After Tessa’s father had passed away, her mother had needed help in the restaurant. When her mom had gotten sick, soon after her dad’s death, and then died only a year later, Tessa had been thrust into the role of restaurant owner quickly. Liam had come home for good, giving up a well-loved, lucrative career to be here in Amesport with her. Back then, she’d needed her brother, had clung to him like a lifeline. Now, he was “helping her” until he drove her nearly insane.
It’s time to move on. I’m finally content with my life now. I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back.
Finally, she answered, “You don’t understand. You have no idea what it’s like to suddenly lose everything you’ve ever known, everything you care about.” She’d been incredibly isolated, suddenly handicapped, and unable to do the thing she’d loved most in the world.
She’d had so many losses over the course of five or six years that she hadn’t been able to take another blow. She’d never had time to recover. Losing her hearing, her fiancé, her skating career, her father, and then finally her mom, all in a relatively short period of time, had nearly killed her.
Over time, she’d learned to function in a world with no sound. She was finally at peace with her condition. The last thing she needed was to reopen old wounds. She’d come too far to slide backward now.
There wasn’t really a deaf community in her area, and she’d already had friends, so it had just been a matter of learning to connect with them again. The need to be able to communicate and not feel so isolated had been almost an obsession. She’d learned to read lips as quickly as possible when she was with Rick, and she’d become an expert at it from years of practice. ASL was easier, but other than Liam, her parents, and her best friend, Randi, nobody knew sign language. Becoming very, very good at lip reading had been her only option. And she was good at it, so good that some people didn’t even notice she was deaf if she was having a face-to-face conversation with them.
Liam had told her that her speaking voice sounded almost identical to her pre-deafness voice. Her friends had claimed the same thing. But Tessa would never really know if they were pacifying her, or if what they said was the truth. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them, but all of them had kind hearts, and what person who cared about her was going to tell a deaf woman that she talked strangely?
Slowly, she’d lost touch with most of her old friends in the area, feeling different from all of her former friends. It hurt to be different, but she’d learned to live with the distance between herself and old friends; most of them were still acquaintances, and they were kind to her.
Tessa startled as she felt the warmth of Micah’s large, strong hand cradling hers. Her eyes flew to his face.
“I’ll help you, Tessa.” The look on his face was intense as he spoke. “You don’t have to do it alone.”
“I can’t do it at all,” she mumbled, unable to pull her hand from his. That simple contact warmed her, and the need for human connection was gnawing at her soul.
“Yes, you can. We danced, and you’re still just as graceful as you ever were. You can feel the rhythm of music somehow. You must.”
Actually, she really didn’t hear whatever music was playing. She could sense vibrations. Once she understood the tempo, she matched a piece of music to that pace in her head. With Micah’s confident lead, she’d been easily able to waltz with him. That night, the evening of Hope’s ball last winter, had been a very memorable evening. She’d felt like Cinderella, and she’d never wanted to leave Micah’s arms. Unfortunately, the dance had ended, but Tessa still hadn’t forgotten the feel of his powerful body guiding her, immersing her in sensation.
Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
She explained how she was able to dance as Micah appeared to listen intently.
His grip on her fingers tightened. “I think you could manage to skate a routine the same way you danced,” he told her, slipping his hand from hers to sign the words he was speaking.
The action had been unnecessary. Tessa had understood him, and her heart immediately started to ache from the lack of contact. “I can’t,” she insisted, unwilling to open a part of her life that needed to stay closed and in the past.
“Can’t or won’t?” he replied.
Micah was irritatingly persistent, and Tessa was starting to find the entire conversation uncomfortable. She didn’t want to spill her guts to a guy she barely knew. Her lips started to curve into a smile as she considered the ironic fact that both of them knew what the other one looked like naked even though they’d exchanged very few words in the past. “Won’t,” she answered honestly.
“Why?” He looked genuinely perplexed now.
She could have answered his one-word question so many ways. The best answer was that she hadn’t even tried to skate in almost a decade. She could claim that she was out of shape, which was true. Or she could try one more time to explain that she couldn’t hear the music. Again, it wouldn’t be a dishonest answer. She said none of those things.
“I’m scared,” she blurted out impulsively, telling him the real reason she’d never touched a pair of skates again. Her life in the last several years had been depressing, full of painful emotional blows and losses. Getting on ice again and failing might very well finish her off, destroy her.
He shrugged. “I think that’s natural. But you were the best in the world. Doing a simple routine would be a piece of cake. The Fund doesn’t expect you to be perfect. All of the athletes invited to perform are past Olympians. They’re all way past the age where they’re in shape for competition.”