Blind Side Read Online Free Page B

drive,” I say and focus my attention on the road ahead, where gravel cracks under shadows from the headlights.

    * * *
    I remember the relief I felt the very moment I was wheeled out of the hospital by my best friend, Ashley. It had been the hardest week of my life, but I knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that in a mere matter of minutes, I’d be home in the arms of my loving husband. It was supposed to be a surprise for him, but it was I who was blindsided the moment I turned the key.
    There he was on the couch, bare-ass naked thrusting into some woman who wasn’t me. I watched them fuck on the couch we had spent hours quarreling overat the department store. He wanted black leather and I wanted white. He won the argument, as he always did.
    I knew I should have closed the door gently and saved the confrontation for another day, but even back then, I didn’t have the best judgment. I could barely stand, but I was ready to kill them both. I shouted at them, something along the lines of, ‘ you stupid fucking prick’, and they pulled themselves away from each other like a fruit roll up.
    It was then when I realized I knew exactly who was on the receiving end of my husband’s tainted cock. Any fire I had for a confrontation dispelled from my body in an instant, and I was out the door in a millisecond flat. I never got the revenge I so craved, but when I look at this sexy stranger beside me, I think to myself that now’s as good a time as any other.
    But it’s not about revenge. Not really. I’ll lie to myself to make it easier, but deep down I’ll always know it’s about something else. It’s about being free, tired of living my life as a bird in a tiny cage. It’s about feeling something other than the sharpest fragments of glass stuck in my soul since the accident. It’s about safety, because I don’t trust myself when I’m alone, and I’m always alone, even when I’m standing in a crowd of a thousand people.
    I watch my hand as it falls upon his thigh. I watch the way he first looks down at my palm, and then at me. I watch the way his throat pulses as he swallows a nervous breath.
    “Aren’t you married?” he questions dryly. I don’t respond. “I mean I saw the ring.”
    “I’m supposed to be,” I whisper, obfuscating the truth, but we both know it.
    “Runaway bride sort of thing?”
    “Running away at this exact moment seems like the best possible idea.” I turn my attention to the passing trees, and then a passing mailbox slotted beside a winding driveway leading to a house on a now haunted hill—my house. It’s like every light in the entire farmhouse is shining bright, but there’s nobody there. Nobody but him, waiting patiently for me to return home while he bottoms one bottle of beer after the next. I don’t say anything. I don’t tell him to stop. I’m past the point of no return, and I feel another fragment of my soul being chipped away, but I’m running high on the adrenaline. It’s a worthy trade off to sacrifice a small piece of my soul if for no other reason than the opportunity to feel alive for just a tiny, fleeting moment.
    “It can’t be that bad,” he assures me with confidence bridled into his tone.
    “That’s what I used to tell myself after the fairy tale ending was cut short.” I look back to him, and begin to caress his thigh in slow strokes. “Now, I just know better.”
    “Maybe it’s because I’m a romantic—“
    I cut him off because I know what he’s going to say. His words will serve as nothing more than an aggravating roadblock to me getting what I want. What I need, just like the air I breathe. “Or because you’re young?”
    “I’m not that young,” he whispers and places his palm upon mine. The first real sign he’s prepared to cross this line, a line that I myself waver to and from.
    “How young?” I shift closer to him.
    “North of twenty.”
    That’s all I need to know. “I’m Stassi.”
    “That’s a