teeth kind of disaster.
