Page 35 of Sacrifice Bunt

Hannah let out a deep breath. “What do you want me to say here? I don’t have a magic answer that’s going to fix this. You are going to have to decide what you want.”

“How am I supposed to know what I want?” She fell into one of the chairs, leaning back and closing her eyes for a second. “He made me feel good.” She opened her eyes. “He makes me feel good. That’s not something I’m used to.”

“Why is that a bad thing?”

“I don't know how to deal with that. I’m not used to people—guys—making me feel good. Unless it’s uncommitted sex. That I can handle.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short. You have been in my life for ten years, and in all that time, I’ve never seen you be so adamantly against anything like you are with Noah. And there have been some real douchebags that have come through, yet you’ve always given them the benefit of the doubt.”

She dropped her head on her desk. “So what you’re saying is that I need to woman up and talk to him instead of ignoring him after having the best sex of my life.” Just remembering the sex was hot. The man had demolished all thoughts of what she was used to regarding sex. And she'd had good sex. Or so she’d thought. She was adventurous and willing to try things. Noah had made her feel like a damn beginner with his dirty words and magical mouth.

She wanted to experience it all again.

Many, many times.

“Was it the best sex of your life?” Hannah said it with humor in her voice.

She picked up her head and gave her friend the death stare. “Don’t be fucking smug. You obviously knew it would be that way before it even happened.”

“Only because I’d been watching you bitch about Noah from the day you met him. You always talked about him even when you didn’t know who he was. Hello, we nicknamed him SFG, and you remember what that stands for, don’t you?”

“Sexy Fire Guy.” They’d given him that nickname a few days after the fire, and it had stuck. Maybe she had talked about him too much.

“You don’t need to get Noah out of your system,” Hannah said. “You need to see what this is between you and if it can lead anywhere.”

That was not what she wanted to hear.

Except with Hannah’s advice, she got to see Noah again.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

A few hours later, she was finishing a new contract for a current client when her phone went off.

Hannah:

Do with it what you want, but here is Noah’s phone number. I figured you didn’t have it.

The message was followed by Noah’s contact information, including his phone number and address.

This was Hannah’s way of pushing her without pushing her. She knew her friend well, just like Hannah knew her well.

The question was, did she want to contact Noah?

The answer: Yes, yes, she did.

The problem was she didn’t know if she had the courage to actually call him. Would a text be sufficient? Was that too cowardly? She hated being a coward. If her dad were here, he’d tell her to stop worrying about other people's thoughts and do what she wanted. Her mom would be the opposite. She’d tell her to think about it, and the answer would come.

She’d been much more like her dad for her whole life than her mom. Jumping in with both feet and worrying later. As she grew older, she was starting to think that her mom’s way might not be so wrong.

While she’d love to talk to them about this and get their advice, that was never going to happen. She’d never talked to her parents about boys, and she wasn’t going to start now. Their Punjabi heritage meant she kept certain things to herself. Even if they’d both been born in California, just as she had, they still had some of the older beliefs from their culture. They had no plans to arrange a marriage with someone of her own culture, but they did want her happy. To keep them off her back, she never brought up dating or guys and immediately changed the subject if their conversations veered in that direction.

The last thing she needed was a nice Indian boy who could provide for her.

She could provide for herself.

Clicking on Noah's info, her thumb hovered over it for long minutes until she chickened out and put her phone away.

She wasn’t going to go down that path. Not yet.

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