Serene (Shattered Book 3) Read online

  “If you unpack our food and warm it up, you will be the best man in the world for me.”

  I loved the way she said it. It made my heart warm up pleasantly.

  I stepped into the apartment and leaning closer to her face I said, “Who would have thought it would be so easy to please you. After what your sister told me about you…”

  She put her hands on her hips and said, “And what exactly did she tell you about me?”

  “I’m not telling you a word. After all, you have a whole night to make me change my opinion about you.”

  She shook her head, smiling as brightly as ever. “I doubt whatever Emery told you about me can be crossed out by one night only.”

  “Who said it’s gonna be one night only?”

  She couldn’t see me now, but what I saw in her eyes made me want to drop the damn bags and pull her into my embrace. She was wearing a pair of oversized jeans, torn here and there and a simple white shirt with a V-neck. Her hair was pulled in a messy ponytail, her lips glistened with a barely visible soft pink gloss that made her lip color look just a little brighter than its natural color.

  “Stop flirting with me, Dr. Burke. If you listened carefully to my sister, you should know that I’m a tough cookie.”

  “Yeah, well, I have had enough time with you to figure it out on my own. Men don’t stand a chance when it comes to impressing you, Miss Ryan.” I sighed. “Who knows, maybe I’m just the right guy to change it.”

  She chuckled. “You are here to feed me, not to impress me.”

  Little do you know…

  “The kitchen is there,” she pointed to one of the doors to my right. “Make yourself at home. I need to make a call. I got an idea about the project my former boss needed my help with. So I’ll let you own my kitchen for a while.”

  “Okay. Take your time.”

  I looked around her spacious living room that opened to the terrace. I bet if I went out there, I would see the windows of my own apartment. The buildings we lived in were on the opposite sides of the road.

  Coming to the kitchen, I was surprised to see the number of cookbooks she owned. Did she use to love cooking? I wouldn’t be surprised to know that.

  I put the bags on the table and started unpacking them. Inside there was a bottle of red wine, two portions of spaghetti with mushroom sauce, sliced chicken fillet and chocolate ice cream. My mouth watered. I swear the girl knew all the secrets of mine, starting from my personality that she could read from the fragrance I used and to my food preferences that I didn’t tell her a word about.

  There was a red light flashing on a small CD player standing on the table. The record was set on pause. Curious, I pushed the play button and it turned out to be an audiobook. From what I managed to hear before Ivy entered the kitchen, it was one of James Bond stories.

  “I can’t believe the addiction is that strong,” I said, smiling.

  “Will you believe if I say it’s the first JB story I’m listening to?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. You got me there. I love James Bond and you are right, the addiction is incurable.”

  My addiction to her was getting stronger with every passing second, and I wondered if I would ever be able to find a cure of it…

  “Did your boss like your ideas?” I asked to distract myself from the thoughts that had been bothering me all week long.

  “He always likes everything I suggest.”

  “I bet he has a secret crush on you.”

  She laughed. “I doubt that. He’s been happily married for thirty years now.”

  “So what? Men are helpless when it comes to beautiful women.”

  “Said a plastic surgeon.”

  “Who knows everything about beautiful women,” I added.

  “Oh, does he?” Her look became thoughtful. “What do you find beautiful, Dr. Burke?”

  I hesitated for a moment, giving her a careful look. “Beauty is not something that you describe with simple words. If you find something beautiful, you fall for it, unintentionally. You look at it and you can’t take your eyes away from it. Beauty is disarming. It’s magnetic. It pulls you into a vortex of its glowing magic. You can’t see it, but you feel like you will never love anything more than what you can see here and now…”

  Silence filled the kitchen.

  To me, beauty was her and she was beauty. A pure masterpiece of soft, perfect lines that made her so special. I could enjoy watching her forever.

  “Are you still hungry?” I asked quietly, afraid to break the inexplicable intimacy of the moment.

  All the time that I was talking, her eyes were focused on me. They trapped me it its hidden world where everything was so much different from what I used to see and feel.

  She cleared her throat and said, “I am. Actually, I feel like I’ll faint if I don’t sink my teeth into something yummy. Now.”

  Smiling, I said, “Okay. Let’s feed you. Where do you keep plates?”

  We brought the food to the living room and placed everything on a coffee table next to the couch. I couldn’t but admit that seeing Ivy navigate around her place so easily still surprised me. There was a lot of, let’s call it ‘dangerous’ furniture in the apartment. But she acted as if she could see everything very clearly and even when I offered my help with the wine glasses, she said she knew where to put them.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said carefully.

  She smirked. “It took you almost forty minutes to get to your first well thought out question.”

  “How do you know how much time passed since my arrival?”

  “The clock on the wall. You probably didn’t even notice that it’s a voice clock. I turned the sound down so that it was barely audible. When you are blind, you can hear what others can’t. Jesse says I have a third ear on my back, because every time the kids break something I’m the first person to hear it breaking. Okay, now ask your question. And don’t worry, no matter what Emery told you about me, I’m not gonna kill you with my fork if I don’t like your question.”

