On Christmas day, they let Jake come home for good. We invited Sophie, Blake, Cindy, Amanda and Sophie’s mom to join us after lunch. They all arrived bearing gifts, and the first hour was spent opening presents. Blake got me a beautiful silver and emerald bracelet that he told me Sophie picked out. I didn’t care who had picked it out; I still loved it.

            I’d had a hard time deciding what to buy Blake for Christmas. I searched the Internet and found a jewelry maker that actually made jewelry in Braille. I ordered a silver chain and a simple square pendant. On the pendant, I had the words Love is Blind engraved on both sides. One side was in Braille and the other wasn’t.

            When he took the pendant in his hand, he frowned a little as he ran his thumb over the words, obviously surprised to find it in Braille. Then he smiled as he read what it said. “It really is, isn’t it?” he asked.

            “Yeah, it is. I thought you might like something like that. I didn’t even know you could get things like that. It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet.” 

After all the presents were open, Sophie, Blake and I went to my room to hang out until dinner. Blake and I sat together on the bed and Sophie sat in the chair by my desk. “So are you guys going to perform anywhere again?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “The talent show was mainly to show people that people with so- called disabilities are capable of amazing things.”

“Well, you did that pretty well. I heard a lot of people talking about it after the show, before I found you guys in the gym. They were all shocked at how well Blake could sing.”

“We proved our point then. So I don’t see any need to repeat the performance. Unless Blake wants too,” I added, looking at him.

He shrugged. “It was fun, but I agree with you. We proved our point and we did it well.”

“That’s too bad. You guys are really good and it would be cool to see you perform again,” Sophie said.

“Well, we’ll still be playing around at home, so you can hear us there all the time,” I told her.

“That’s true. Do you guys want to play some cards? I brought the ones with Braille on them.”

We both agreed and that’s how we spent the rest of the afternoon, until we were called out for supper. Grace had outdone herself with the meal, and everyone enjoyed it immensely. The entire day and evening ended up being a lot of fun, and it was easy to forget all of our problems, at least for a little while.

When everyone was about to head out, Blake pulled me away from everyone. “Do you want to come spend the day at my place tomorrow?” he asked.

“I kind of want to spend time with Jake tomorrow,” I replied. “He just got home and I want to just hang out with him like we used to.”

Blake seemed disappointed, but he nodded. “How about the day after that then?”

I smiled. “Sure, that sounds like fun. Do you have anything special planned?”

He shrugged. “Not really. It’s just been awhile since we’ve had a day to ourselves to just relax.”

I stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, laying my cheek on his chest. “It has been kind of hectic the past couple of weeks, hasn’t it?”

He rubbed my back lightly as he nodded. “Yeah, it has.” He held me close to him for a few moments. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

I nodded and gave him a sweet and gentle kiss. “Love you,” I murmured against his lips.

“I love you too. Have a good night.”

When everyone had left, Jared, Jake, Liam and I went into the living room to watch a little TV together. It was nice to be able to sit with my brother again. He was able to get around without a wheelchair now, but he was using crutches to help him. He was getting stronger every day though and the doctor thought he’d be able to walk unassisted in another month or so. His memory was also very slowly improving. He still had no memory of the ten months before the crash, but he could remember things we’d told him the day before sometimes now.

We all went to bed an hour after we sat down to watch TV. Tonto followed me into my room and plopped down on the floor, happily chewing away on his new rawhide bone. I glanced at my phone and saw that it was flashing, indicating that I had a new text message.

I walked over to it and picked it up, assuming it was just from Blake telling me goodnight. But when I opened the message, I saw it was from Marcus. It was another one saying that he missed me and wanted to talk to me. I deleted the message and sat on the edge of my bed, letting the anger course through me.

After a few minutes, I grabbed my phone again and called Blake, needing to hear his voice so that I could calm down properly. He picked up after two rings. “Miss me already?” he asked teasingly.

