Under cover of darkness, they ran, hand in hand, splashing through puddles, laughing, soaked and breathless when they arrived at his truck.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked, one heel up and back on the step bar.
He placed his hands on the wet body of his truck, boxing her in, and leaned down. The clean, masculine scent of him, leather, soap and a hint of spice, had her breathing deep.
“To rescue you. Plus, I owe you for bailing me out at the bachelor’s auction last week.”
A bright laugh bubbled up from within. It felt good after so much worry. “Still not sure if I got my money’s worth...”
“Chili dogs and chips?” he scoffed, looking not the least bit offended. “That took a lot of effort. Planning.”
She pressed lightly on his muscular chest. “Yeah. Right.”
He trapped her hand against his heart, and for a breathless moment they simply stared at each other.
Tell him about your eyes, urged the angel on one shoulder.
Keep quiet, the devil on her other shoulder whispered.
She cleared her throat and ignored the strange sense of letdown when he released her and stepped aside. “Anyway, I had to even up the score.”
“Never,” she shot back, forcing a teasing tone, needing to lose this strange awareness tugging her from the friend zone.
He angled his head and raised his thick, perfectly shaped brows. “As in you don’t want me rescuing you or pulling ahead in the tally?”
She lifted her chin and ignored the twinge inside about her eyesight. “Neither. Do I look like someone that needs rescuing?”
“Not a chance.” He chucked her gently under the chin and considered her. “It might be what I like about you best.” Her heart flailed at the deep, serious timbre in his voice. “That and your burned grilled cheese sandwiches.”
She laughed, but it didn’t break the intimacy swelling between them. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“Acquired? Maybe. Taste? That’s debatable.”
The air in her lungs faltered at his tease. Strategic withdrawal time.
She hopped into the truck but left the door open. Today had been a strange day with lots out of focus, especially these all-over-the-map feelings for Jared. Friends didn’t look at each like that.
“Get me out of here, you fool.”
“Always a fool for you, darlin’.” Deep dimples appeared in his flashbulb smile, and for a moment, she almost believed him. He winked, then shut the door.
She leaned her forehead against the window and watched her breath fog the glass. Flirting was as natural and necessary to Jared as breathing.
It didn’t mean anything.
And if she ever let herself think so, then she’d be the biggest fool of all.
“STARGARDT’S DISEASE?”
Amberley strained to bring the wavy lines of her ophthalmologist, Dr. Hamilton, into focus. Shameful tears pricked the back of her eyes. It’d been a long six weeks of appointments and tests since she’d returned home and begun searching for an answer about her failing eyesight, and now this...some strange name that seemed like it had nothing to do with her.
Dr. Hamilton’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “It’s a genetic disorder that causes macular degeneration.”
Her heart dropped all the way to the floor and splattered.
Was there a cure?
Lately, her central vision had deteriorated at a terrifying rate, hobbling her at home, her spirit and independence vanishing with it.
“Should we have discovered this when she was born?” her mother asked in what Amberley called her “Interrogation Voice.” She’d been a Carbondale county judge for almost ten years and a prosecutor for fifteen before that.
Out of the corner of Amberley’s eye, she spied her mother’s white face in sharp detail. A line where she hadn’t blended her makeup. A mole the size of a pencil eraser. A few strands of gray-brown hair that’d escaped her braid and fell across her cheek.
Strange that while the center of her vision failed, her peripheral vision still worked fine.
“Not necessarily. The condition appears, symptomatically, in childhood with some vision deficit that’s correctable with glasses or contacts. However, the loss of sight increases rapidly in the twenties, in some instances progressing to legal blindness.”
Her gasp cracked loud in the ophthalmologist’s office.
A hand—her mother’s—fell on Amberley’s knee. Squeezed.
Suddenly it became hard to breath.
“Am I going blind?”
Dr. Hamilton moved his head toward her. That much she could tell, but if he nodded or made a face, she didn’t have a clue. He appeared as just a fuzzy blob of tan and brown wearing something white—a lab coat she guessed.
“Complete blindness?” He paused—maybe waiting for her to affirm the question? Her mouth froze along with the rest of her, her heart beating down deep in a block of ice. “That would be rare, but we can’t rule it out.”
Panic rose. Would her vision be this way from now on? Forever? The world had morphed into a carnival fun house full of twisted, stretched and squashed reflections.
“There isn’t a procedure that could help? An implant? Gene therapy?” Her mother’s crisp voice turned sharp.
Another knee squeeze.
A drumming sound signaled Dr. Hamilton tapping on his desk. Then a long sigh.
“Gene therapy studies are still too early to be conclusive. Charlotte, I wish I had a better prognosis for Amberley. This is a heck of a thing.”
“So—so that’s it?” Amberley’s voice shook.
“We can arrange for a service dog.”
“I don’t need a dog,” she cried. “I need my eyes back.”
My life.
“The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can handle—”
Easy for a sighted person to say. Amberley shook off her mother’s hand, shot to her feet, stepped forward, then bumped into the desk with her thigh. Hard. Her teeth ground together. She’d become a hermit these last few weeks for this exact reason. At home, she navigated the space well enough, keeping the tormenting sense of helpless, hopeless at bay.
But here—here she couldn’t hide from it. In the real world, her vision blossomed into a bigger problem and she shrunk into someone incompetent, dependent, weak, a person she never wanted to be.
“I can handle a fifteen-hundred-pound stallion at fifty miles an hour. But this—I can’t deal with this. What am I supposed to do with my life?”
She’d been planning on trying out for the ERA Premier tour team again at their end-of-summer qualifiers. Now she’d never be good enough to ride with them.
Or ride at all...
The life she’d always wanted ended before it’d even started, and she had no contingency plan.
“Honey, let’s not think so far ahead.”
Dr. Hamilton made a soothing noise. “Your mother’s