For once, I was not the scarred woman everyone politely tried not to notice. I was the bride.
Lorie drove us back to Callahan’s apartment after sunset. Buddy padded inside first, exhausted from too much attention, and collapsed near the bedroom doorway with the heavy sigh of a dog who had completed every duty expected of him.
My sister hugged me tightly at the door. “You deserve this, Merry,” she whispered. “I’m so happy for you, love.”
Then she left, and suddenly it was only my husband and me, with the first quiet moments of marriage settling around us.
I guided Callahan toward the bedroom by the hand. When we reached the edge of the bed, he turned toward me, and I felt more nervous than I had walking down the aisle.
Not because he could see me.
Because he couldn’t.
Part of me had always believed Callahan’s blindness made me possible—that with him, I would never again have to watch recognition flash across a man’s face and wonder whether love had survived the first real look.
He slowly lifted one hand. “Merritt… can I?”
I nodded.
His fingers found my cheek first, then the scarred line along my jaw, then the raised ridges across my throat above the lace. Instinct almost made me stop him. Years of hiding do not disappear simply because one person is gentle. But Callahan moved with such care that I let him continue.