I chuckled a little. “Of course, I always do,” I replied.

“What’s wrong?”

“How did you know something was wrong?”

“Your voice is tighter then usual. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

I scooted onto the bed further and put my back against the headboard. “I got another text message from Marcus, that’s all. I needed to talk to you so I could calm down.”

I heard him curse quietly. “Why the hell does that idiot keep calling? He must know that you despise him and want nothing to do with him.”

“He never was the smartest person in the world,” I said.

Blake sighed. “I hate to say it, but maybe you should just talk to him once. As much as I don’t want you to, maybe it’ll get it through his thick skull if you scream at him a bit.”

“Throwing things at him didn’t get the message across, so why would yelling at him?”

“Maybe he thought you only threw things in the heat of the moment and that you’ve had time to cool off now.”

“I don’t think he’s smart enough to think of that, but maybe you’re right. I’ll think about talking to him, but I’m not making any promises.”

“If you do decide you want to talk to him, make sure I’m around, okay? I can help keep you from smashing your phone to pieces.”

I grinned. “Deal. Are you in bed already?” I asked, changing the subject.

We talked for a few more minutes and then said good night to each other. I fell asleep with a smile on my face, which never happened after I heard from Marcus. Talking to Blake afterwards had made a huge difference, and I vowed to thank him properly for it another time.

Over the next few days, I hung out with my brother a lot. It was nice having him home again and we spent a lot of time talking about when we were younger. Jared was almost always there as well and Liam joined in whenever he wasn’t busy.

A couple of days before New Years, I went over to Blake’s to spend the day with him. We hadn’t really had any time alone since Jake woke up, so we were just going to stay in and hang out by ourselves. Sophie and his aunt both had plans elsewhere, so we would have the place to ourselves.

When I got to Blake’s he was waiting for me at the door. He pulled me in for a passionate kiss as soon as I walked inside and it left me breathless. “Well hello to you as well,” I said with a laugh.

He held me snugly to his body. “Hi. Did you know that I’m happy to have you to myself for the day?”

I grinned. “I think that kiss did a pretty good job of letting me know that. Are we going to stand here all day? Or are we going to go do something?”

He kissed the side of my neck. “I’d be happy to just hold you like this all day,” he stated.

I pushed him away a little. “As tempting as that sounds, I’m hungry. I brought ingredients to make some cookies and you’re going to help me.”

“I am?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’ll be fun, especially because we can eat as much cookie dough as we want too. There’s no one here to tell us not to.”

“Hmm, it has been awhile since I’ve had raw cookie dough. Lets go do some baking.”

A couple of hours later, we were sprawled out on the couch in the living room. Both of us were groaning and holding our stomachs. “Now I understand why my parents always told me not to eat too much cookie dough,” I moaned.

“Whose bright idea was it to eat the cookie dough?” Blake asked.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I defended myself. “And you have to admit, it did taste really good.”

“That’s true. How many actual cookies ended up getting baked?”

“Half a dozen,” I said sheepishly. “We ate the rest of the dough before it could go into the oven.”

“No wonder we both feel so sick then. That’s a lot of cookie dough.”

I wiggled around until I could lay my head on his chest. “I say we have a nap right here until we feel better.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” he murmured.

When we woke up a little later, we both felt better, so we decided to go listen to some music in his room. But when we got there, he had a different idea of what we should do, and we ended up spending an hour in his bed before we finally turned the music on.

“Have you decided what to do about Marcus?” he asked me at one point as we were lying on his bed together.

I shrugged. “Not really. I know I’m not ready to talk to him yet, but maybe I’ll be able to a little further down the road.”

He kissed the top of my head. “You know I’ll be there for you no matter what you do, right?”

“I know. And as much as I never want to talk to him again, I know that I should eventually, even if it is just so I can get some closure.”

“We don’t need to worry about that right now,” he said. “Have you decided what we should do for New Years Eve?”

