2022 Watty Award Winner ✨
In which a blind girl and a disfigured army vet attempt to find love and belonging in a big bad world.
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Olivia Harris is blind, and that's just the way it is. Naviga...
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DARKNESS DOESN'T EXIST for Olivia. Light, dark, bright, black... it's all irrelevant. Her eyes don't see, her brain has never understood the visual difference between the morning and midnight skies.
When she stirs awake, leaden and stuffy, an unfamiliar bed, it's not the darkness she notices, it's the sound.
A firm pressure stretched on the mattress beside her, fitful shudders, unintelligible muttering. The scent of him reminds her where she is, who she's with. His breathing is thick and shallow. Her mind is still shrouded with sleep but she forces herself to stay still and quiet, to listen.
"No..." A bleak, heavy whisper. "J—James..."
Olivia's heart contorts into a twist. He told her he doesn't sleep well, but she didn't realize...
Her hands are gentle. A tentative sweep along his clammy forehead, brushing disheveled waves of hair away from his eyes. His face is feverish, his arms pinned tight to his sides, clenched fists, shoulders tense and wired, his entire body taut, agitated mumbles flitting past his parted lips.
"It's okay," she whispers, pressing nearer, bumping the side of his head with her nose. "It's okay, Connor. You're just having a bad dream. Hey, I'm here, it's okay..."
Quiet coos, the tender brushing of her fingertips against his strained jawbone. It takes a few moments before a gasp of startled air bursts from him, his eyes snapping open, body jerking upwards.
Ripped out of his nightmare, Connor's lungs gape, sore, drained of air, the darkness dense around him, eyes scraping frantically along the blackened ceiling. He was back in Mosul, pinned beneath the collapsed building, remembering James' laughter splintering suddenly in the explosion, he couldn't move, the entire left side of his body was crushed and he couldn't see anyone, anything, it was all smoke and ash and the noxious searing reek ofcharred flesh and chemical burns and—
"Hey," oh so soft, a shadowed halo of warmth leaning over him, tucked close to his side. "Are you okay?"
He gulps, his mouth all parched and papery. Squinting at her, he shakes his head. His blood is still pounding through his veins, fight or flight. "I'm..." There aren't words, not right now. Her knuckles flutter beneath his eyelids, swiping away a wet smear of tears.
"What do you need?" she murmurs. Her fingers lace with his, a comforting grasp.
He shakes his head again. Hoarse, exhausted, "I don't... I just... I don't know how to make it stop..."
Scrubbing at his bloodshot eyes, he shifts to sit up, sheets bunched low on his torso, his t-shirt clinging to hot skin. He leans back against the headboard, trying to pull in longer breaths, to get his heart-rate back down. He feels hopeless, ashamed, restless, beaten.
