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now?”
    “There won’t be any more bad dreams tonight.”  
    On impulse, he pressed his lips to her forehead before slipping his arm out from around her and climbing off the bed.   He leaned down and patted the dog’s head then said good-night to Serena and headed for the door.   Turning to take one last look at her, Will was filled with a lightheaded giddiness to see a soft smile playing on her lips.
    “Don’t forget to turn off the light,” she said, then laughed because she knew he was baffled as to why a blind woman cared if the light was off or on.   “It bothers Rufus .  H e’ll flop around, deliberately making little grunting noises until I get up to turn it off.”
    “Sure thing.   Good-night, Serena.”
    “Will?   Thanks for being my sounding board.”
    “No problem, that’s what friends are for.”
    “Oh, and Will?   If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t at the end of Melinda Sue’s list of boys to kiss.   I overheard Sawyer and Anthony joking about someone named Nathanial Torrance who never even got an invite to take lessons.”
    “That’s just great,” he snorted.   “I beat out Nate the nose picker.   Thanks for the ego booster, friend .”
    Will could still hear Serena’s muffled giggles half way up the stairs to the second floor.   He paused for a few minutes at the top of the landing, letting the sound of it chase away his own doubts and fears.   He’d finally broken through that cement barrier she protected herself with and gotten her to divulge something she had kept locked inside for God knows how many years.   And she hadn’t drawn away from him, physically or mentally, which was a major triumph all its own.   Oh, Will wasn’t kidding himself.   He still had a long row to hoe, but it was a start.   Now all he had to do was keep chipping away until the wall around her heart came tumbling down, and when it did…
    He stopped himself cold.   There could be no future for them without facing the past first.   It was going to be rough, and maybe in the end it would tear them apart instead of binding them to one another, but they had both hidden from it long enough.   Tonight he’d caught a glimpse of the torment Serena suffered from every day of her life .  I t was only going to get worse before it got better, but they had taken that first step together and it gave him hope.  
    “I can do this,” he murmured as he crawled into bed.   He had to do this, and he would…one day at a time.

Chapter 3
    After Will had gone, Serena retrieved the bedding she’d kicked off in her sleep and remade the bed then slipped beneath the covers.   She was emotionally drained but in a good way, like when she sat down and had a good cry after one of her dark episodes.   It was a cleansing of sorts and she always felt better afterwards, as if she had purged herself of some invisible force that kept nudging her towards a complete melt down.
    But when morning rolled around and she had time to reflect on the things she’d divulged to Will, Serena began to doubt the wisdom of exposing so much of herself to him.   The last thing she wanted was for Will to feel sorry for her, or worse, start treating her like an emotional cripple.   It was bad enough when her own family did it; carefully avoiding subjects that might trigger memories of that night, always trying to be bright and cheerful to keep her from worrying about them, and praising her for being able to do things that were far from extraordinary even for a blind person.   Managing to get food onto a fork and into her mouth without slopping it down the front of her blouse was hardly a skill that required her sight .  T he way the members of her family carried on about such trivial accomplishments, Serena was surprised they hadn’t presented her with a medal.
    Oh, she knew she sounded like an ungrateful wretch, and even while their behavior irritated her at times , she loved them all the more for it.   It’s just that