Love is Blind (17 page)

“He knows as well. Hopefully he realizes quickly
that I’m not just going to forgive and forget right away.”

Jared patted my leg and then stood up. “Well,
I’m going to go make some popcorn and put on a movie. You want to
join me?”

I nodded. “Sounds like fun,” I said, holding out
my hand for him to help me to my feet. Once I was standing, I
stretched my arms over my head. “Let’s get this party started.”

I spent the rest of the night hanging out with
Jared and Liam, just goofing around and watching movies. Blake
tried calling me a couple of times, but I ignored him. I didn’t
want to make him suffer like Jared had said, but I did want him to
think about what I’d said.

The next day, I was playing around on the
piano in the morning when a movement to my right caught my eye. I
turned in that direction and frowned when I saw Blake standing
there. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“You wouldn’t answer my calls, so I figured the
only way you’d talk to me would be if I showed up. Liam let me
in.”

“Traitor,” I muttered before standing up. “Come
on then, let’s go to my room so we can talk.”

I walked past him and heard him following me
down the hallway to my room. Once we were in there with the door
closed, I walked to my bed and sat on the edge, folding my arms
over my chest. “Talk,” I said.

He sighed and came to sit beside me. “You’re not
going to make this easy, are you?”

“Why should I make it easy?”

“Because I’m cute?” he offered.

I struggled not to smile. “Nice try.”

His shoulders slumped a little and he let his
arms dangle loosely between his knees. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“Why are you sorry?”

“Damn it, you know I hate apologizing. The least
you could do is cut me some slack.”

“No, the least I could do is not smack you for
being a jerk,” I retorted.

“I guess that’s true.” He tilted his head in my
direction. “I’m sorry for being an insensitive jerk. I got
frustrated because I can’t treat you the way I want to, and I took
it out on you.”

I smiled. “Was that so hard?”

“Yes,” he grumbled, but then scooted closer to
me. “Am I forgiven?”

“That depends. Are you going to give me a hard
time about walking you to your classes?”

He slid his arm around my waist. “No, because it
means I get to spend more time with you.”

My heart melted a little. “You can be so sweet
sometimes,” I murmured as I put my head on his shoulder. “When
you’re not being an ass, that is,” I added.

He chuckled and pressed a kiss to the side of my
head. “Just admit it. You like both sides of my personality.”

I rolled my eyes. “I suppose, but I could
definitely go for you being sweet more often.”

“I’ll work on it,” he promised. He raised his
hand to my cheek and tilted my head so that he could kiss my lips
softly. “We okay now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, then do you want to go out and do
something?”

This surprised me a little. He was never the one
to suggest doing something. “Sure. What did you have in mind?”

He shrugged. “Nothing really. I have Abby here,
so we could take her and Tonto out for a walk or something.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.” We stood up
together and walked out of my room, heading to the front door. Both
dogs came around the corner when we called their names and Blake
put Abby’s harness before we walked outside.

Blake took my hand and laced his fingers with
mine as we headed down the sidewalk. “Anywhere in particular that
you want to walk to?” he asked.

“Not really. We could go to the park if you
want,” I replied.

He nodded and we walked in a comfortable
silence. Once we got to the park, we sat on our bench and I let my
head rest on his shoulder. He turned his head and put his cheek
against the top of my head.

“So, I was thinking about something,” I said
after a few minutes.

“Okay?”

I took his hand and played with his fingers.
“Would you come to the hospital with me this afternoon?”

He laced our fingers together and squeezed my
hand. “You want me to?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know you can’t see him, but it
would be nice having you there with me,” I mumbled.

He raised his head and used his free hand to
tilt my face up. “I’ll go with you.” He kissed me gently. “I know
it’s still hard for you to go there.”

I blew out a breath. “Yeah, it is. It’s been
almost ten months now. The chances of him waking up decrease every
single day,” I said, my voice cracking near the end.