  “Okay.” I let out an intentionally loud breath. “You just simplified my life.”

  Laughing quietly, she said, “As a rule, I avoid personal questions, but with you, it feels quite easy to talk about my state and the rest… It’s new to me. I never let anyone except my sister into my blind world experiences.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m a doctor, but not one of those who told you they couldn’t cure you.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Actually, there are so many questions I would like to ask, but I don’t know what to start with.”

  “Start with something simple.”

  There were no simple questions in my head. I knew that whatever I was about to ask would make her think about her past. And I didn’t want to upset her.

  “Tell me about your dreams,” I said. “What do they look like?”

  “Like my dream life – full of colors and faces that I can no longer see. I love dreaming. It’s the only thing that still feels more or less real about my blind days and nights. Sometimes those are memories of my past, sometimes new things. But you know what the best thing about them is? They are no longer nightmares. And in my case, it’s a huge relief.”

  “What about the emotions you feel when deep asleep?”

  “The emotional content of my dreams varies. When in a dream, I can feel anger, happiness, even excitement. In fact, dreams are the only part of my life that hasn’t changed with time. In my dreams, I can see and feel everything just the way it used to be before the accident. Sometimes I can’t wait to go to bed and see another dream or two. Especially after eventful days. Everything I feel during the day transforms into a dream. I love it. It’s like watching a movie based on your day. You live through it all over again, with the only difference that in a dream your eyes are wide open and they can see everything around you.”

  Without thinking, I asked the first question that came to my mind, “Have you dreamed about me?”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ivy

  If I could turn back time and stay at Stanley’s party a little longer, I would do it without hesitation. No matter how uneasy everything about the night made me feel. At least I would get a chance to spend more time with him… It was like I couldn’t get enough of the new sensations running through me, too scared to suffocate from their amount and never feel anything at all again.

  There was no point in lying, so I said, “I’ve been dreaming about you since the very first time we met at Emery’s.” I paused, not sure how to interpret his silence. “Last night I wanted to call my sister and ask for your phone number so I could call you and tell you to stop haunting my dreams, because for some stupid reason, my mind wouldn’t show me anything but a blurry image of the guy in a dark suit whose scent reminded me of the ocean. Do you think it’s weird?”

  “No,” he responded in a soft voice. I could feel that he was sitting pretty close to me, and just like the first time we met, his closeness did crazy things to my body and mind.

  I felt like I was running away, constantly turning back and hoping to see him follow me. Even right now, I had no idea what he was doing in my apartment, except for the obvious reason that we were sharing supper. I didn’t know what made him call me or what made me invite him to my place. I did it without thinking. And I never did anything without thinking.

  “What’s one thing that you miss most of all about your past life?” He asked.

  My answer was obvious. “Driving my car.”

  “I should have guessed,” he said with a smile in his words. “What else?”

  “The sun. Not just the artificial light, but the view of the sun going down with starlet or pale pink streaks in the sky. I would go to the terrace and sit there for hours, thinking about new pictures I could draw. Creative minds, they are a bit insane, you know? We love peace, silence and all the things that others might call crazy. Loneliness doesn’t scare us. We love talking to ourselves, arguing even. But in the end, we still look for something or someone to inspire us. We can easily spend a whole day staring at a blank piece of paper, thinking about the words or pictures or music we would like to put there. Then send it into a trash can, say ‘the hell with it’ and go out for a double burger with coke.”

  It made him burst out laughing. “I’ll remember it.”

  “But there’s one huge advantage of being legally blind – I can find missing things so much faster than any fully sighted person.”

  “Really?”

  “Ask my sister.”

  “Well, I’m a hopeless loser of things. I never know where my phone is, not to mention my car keys that I tend to leave in places people would never think of looking for them. I once put them in my fridge. If you ask me what made me put them in there, I won’t be able to answer that question.”

  “But when it comes to your work, you know everything and you can answer any question, right?”

  “It’s what makes someone like me a pro. I love my job. If something goes wrong about my life, work becomes my cure. I make others happy and it makes me happy as well.”

  “I can hear you there. Same happens when I work with the kids. They replace the absence of paint in my hands with the sound of their laughter or the words of gratitude. Some of them are just like me – they lost their vision and now are trying to get used to their new lives. It’s not easy, I know it from my own experience. But they don’t give up. Unlike me, they never once said they didn’t want to live a life like this…”

  I felt Stanley moved closer to me and took my hand in his, lacing our fingers together; his shoulder brushed against mine.

  “What do you feel when someone takes your hand?” He asked.

  “Will you believe if I say that I rarely let anyone touch me?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are not many people I can trust. Becoming blind made me very cautious. When someone’s touching me, I think of all the bad things their touch could lead to.”

