“If I need to go anywhere, someone helps me,” I told him. “My parents don’t like me to draw attention to myself.”
They thought people would stare at me. I wasn’t the only visually impaired person in town, but I was pretty sure I was the only full-on blind one, and I knew their fears without even asking. And they were right. It made people uncomfortable. I’d been through enough awkward conversations to know when someone just wanted to be away from me, because they didn’t know how to act around me.
The part they were wrong about was that they thought the world was still the same for me, and I should learn how to navigate it the same way I did before. I couldn’t. People might be uncomfortable, but they would get used to it. They would change. It was a source of resentment that my parents thought that no one should be inconvenienced, and it was my responsibility not to be a burden to others.
It was my world, too.
“You could never not draw attention,” he finally said. “And it has nothing to do with you being blind.”
The way he said it—gentle and thoughtful—made heat rise to my cheeks, and I didn’t know if he meant my dancing or if I was pretty, but I smiled to myself, suddenly warm all over.
I didn’t have time to ask him to clarify, though, because the next thing I knew he was in front of me, reaching back, grabbing my thighs, and hefting me up onto his back. I sucked in a breath, my feet lifting off the ground, and I hurriedly circled my arms around his neck so I wouldn’t fall.
“I can walk faster,” I told him. “I can. I didn’t mean—”
“Shut up and hold me tight.”
Okayyyy. I locked my arms around his neck.
“Tighter,” he bit out. “Like in the closet the other night.”
I smirked but he couldn’t see it. I tightened my arms around his neck, tucking my head close with my cheek next to his. I’d tried not to think about my parents’ fight that night, but I couldn’t not think about him. How his arms, heat, and pulse in my ear made it all go away. How sometimes you have to get the worst to feel the best. It was a nice memory.
He carried me down the driveway, and when his shoes hit rocks, I knew we were outside my walls.
He stopped and set me down, my leg brushing a body of metal. I put out my hands, rubbing them over steel, glass, and a door handle.
I smiled.
Of course, he wouldn’t have pulled up right in front of my house. He’d parked outside the open gates.
I trailed the length of the car, feeling the smooth surface, but not glossy like glass. It was a matte paint, the long, clean lines and grill narrow, sophisticated, and sleek. Definitely foreign.
“I like your car,” I told him and then teased, “What’s its name?”
He breathed out a laugh and then I felt him behind me, his whisper hitting my ear. “My pets all have pulses.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and every inch of my skin sparked to life. How did he do that?
Taking my hand, he led me around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and climbed in, and I heard the seat slide, but I wasn’t sure if he was moving it forward or backward. Something else shifted, too. The steering wheel?
My heart pumped harder, and apprehension made me retreat a step. I don’t think…
“Come here,” he said.
Uh, no. Maybe this isn’t a great idea.
His fingers took mine, and he tugged. “Get in this car right now.”
My stomach sank to my feet as I hesitated, and I felt a little sick.
I could go back to the house right now. I could go to bed with my music and audiobooks and my quiet house while the world continued to spin around me, and the next time I was given a chance to do something wild, stupid, and scary, it would be even easier to turn tail and run… Every day just as predictable as the last.
This was stupid. And illegal.
But he was fun. I didn’t want it to be over.
I closed my eyes and let my shoulders slump a little, defeated.