Blake half picked me up and maneuvered me until
I was sitting on his lap with his arms snugly around me. “I can’t
imagine how hard this must be for you. You’re so happy all the time
that it’s easy to forget that you’ve been through so much.”

I tucked my head into the crook of his neck and
breathed in his scent. “Just like it’s easy to forget that you’re
blind because you can get around so easily.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Do you mean
that?”

I furrowed my brow. “Mean what?”

“That you forget that I’m blind.”

I pulled my head back to look at him. “Yeah.
You get around better than I can sometimes. I’ve never seen you
trip over anything.”

He pulled my face towards him and kissed me
tenderly. “You never cease to amaze me,” he murmured against my
lips.

“Well, I’m an amazing person,” I replied with a
smile.

He chuckled. “You really are.”

We stayed at the park for another hour, even
though it was pretty chilly out. Then we brought the dogs back to
my place before heading to the hospital. When we got there, Blake
took my hand and we headed inside. We went directly up to Jake’s
room and I brought Blake over to the bedside. “Blake, this is my
brother Jake.”

“What does he look like?” Blake asked. This was
part of our routine now; I described everything to him when he
asked.

“Well, he has dark hair like I do, but his eyes
are gray instead of brown. His hair has gotten a little longer
since the accident. He always kept it short and spiky, but now it’s
down past his ears.” As I spoke, I reached out to run my fingers
through Jake’s hair. “I wish you could actually meet him. I think
you’d get along after the initial big brother questioning and
intimidation.”

“What would that include?”

I smiled softly. “Pretty much what your
intentions are with me and he’d threaten you with bodily harm if
you were to hurt me.”

Blake found my hand with his and tugged until I
had my back against his chest with his arms around my waist. “So he
would’ve kicked my ass for yesterday, huh?”

I laughed a little. “Yeah, probably. Jared said
he’d do it, but that it wouldn’t solve anything. Jake would’ve done
it anyways and not cared if it solved anything or not.”

“He sounds like a good brother.”

“He is. I miss him so much. It’s harder with him
than it was with my parents, because of that slight possibility
that he might wake up. At least with my parents there was that
sense of finality, as horrible as that is.”

Blake put his chin on my shoulder. “I can
understand what you mean. Your parents are gone, but Jake is still
here, even if he isn’t awake.”

I nodded. “Exactly.” I turned in his arms to
give him a hug. “Want to sit down?”

“Sure.”

I guided him to the chair and he sat down,
pulling me with him onto his lap. I put one arm around his neck and
let my other hand rest lightly on his chest. “Thanks for coming
with me.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Hailey. I’m more
than happy to come with you.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.” He pressed a kiss to my hair. “Why
don’t you tell me a story about you and Jake?”

I furrowed my brow. “What kind of story?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe something he
did that made you happy.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Oh, I’ve got a
good one. It was my ninth birthday and he had gone out to get me my
present. He was secretive about it, but I knew that that’s what he
was off to do. He was gone for about an hour and he came back with
a big box, which he put into his room. He said I wasn’t allowed to
open it until the party later.

“Well, by the time I was ready to open presents,
I was almost dying of curiosity. He went to get the box and I was
bouncing in excitement. But when he came back a moment later, he
was empty-handed and had this weird look on his face. When I asked
him what was wrong, he gave me this sheepish look. ‘Well Hailey,’
he said, ‘I bought you a rabbit for your birthday but it seems to
have gotten out of the box and I don’t know where it went’.

“I was so excited about having a bunny that it
took me a moment to realize that it was currently loose in the
house somewhere. Jake had left his bedroom door open, so no one
knew where it was. Everyone split up and started looking for it.
After half an hour, we finally found it hiding underneath the couch
in the living room. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to get caught and
we spent another half an hour chasing that damn thing around the
house until we finally cornered it.”

Blake was laughing at this point. “I feel bad
for the poor bunny. Having a herd of people chasing it around the
house must have traumatized it.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I think it might have. But I
had that thing four years. I named him Houdini since he was
apparently such an escape artist.”