“Do you want to just come over to my place? Jared, Jake, Cindy and Amanda will be there. Liam is going to some party that he’s throwing for one of his companies, so he won’t be there.”

“Sounds good to me,” he replied. “Will I be staying the night there?”

“I’m hoping you will. I like falling asleep with you.”

“Good, because I like falling asleep with you as well.” He played with my fingers for a moment. “I was thinking about something earlier.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“After we’ve graduated, do you want to maybe get a place together?” he asked, a bit of nervousness evident in his voice.

“What if I’m sick of you by then?” I asked teasingly.

“Well, that’ll be too bad for you, because I’m not letting you get away, no matter what.”

I laughed and kissed his cheek. “Well in that case, I like the sound of getting a place together. Do you know what you want to do after we graduate?”

“I was thinking maybe becoming a guitar teacher or something.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Think you can deal with students without scaring them off?”

“Ha ha,” he said sarcastically. “Yes, I think I can do that. I know I won’t make a lot of money doing that, but it’s not like either of us really needs to worry about that. What do you want to do?”

“Maybe become a teacher,” I said. “I think it would be fun and I might be able to make a difference by doing that. I’m not sure what grade I’d want to teach though.”

“Not high school, because all of the boys would get major crushes on you. They’d be too busy drooling over you to get any of the work done.”

“Hmm, maybe I want a bunch of boys drooling over me.”

Blake rolled so that he was on top of me. “I’m the only one who needs to be drooling over you,” he retorted.

I kissed the tip of his nose. “But I think it’s cute when you get jealous.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get jealous,” he muttered.

“Yes you do, and like I said, I think it’s cute. It makes me feel more desirable.”

He ran his nose up my jawline. “You are very desirable,” he replied.

I pushed on his chest until he rolled off of me. “I’m glad you think so.” I pushed myself into a sitting position. “I have an idea. Since you want to be a guitar teacher, why don’t you start by teaching me?”

He sat up beside me. “You want to learn to play the guitar?”

I shrugged. “I do if you’re the one teaching me.”

He stood up and offered his hand to me. “Let’s go then. I left my guitar in the music room, so we’ll go in there.”

An hour later, we were both laughing at my attempts to learn. “Maybe I should just stick to the piano,” I admitted.

“No, you’ll get it eventually. And if I can succeed in teaching you, then I’ll know I can teach anyone.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, knowing he couldn’t see me. “That’s not a very nice thing to say to your girlfriend,” I told him.

“I’m only speaking the truth. Come on, let’s try this again.”

A few minutes later, we heard the front door open, but neither of us paid any attention to it. We figured that it was either Sophie or her mom that had decided to come home early.

We were sitting on the couch in the music room with our heads together as Blake positioned my hands properly on the guitar strings. “Now just try strumming,” he instructed.

I did as he said and let out a little squeak of excitement as I finally produced the correct note. “I did it!”

He laughed and sat back a little. “And it only took an hour and a half,” he teased.

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t need to rub it in,” I grumbled. We both turned our head towards the doorway when we heard footsteps approaching. A moment later, an older man appeared in the doorway. I shrank into Blake’s side a little, because I didn’t recognize him.

“Who’s there?” Blake asked me.

Before I could reply, the man spoke. “Hello son.”

**********************************************************************

It's a little short and choppy, but I needed to write this chapter to get to the next one, which I have partially written already. I'm not sure what is going on with the indentations, but I apologize if it makes it harder to read.

So, Hailey is going to meet Blake's parents. What do you think will happen? I somehow don't think it's going to be a happy reunion, but that's just me :-D.

I mentioned Marcus in here a couple of times so that you don't think I've forgotten him. Don't worry, there will be a meeting with him at some point in the future.

Also, does anyone have any other ideas what the pendant on Blake's necklace should say? I drew a blank when I tried to think of something, which is why I just had it say Love is Blind.

As always, comment to let me know what you think :-).