Rush (Rush, #1)

by Emma Scott

She walked around with a tissue clutched in her hand and a panicked look in her eye, as if she had lost something and couldn’t think where to look for it. She had lost something, her son, and she would never get him back.

Noah requires—someone with tenacity and compassion, who is able to see through the rough veneer to the suffering young man beneath. Someone who will treat Noah with kindness despite the fact that he might never return a fraction of the same courtesy to you.”

“He is suffering, Miss Conroy, and I fear that unless he can begin to find acceptance, that suffering will consume him, and the vibrant young man I knew will be lost.”

Noah Lake was stunning. There might have been a better word for him, but my brain wasn’t quite able to cough it up. I just stared.

“There are times in this life in which we must do what is best, and so often what is best is not what is easy.”

His body was meant for swimming in oceans and racing down ski slopes, not sitting hunched in darkened rooms.

I wished there was some way to give it all back to him. The sunsets and the blues skies, and even his adrenaline rushes…

My endless black was never going to go away. That was certainty. But kissing Charlotte had been a burst of light streaking across it, like a comet.

I’m so sorry I hurt you tonight. Or ever. You’re the light in my darkness, Charlotte. You are…”

I’m in love with Charlotte, I thought, and there it was. The rush I’d thought I’d lost forever.

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.

“A last wish I’m afraid won’t ever fade. I’ve made peace with my blindness but if I could see just once more—just one thing in this world—it would be you. I would only need a second. One second, and I would hold the image of you in my heart forever.”