“Sounds like that was an exciting birthday.”

“It really was. Jake was always really good to
me. He didn’t mind having me tag along with him, and Jared was
always the same. I spent a lot of time with the two of them until
they both went off to university.”

Blake asked me to tell him some more stories, so
we spent the next hour just talking. By the time we were ready to
leave, I felt a little lighter. Blake slung an arm over my shoulder
as we left the room and I let myself lean into him. “You know,
you’re pretty amazing yourself,” I told him.

He tilted his head a little. “Not that I don’t
agree, but what makes you say that?”

I smiled at his cockiness. “Because you seem to
know exactly what I need to keep me from dwelling on things too
much.”

He shrugged. “It’s mainly just dumb luck.”

We had reached the car by this time, so I
turned to face him, placing my hands on his cheeks. “No it’s not.
It’s because you’re a genuinely good person who just got a little
off track for a while.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say I’m on track now,” he
replied.

“Maybe not all the time, but you’re working on
it. Stick with me and you’ll get there eventually.”

He smiled and bent down to kiss the tip of my
nose. “I guess I can do that.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” I said dryly.

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around me
tightly. “Don’t worry Hales. You’re stuck with me now.”

I heaved a sigh as I put my arms around him. “I
guess I can handle that.”

Chapter nineteen

On Friday morning, Blake and I walked into our
Biology class and took our seats. Mr. White wasn’t there yet, so I
scooted my chair closer to Blake and laced my fingers with his,
talking quietly with him. When the bell rang and the teacher still
wasn’t there the class started murmuring, wondering where he
was.

The door opened, and an older man that I
didn’t recognize came in. He had white hair and a slightly wrinkled
face that was set in a frown. “Settle down, class,” he called out.
“Mr. White is ill today, so I will be teaching. My name is Mr.
Grant and I will not tolerate any nonsense.”

I moved away from Blake with a quiet sigh. “This
class is going to be a barrel of fun,” I muttered.

Blake snorted but otherwise didn’t reply. Mr.
Grant went up to the blackboard and wrote a few questions down.
“Read these and answer them quietly. When you are done, occupy
yourselves without speaking.”

I rolled my eyes and took out some paper and a
pencil. Blake scooted his chair a little closer to mine so I could
read the questions to him and he could help me answer them. It was
the system we had come up with over the past couple of weeks and
Mr. White was more than happy to let us work together.

Apparently, Mr. Grant wasn’t quite as happy with
the arrangement. He came up to our table as I was reading the
second question to Blake. “What part of quietly did you not
understand?” he snapped.

I looked up in surprise. “Blake and I always do
our work together. Mr. White has no problem with it.”

“Well, I am not Mr. White and I will not
tolerate you talking. Move away from each other and do your work
silently.”

“But sir-”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” he
interrupted. “And you, take those sunglasses off immediately.”

“But-” I tried to speak again.

“Quiet!” he snapped. “If you refuse to listen, I
will send you down to the office. I don’t have the patience to deal
with hormone-riddled teenagers who want to canoodle during class.
And I told you to take those sunglasses off!”

My cheeks flamed with embarrassment, but
Blake got angry. “Don’t talk to her like that!” he snarled. “And
I’m not taking my sunglasses off, you ignorant dickhead.”

The teacher’s nostrils flared before he reached
out and grabbed Blake’s sunglasses, ripping them off of him. “When
I tell you to do something, I expect you to listen.”

Something inside of me snapped and I jumped
to my feet. “You jerk! Give those back right now!”

Mr. Grant turned his glare back to me. “Both of
you go to the office now!”

Blake snorted and stood up readily.
“Gladly.”

I put my stuff into my bag and then Blake took
it from me and found my hand with his free one. As I passed Mr.
Grant, I snatched the glasses out of his hand. “Jackass,” I growled
and then Blake and I walked out of the room.