Chapter 1

• Tessa’s POV:
• There’s a myth that blind people have heightened senses just because they’re blind, but I can tell you for a fact that isn’t true. Why am I so confident? Well, because I’ve been blind my whole life.
• Darkness has been my constant companion ever since the first day I was brought into the world, and I have had to train myself to be able to survive basic day-to-day life activities.
• When your sight is gone, your only choice is to depend on the other senses you have available to you and use those to the fullest of their abilities. I’ve had to memorize different types of smells, tastes, surface textures, and sounds so that I can move around the house or even go to school; the two places my life revolves around. Well, until three years ago, when I was forced to drop out of high school in my sophomore year.
• “Ouch…” I winced in pain when a sharp knife from the pile of dishes I was washing in the sink cut my hand. I blew breeze onto the wound in a failed attempt to ease the pain and immediately went back to the chore at hand.
• I had no choice but to brave through the sting that the foamy water caused as it met my open wound because if my stepmother, Vivian, came in and saw I wasn’t done with the dishes, I would be going to sleep without food again tonight.
• My Dad told me my mother died when I was one. I knew nothing about her because Dad rarely spoke about her. The only thing I had to remember her by was the locket she left me with as a child.
• Dad raised me on his own until three years ago when he got married to Vivian. Dad had always been passive towards me; he didn’t hate me, but he didn’t love me either. He treated me with the same indifference you would pay to a mannequin at the mall. But Vivian, my stepmother, clearly hated me, and she wasted no time in showing it.
• In less than a month after moving into our house with her son, Noah, who was around my age; she made me drop out of school, turned me into the designated house help, and sent me out of my room into the cubicle beside the henhouse in the backyard because she wanted to use my room to store her art paintings.
• My father couldn’t care less what she did to me, and sometimes I wondered if he was actually my father because of the way he acted.
• I heard the kitchen door open and then the soft steps of a person foot against the tile floor, drawing closer to where I stood. I paid no attention to the new presence and continued washing the dishes. All I wanted to do was to finish this fast so I could go rest. I was already drained from all the clothes I had to wash and the cleaning I had done earlier in the day.
• Suddenly I felt the person’s body pressed against mine from behind. Then their hand brushed my hair away from my neck to the other side before planting a deep kiss on my open skin, causing electric jolts to run through my body.
• “You like that, don’t you?” He teased, and before I could recover, his mouth swallowed the whole of the lower part of my ear, which he knew was my weak point. I couldn’t help but moan his name, “Noah…”
• Noah, my stepbrother, was always teasing me like this around the house without our parents knowing. Noah and I used to attend the same school back before our parents got married, and as you would have guessed, I was constantly getting bullied by everyone in school.
• Sending a blind girl to a normal high school was like sending easy prey to a den of lions; they wasted no time in tearing me up.
• Noah was the most popular boy in school, and he was the only one who showed me a little care. Usually the bullying and the pranks the other students played on me were very brutal; they would ‘mistakenly’ make me trip on the stairs or purposely put stolen materials in my bag so they could get a legit reason to beat me up.
• But whenever Noah was around, he would always caution them not to take things too far. With him around, I would walk away maybe a little drenched or with a small bruise.
• Soon I began to fall for this savior of mine, and I summoned the courage to tell him how I felt. All this was before I knew that my father was going to marry his mum, and we were going to become step siblings.
• “You’ve told me how much you like me,” his hand trailed the fabric of my skirt until he reached the hem and pulled it up. “Now I want to know how much you fantasize about me because I know you do.” His hand was now rubbing against my bare thigh. I could feel my cotton panties get damp from the wetness his touch caused.
• Noah wasn’t wrong, even though I have never seen his face, I always had wet dreams about him. He knew how much this touch drove me crazy, and he never failed to use that against me.
• I felt Noah’s hand move up my lap, every trail closer to the wetness of my cotton panties. My pulse was rushing with rapid vigor as my mouth went dry because I couldn’t swallow due to the intensity of things. The only thing my body could do was focus on the sensation of Noah’s touch.
• Then suddenly, he stopped. He leaned into my ear and whispered, “Sorry, but I don’t do maids.” A wicked laugh escaped his lips as he walked away with the knowledge of the situation he had left me in.
• I knew better than to get my hopes up whenever he did his usual teasing but still somehow, every time, I found myself believing that he might actually follow through all the way.
• I was still trying to recover from the high of the whole situation when I heard the door swing open again, but this time with a more aggressive push. And in the next instant, I felt a reverberating hot slap on my cheek that sent me crashing to the ground.
• “You blind brat,” Vivian spat in anger, “Why are you still not done washing these dishes?” I heard her grab a plate from the pile and scooped up some of the soapy water.
• “It seems you must be sleepy, let me help wake you up.” Immediately I felt the cold splash of the soapy water on my face, some of it getting into my open mouth and nose.
• “No food for you tonight. Finish up and go to bed.” She declared, the vile and disgust strong in her tone. “Damn nuisance.” Vivian walked out angrily from the kitchen, leaving me alone, struggling to get out all the soapy water from my nostril and mouth.
• Soon I finished the dishes and went out the back door towards the henhouse where my room was. The tiny space that served as my room had just one small window in the top left corner and a roll mat, which served as my bed.
• “What does a blind girl need a big room for anyways?” Vivian had told my father on the day my room was taken from me.
• I lay my tired body on the roll mat, and as if on cue, my stomach grumbled in hunger. I sighed, “Another night to go hungry again,” placing my hand on my stomach to calm it down.
• Then I had a thud on the wooden wall of my room. It sounded like someone was throwing stones over the fence. I heard another thud, and I quickly jumped up, knowing who it was.
• I went out the other door, directly through the henhouse, and came out in front of the house fence. I had been living in this house for the past seventeen years of my life, so I knew every nook and cranny of the place.
• “Tessa, are you there?” Benjamin called out, his voice a low whisper. “Yes,” I answered.
• He threw something over the fence, which landed on my feet. I picked it up and smiled as the sweet smell swirled in the air. “OMG! You got me my favorite banana bread.” I exclaimed. “Thank you.”
• Benjamin was my best friend; he and his parents used to work for my family as our gardener until they all suddenly had to travel out of the country for some reason. It had been five years now, and he was back.
• The first day he came visiting, he had seen me throwing out trash, and he commented on how tattered and lean I looked. I told him the kind of treatment I was enduring at the hands of my stepmother, and he had promised to always come visiting in secret because I knew my stepmother would never allow him to see me.
• Benjamin kept to his promise and always came to check up on me. He always came with goodies like this too, even though I knew his family wasn’t rich.
• “Are you all set for tomorrow?” Benjamin asked, his voice sounding serious. I swallowed the bread in my mouth and replied, “Yes, I am.”
• On one of our meetups, Benjamin had suggested I run away from home and start a new life, which he was ready to support. He didn’t have much, but he said he couldn’t bear to continue seeing me live like this, and honestly I was tired of the kind of life I lived. My father didn’t care for me, my stepmother maltreated me and my step-brother bullied me.
• I didn’t have a choice then but to endure all the hardship because what could a blind girl do? But now with Benjamin’s support, I could actually escape this hellhole. There was now a possibility that the theme of my life could actually become something other than pains and sorrows.
• The plan was set on my 18th birthday, which happened to be tomorrow.
• “Tomorrow is the day I finally get my freedom.”