Rush (City Lights Series, #3)

by Emma Scott

After the accident I thought I’d never know the kind of pure, unadulterated bliss I’d felt in Peru ever again. It was lost to me when the rocks stole my sight. That euphoria of endless possibility was gone forever. And then I met Charlotte.

“You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes at you behind my sunglasses. That I wear inside. Because I’m cool like Bono.”

“Until you, I was lost. Sometimes, you’re the only thing that ever feels real to me.” I stroked his cheek. “I’ll always be right here for you, Noah.”

“Oh, I see you brought a GQ model with you, as one does.”

“Are you wearing lipstick?” “Yes.” “You’re going to have to redo it,”

“You’re more than beautiful.” He caressed my cheek. “You’re the dawn, Charlotte, and no woman can hold a candle to you.”

“He wants you to have this,” Melanie said softly, “because he knows it’s the best thing for you.” I blinked back tears. “I know. And it is. But he’s the best thing too, though he doesn’t realize it. Not yet.”

We’re all finding a way to move on, I thought after we’d hung up. And moving on, I realized, wasn’t the same as forgetting or even letting go. It was making a tentative peace with tragedy and doing the best we could forever after.

moving slowly was better than not moving at all. I had to keep moving. Always. To her. She was at the end of a long, dark road where I was going to be beset with impossible obstacles, and maybe even danger, but I had to make that journey. I had to do everything possible for Charlotte. Everything and anything. Because the idea of failure, of living without her in my life, was a nightmare worse than blindness.

Everything I thought I knew about what it meant to be a man was stripped away. What remained was what it meant to be a man who loved a woman as much as I did. To be a human being experiencing this life in all its ugliness, its beauty, its pain and hate; good and evil; love and death. So yeah, I sobbed like a goddamn baby, but I’d never felt more like myself—whatever that was or whatever it was going to be—than at that moment.

I am blind but I’m no longer lost in the dark. The future with Charlotte is vast and bright, and over that horizon—our horizon—I can see to forever.

“I’ll do my best.” His best. This from a man who spent six weeks traveling across Europe blind for me. For us. Noah’s best meant his heart and soul, blood and guts, sweat and tears, and my heart was filled with so much love for him, I could hardly contain it.