Page 26 of The Villain

“Here.” His gruff word was followed by a weight on my shoulders. A jacket. Aheavyjacket that was warm and soaked in his scent. I felt for the edge, smooth leather greeting my fingertips.

A leather jacket.

“Thank you.” I curled deeper into the masculine cocoon, and when he stepped back, the vacuum of darkness swallowed me again. Biting my lip, I tried to imagine our surroundings. The shape of the leaves catching on the wind. Their color brimming with the sun-saturated summer green. And the ocean—would it be visible on the horizon? Blue and glittering against the sky?

There, I lost the image. All the threads I’d woven together tangled back into a knot of darkness.

“Do you think my sight will come back?”

I tried not to dwell on the alternative because it wouldn’t make anything better, but sometimes I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t help but worry if this was it—the end of the career I’d envisioned before it had hardly started.

I’d survived so much to be back here—to be painting and drawing again. And to think that could be irrevocably altered…

“Dr. Nilsen believes so.” His low voice chased away my thoughts.

“Do you?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

I shivered. “You’re very black and white, aren’t you?”

“Makes things simple,” he grunted.

A small smile curled up my cheeks. “I knew someone like that once,” I said, and just as quickly, I shoved the memoryaway. “I thought I’d notice some change by now—some improvement. But every day is the same. I know I should probably be worried about other things, butI’m an artist. My whole life…is what I see.”

My throat felt thick. To say it out loud, to hear what could be gone forever, it felt like the air had been taken right from my lungs.

“I understand.” His deep voice grounded me.

“I feel like I can’t trust anything.”Oh no.Heat lifted to my cheeks, realizing how that sounded. I clamored to correct myself. “I didn’t mean you. I know I can trust you,” I said quickly, feeling like the biggest, ungrateful jerk. “I feel like I can’t trust myself, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “It makes perfect sense.Losing trust in your own instincts…is one of the hardest battles to fight.”

He spoke like he knew firsthand, the tenor of his voice cutting a measure lower, the inflection of his tone hanging at the end of certain words like he had gathered strength to speak the rest.

I wondered if I were able to see him, if I would’ve noticed those small changes, or if this was some superpower silver lining to having been robbed of sight.

“It feels like I’m losing myself,” I admitted softly, my voice cracking.

There was no reason to hide my vulnerability. How could I when I relied on them for everything? Food. A place to stay. A babysitter while I showered. How could I when it literally covered my body in bumps and bruises and was written across my face in the form of an eye mask?

I felt the solemn assessment of his gaze penetrate through me, but I fought the urge to fidget, instead tightening my hold on his jacket like it was a life vest. “Even now, how do I knowwhat time it is? Is it even daylight? Are the stars out? To think it could be anytime, and I could be anywhere—at the edge of the ocean or on the edge of a cliff—is mind-boggling.”

He didn’t reply, but I knew he was looking at me. At least the eye mask hid from him the well of tears that burned in my eyes.

“I have no picture. All my life, I’ve had a picture…” I trailed off, and the silence that lingered was just as heavy as the darkness encasing my world.

What if this was my future?

It would be okay.I would make it okay.

“To your left is the safe house. A small, dark wood cabin with big windows framing the gray front door. It’s built up against a grass-covered hill, which camouflages it from the back.”

His rasped words brushed bold strokes through my mind, painting right over the darkness. I sucked in a warm breath, feeling the safe house come to life before me. A modern hobbit’s house framed into a grassy knoll.

“In front of the house is a small clearing in the forest where we’re standing now. Grass and daffodils all the way to the trees.” Sentence by sentence, the darkness cowered and retreated in the face of his firm tone. “The evergreen trees are thick, so you can’t see too far even in winter, but now, with the rest of the trees in bloom…it’s impossible.”

“I can smell them. Pine and ocean,” I murmured. “And I can hear the way the wind rustles every needle and leaf.”My head tipped back, feeling that same breeze on my face.

---