Priceless (Forbidden Men #8)(10)

I frowned, not wanting her to think I was a wuss. Hey, I can hold my own, thank you very much! Just not when I get jumped by half a dozen *s at once.

Sarah sent me a laughing emoticon. I think you needed to join a self-defense class if you got jumped that much.

No, what I needed was to get out of that town, except what if this new place is no better than the last? I’m not going to know anyone.

You’ll know ME.

Relief swamped me that she actually offered her help. So you’ll be there first thing on Monday at the office to show me around to all my classes?

When she didn’t answer within a minute, I added, Pretty please with sugar on top.

Ugh. Add a cherry and maybe I’ll consider it.

How about a cherry on top PLUS my never-ending gratitude, I typed, biting my lip before I added the begging eyes emoticon.

No! Not the begging eyes. You don’t play fair. Fine. We have a deal. I’ll be your guide.

I sat back and grinned, glad Sarah Arnosta had friend requested me.





SARAH

AGE 13




Brandt Gamble was beautiful.

He looked tall for as lean as he was. The shirt he wore made his shoulders appear impossibly wide because the cloth stretched tight over his upper half while remaining baggy lower down.

His chocolate-colored hair held the shaggy look, shorter in the back and longer up front so that his bangs hung down into his eyes, obscuring what color they were.

Face narrow, chin pointed, mouth and nose on the slim side, his features were too well proportioned, only offset by his bruised eye and a single freckle, mole, beauty mark thing hugging the right side of his nose. He reminded me of Sam Winchester off Supernatural.

The dark slashes of his eyebrows were expressive as he studied the hive of students swarming past him with leery suspicion. He didn’t seem to like what he saw at all. Didn’t appear to want to join their flow.

I’d watched him for all of five seconds, ever since he’d stepped from the office and slung his tattered green army book bag over his shoulder before he caught sight of me. As he took me in, every muscle in my stomach tensed. I held my breath, waiting for recognition to light his gaze.

I hadn’t expected him to be so pretty. So tall. So...boy.

Looking at him in real life was so very different from a small, grainy photo on a screen. His flawless beauty made the first traces of uncertainty stir in my gut. I suddenly realized how stupid and naive I’d been to think we could be buddies. In my head, I’d built him up to be the nerdy type, a lonely, awkward boy who got his butt kicked a lot and needed a friend just as badly as I did.

This badass hottie with that couldn’t-care-less aura wrapped around him was so not what I’d been expecting and so far out of my league I probably shouldn’t even be staring at him.

Dang it. And it’d been amazing to talk to him too.

He’d poured out his entire life story to me these past few days. For the rest of the weekend, we’d written to each other constantly, at least once every waking hour of the day. He’d told me I was funny and smart, and I glowed inside. He’d commiserated about his life, and it felt amazing to listen to him pour out his heart to me.

People never brought their problems to me. Ever. Reading all his worries and concerns hadn’t just made me feel normal. It’d made me feel special. And not the kind of special in special needs, how everyone else thought of me, but special special.

Since I’d sworn to him that I’d wait outside the office for him first thing Monday morning to show him around his new school, here I was. But as he barely took in my wheelchair and then glanced away, I realized one startling fact.

He didn’t know.

No one had told him about me.

He hadn’t been writing his heart out to me these past few days and treating me like a normal, regular girl from the kindness of his heart. He’d been doing it because he actually thought I was a normal, regular girl.

I swallowed, and the muscles in my stomach not only tightened this time, but they wound themselves together in complicated little snaking knots. Like Chinese button knots.

I felt like a cheater, as if I’d tricked him into befriending me by not telling him about my condition. But honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to me. Everyone else had always been so eager to tell newcomers about me that I’d never had to explain it to anyone myself. So naturally, I assumed his brother or someone had already filled him in on the whole cerebral palsy, wheelchair, seizures, speech impediment thing.

He was going to be so mad when he learned the truth. No one here wanted to befriend the cerebral palsy girl. What had I been thinking to even hope that Brandt Gamble might?

I was about to wheel away and escape down the hall when I saw him bite his lower lip and glance around him again, as if he was looking for something. And it struck me he was. He was looking for me because I’d promised to meet him.

A ten-second debate took up residence in my head. Approach him like I’d been planning to do before I’d seen him step from the office, or run away like the coward I was. I really—really—wanted to flee. I hated seeing revulsion on people’s faces when they looked at me, and I had a feeling an expression of disgust coming from him would break me.

All my life, I’d thought of myself as some kind of lower life form. My mother treated me as if I were an idiot. She probably had no idea I could actually form rational thoughts and feel feelings all on my own. And Mason...I loved my big brother to death, but he was too concerned about being protective and making sure everyone treated me with respect to realize how trapped I was in my own skin.