Desire flared to life between my thighs. But something else too: I needed to pee.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I murmured. “Then you can do whatever you want to me.”
It sounded crazy saying it out loud, but I meant it.
I sat up and opened my eyes.
Light flared, like a spotlight shining on my brain, and I closed my eyes with a gasp.
“You okay?” Hawk asked, strangely alert considering he’d been asleep a minute before.
“I… I don’t know.” I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.
And this time I understood: I was seeing light from the bedroom.
And more than light: shapes.
I closed my eyes again, then opened them blinking rapidly. The shapes were clearer.
A dresser.
A chair.
The TV on the wall.
All blurry but visible, the morning light shining in from the window obscenely bright, bright enough to make my head pound.
But now I understood.
“I can see.”
PART II
26
CASSIE
I movedbehind the counter at the coffee shop, refilling the stainless canisters with fresh coffee beans, wiping up spills, and stepping in now and then to help Kaylee with the late morning rush.
The shop was packed with tourists getting in one more hike, one more rafting trip, before the warmth of summer gave way to fall. Kaylee and I had been on our feet for hours but I felt happy and energized, still buoyed by the fact that I could be there at all.
By the fact that I could see.
Plus, I’d gotten my cast off a few days before, and having the use of my previously broken arm together with my sight felt like winning the jackpot in the Mega Millions lottery.
I wasn’t a hundred percent. My eyes were still super sensitive to bright light, forcing me to wear sunglasses whenever I was outside — and sometimes even when I was inside — and my arm was still weak from all the time it had spent in a cast.
But I felt closer to normal than I’d felt in weeks, since before my accident.
Being at the shop again felt like a gift and I relished every second.
The bell on the door chimed and I looked up to see a pretty girl about my age walk into the shop. I knew immediately it was Lilah Abbott, both because I’d gone to high school with her and because I’d looked her up on social media before reaching out to see if she’d be willing to have coffee.
She was even prettier than she was in her pictures, with long honey-blonde hair that fell around her shoulders in waves and the kind of delicate bone structure that made me think of the fairies and forest nymphs in my childhood storybooks.
She wore ripped jeans, black boots, and a green hoodie — unzipped — over a white tank top.
I lifted my hand to get her attention, then smiled when she spotted me.
