Ruthless Love (Ash and Innocence 1)

I spent the next half hour using a broom handle that I taped a knife to like a spear to hack away at the weeds. It was horribly inefficient, dangerous, and meant I had to keep reapplying the tape. But we moved from downtown Chicago, and I knew there weren’t any gardening tools waiting to be unpacked.

I was sweating when the sound of a car engine made me look up. It was coming from the direction of the gate. I shielded my eyes and watched as a sleek, black car rolled down the path past my house. It was one of those cars so low to the ground and so angular that it had to be nauseatingly expensive.

When I saw the driver-side window was down, I inched my wheelchair closer to the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of my mysterious neighbor. I imagined he’d look something like Willy Wonka, for some reason. Eccentric, older, and mysterious.

The setting sun shone straight into the car like an orange spotlight, and the boy inside was no Willy Wonka.

He was also staring straight back at me.

My hands squeezed tight on the rubber wheels of my chair. He was breathtaking. Before I’d had time to take in much more than his wolfish eyes, he rolled the nearly black window up.

He revved the engine, then sped around the corner so sharply that the wheels spun, kicking up rocks and dirt that pattered against my legs. The car tore away down the down road.

I watched it go, nodding slowly to myself. Yeah. My luck was officially shitty.

I was living in the setting of a Stephen King novel. I was me, with all the obvious drawbacks that brought. I was stuck in a stupid wheelchair and I took more prescription medicine than a geriatric patient getting cancer treatments. Oh, and my social life was about as lively as a corpse.

The worst part was I couldn’t even happily fantasize about some dream guy looking past my chair and falling for me. I didn’t want to be somebody’s burden—like a pathetic little charity case, constantly needing attention and care. I didn’t want to be the broken thing that people had to tip-toe around, or to be the one girl people were afraid to get mad at. I just wanted to be normal.

Except normal wasn’t in the cards for me. That meant I couldn’t even imagine what it’d be like to date the douchebag with the fast car, or the nerdy guy who spends too much time on his computer.

I brushed the dirt off my legs and looked toward the house. I was already feeling completely drained, which wasn’t unusual around dinner time. The dizziness and fatigue were the main things that kept me from living a normal life, but mom said it was a small price to pay for staying healthy. At least, that was the line I tried to play on repeat to keep my sanity.

I looked back to the road where I could still see the faint cloud of dust from the boy’s car settling. I set my eyes on the back porch of the house and gripped my chair tighter. It was maybe twenty steps away.

Twenty little steps…

I got to my feet. There was nothing wrong with my legs, which easily took my weight. But my head immediately started spinning. It felt like an invisible current was pushing me from side to side and front to back, until it took every ounce of concentration just to stay upright.

I took a cautious step forward, then another. I was still on my feet. A shaky smile formed on my face, but my balance faltered. I crashed to the ground in a heap, then rolled to my back and watched the sky spin.2TristanI leaned against the fence, still dripping sweat. Football practice was over for me, but the special teams unit was still out on the field working on kick offs. They’d done such a shit job of it in practice that coach made them all stay after. It was brutal, even by his standards, considering these were just our offseason workouts. We still had a few more weeks before the season and the school year even began.

The sun beat on my bare shoulders and there wasn’t so much as a hint of a breeze. It was about as brutally hot as Maine could get, but I didn’t hide from the discomfort. I leaned harder into the fence, letting the triangular points of metal dig into my forearms until it stung. I focused on the way it felt like a slow burning acid was pumping through me, leaking into my muscles with every heartbeat.

“You good?” Logan asked. He was fresh out of the shower and wearing nothing but a pair of black athletic shorts. His dark hair fell in loose curls to the nape of his neck and around his ears in the careless sort of way that drove girls crazy.