"I'm not …" She swallowed. "I'm not in a place where I'm ready to have dinner with anyone, Levi." She gestured weakly at her lap and legs. "Even though it's been two years since I got sick and ended up … like this, it's still … it still takes up a lot of my head. I can't think about dinners," she said it quietly, looking far older than her sixteen years. "Or anything like that right now."
I nodded, using two mental hands to shove down the biting sense of disappointment.
Stupid Buchanan curse.
I expected that same thing prodding me forward would start railing, turning the nudge into something more persistent, but it was quiet. Waiting for what she said next.
"But," she continued, hesitation written all over her face, in her wrinkled brow, the uncomfortable smile, "finishing high school on your computer doesn't give you much of a social life. Especially when you're new in town." Her fingers curled together on her lap. "Maybe … maybe a new friend wouldn't be so bad."
It made no sense that I'd know, instantly and with complete surety, that what she'd just admitted to me was a gift. Something real and raw, hard for her to say out loud, something I definitely hadn't earned yet, but that I'd hold carefully, nonetheless.
Joss gave me a curious look when I held out my hand. Even that, the question in her eyes, had my heart doing a skip-stutter.
"Levi Buchanan," I said. "It's nice to meet you, Joss."
Then, then she gave me a real smile—white teeth, pink lips, tiny dimple on the right side—and I never, ever got my heart back.
Chapter 1
Jocelyn
“Arm porn" was a trendy term I wouldn't mind getting rid of. It'd gotten a little out of hand if you asked me. Don't get me wrong, I could, objectively at least, understand why you'd turn your head at a completely impossible angle to catch a glimpse of a nice bicep, the kind that looked like someone shoved a softball under a guy's skin.
It was the double standard that irritated the shit out of me. Probably no woman in Green Valley has stronger arms than I did. Without breaking a sweat, I could probably crack a walnut with my forearms.
It was the happy by-product of:
1- Being confined to a wheelchair for the past seven years, thereby relying on my arms to power all my forward motion.
2- Discovering that baking was the second greatest love of my life after my dog, Nero.
Trust me, kneading bread was a better workout than just about anything.
But no one was waxing poetic about the rippling muscles in my forearms.
"Careful, the steam coming out of your ears might mess up your hair," my best friend, Levi, said from behind my chair.
He sounded bored, which didn't surprise me. He'd heard this rant a time or seven.
Immediately, my right hand came up to double-check that every blond curl was in the same place that it was when I left my house.
Whew. Not a corkscrew springing out anywhere. Very I'm ready to bake bread and muffins and cupcakes and cakes and all the delicious things. Or at least, that was how it felt when I studied my own reflection just before Levi picked me up.
"You see the issue, though, right? I've seen women practically wreck their cars when you roll up your sleeves."
Levi laughed easily. He did everything easily, the asshole. His hand landed on my shoulder in a condescending pat that had me rolling my eyes. "Of course, I see the issue, my little feminist warrior princess."
As he spoke, I aimed my wheelchair slightly to the right when a guy walking his dog refused to concede any space. He also refused to make eye contact.
I called those people The Blinders. For the most part, people's reactions to someone in a wheelchair—especially a young someone with incredibly sexy arms—fell into two main camps.
The Blinders and The Pitiers.
The Blinders pretended they couldn't see me, which I often attributed to the fact I made them uncomfortable. They could walk around just fine. Staring at a young woman stuck in a metal chair might force them to come to grips with their own mortality, their health … the things most people take for granted on a daily basis.
The man walking his dog might have looked at me if I was pre-TM Jocelyn. The fourteen-year-old me who could run like a freaking gazelle,