“Too bad you’re blind, because if you weren’t you could take one look at my face and know that’s not going to happen. Obviously I need to convince you with my words.” He took a step toward her. “No. Clear enough?”

She curled her hands into fists and started hitting the dark shape in front of her. “It’s not clear. Nothing’s clear,” she yelled. “Don’t you get that? Nothing is right. I can’t make it go away. It sucks. My life is ruined and you want to talk to me about horses? About your stupid ranch? I want to go home. I want to be left alone.”

She hit and hit until her arms got tired. Nick didn’t bother defending himself, probably because she wasn’t hurting him. Eventually, she dropped her hands to her sides.

“You about done?” he asked. “Is there more? You want to cry now?”

She hated him, then. Hated him more than she’d hated any human being ever.

“I’ll find a way to crush you,” she vowed.

“You’ll have to find me, first. But that’s the trick, isn’t it? You can’t find anything. If you had the surgery, you could.”

“Get off me about the surgery,” she yelled. “Did they tell you it wasn’t a sure thing? Did they tell you I could end up totally blind?”

“Yes, but the odds are you’ll be fine. Those are odds worth taking.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Fair enough. The barn is this way.”

He just started walking. As if he expected her to follow him. As if her pain and suffering didn’t matter.

“I’m not even a person to you, am I?” she asked, defeated and exhausted.

“You’re a person. You’re just not much of one right now. Rita will show you everything in the morning. For today, you can groom one of the horses. Skye said you’ve been around horses your whole life so you know what you’re doing.”

They were near the barn. Izzy saw the yawning darkness and didn’t want to go inside. It was too black, there. Too frightening.