  “What about me? It’s not the first time that I’m touching you, but you are still here, sitting on a couch with me, and not running away from me.”

  “You are different… I’m not afraid of you, I trust you. You make me feel secure.”

  “So it’s okay if touching you I might think about doing all the ‘bad’ things with you?”

  I laughed. “It depends on how bad those things might be. I used to attend self-defense classes, you know?”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “No. Just a piece of information that might be useful. A friend of mine who attended those classes with me once joked saying that her boyfriend never fights with her because she can shoulder throw him faster than he takes down his pants.”

  The sound of his quiet laugh vibrated on my skin, his breathing touched the side of my neck. How close his lips were from my skin? What if he tried to kiss me? Would I try to shop him?

  Most likely not…

  “I wanna try something… Stand up.” He rose from the couch and pulled me by the hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You said you trust me, right?”

  “Can I take my words back?”

  “Too late,” he said right into my ear.

  Then he turned me around so that now I was standing with my back to him. He took a few steps away from me and said, “Fall back.”

  “What?”

  “Fall back. It’s not a hard task, is it?”

  I hesitated, recalling my words about trust. I always thought it should come with time; only knowing someone well enough you could trust them. But with Stanley, I never thought about the little time I knew him. There was something about the way he treated me that made me trust him with my life.

  I closed my eyes, even though it didn’t change anything for me, and fell back.

  In two split seconds, I felt a storm of emotions, starting from fear of hurting my back and to the freedom of falling into the unknown.

  But when Stanley’s strong arms wrapped around me, something completely different hit me…

  He lifted me up with one arm wrapped around my knees and the other one – around my waist. My hands flew up and I wrapped them around his neck.

  “Can we repeat it?” I asked, both excited because of the way he was touching me now and feeling as silly as ever.

  “I knew you would love it.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because something’s telling me that you haven’t had real fun in a long time. When was the last time you went to the amusement park? Or jumped into a fountain in the middle of a park with dozens of people staring at you?”

  “Oh, God, I never did that before. As for the amusement park, I guess it was like ten years ago.”

  “Okay. I’ll take you there one day. Do you like cotton candy?”

  “I love it.”

  “Me too.” He stopped talking and I immediately felt a little uneasy.

  “You can put me down,” I said, not sure if I wanted to leave the warmth of his embrace. It felt both calming and somehow intoxicating. As if I had never felt better than right now, with him.

  “The problem is… I don’t know what else to come up with to hold you in my arms at least a little longer.”

  Thank God I couldn’t see a damn thing now, or I would probably get lost in the look of his eyes that I knew were drinking me in; I could feel their gaze studying me. I tried to remember the last time I felt so shy, but failed. Not even when kissing my high school crush did I feel like a fish thrown out of the ocean.

  “Do you even know how beautiful you are right now?”

  Uh… He just had to intensify my embarrassment to the maximum.

  After the accident, many things changed for me, including the way I felt about myself. I used to be brave and strong and fearless. I used to dive into everything that would bring new emotions. I made plans about my future, I dreamed with my eyes wide open. And never once did I doubt my next move.

  But right now, even taking
a breath felt like the hardest thing to do. My heart raced in my chest and every small part of me vibrated in response to Stanley’s words.

  As if he wanted to test how far I would let him go with his words, he continued, “I look at you, and the world around me stops spinning, as if giving me time to memorize you, every perfect line of your lips, your eyes, a soft blush on your cheeks. I’m tempted to make you do things you never did with anyone before, make you feel things that you never felt before, say the words that you never thought you would say to anyone and dream the dreams that would make you want to call me in the middle of the night and ask me to come here and stay with you until the sun wakes up. I don’t know what’s going on with me, Ivy… I don’t want to define it. All I want is to sink into it, let it fill me up and take me away. Do you think it means something is wrong with me? Or maybe it’s just something that I never experienced before I met you. I don’t know… But whatever it is, I want to share it with you.”

  “Stanley…”

  “And before you say something, I want you to know that I don’t care about how little you can see.” He put me down and cupped my face in his hands. “I will show you everything with my words, with my touch, with my kiss…”

  I knew that something inevitable was coming, but I never expected it to be so damn perfect.

  His lips brushed against mine, as if asking for permission and giving me a chance to stop him.

  My heart missed a beat. My body froze.

  Warm lips pressed against mine, both soft and firm. My eyelids fluttered to shut, making blissful lights explode in the middle of my endless darkness. I could taste wine in his kiss; it made me drunk and high in zero point five seconds. Reality faded away, leaving nothing but his lips moving over mine to focus on.

  My palms rested on his sides, too afraid to slide even an inch up or down.

  It was almost as good as the first kiss you share with a guy: a little shy, but so tempting, it could make the stars fall. I forgot what it felt like to be wrapped in sensations that make you both weak and as strong as ever. I forgot what it felt like to be kissed like that. No, scratch that – like that never happened before.