Page 126 of Indiscretion

“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked. “I’m so damn sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”

I tasted salt in my throat, but refused to allow myself to cry. “Why? What did I do?”

He shook his head. “You didn’t do anything. I’m just a coward.”

“I don’t understand.”

He nodded. “I know. And that’s because I shut you out when I should’ve let you in. But I was too ashamed to tell you about my past.”

“Does this have something to do with Bailey?”

“It starts there. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to tell you about her.”

“Of course.”

Dawson looked down for a few moments before starting. “I met Bailey in eighth grade. Girls were just starting to get into boys, and I thought I was hot shit because a few of the popular girls liked me.” He shook his head. “Bailey called me out on my shit whenever my head started to get too big. We were best friends. She had cancer, but in tenth grade she went into remission, and boys started to notice her. Her hair grew back, and she put these blond streaks in it. She wasn’t the sick girl anymore. She was just a regular high school girl, which is really all she ever wanted. She didn’t have a lot of friends, because she was sometimes out of school for long periods of time and her treatments took all her energy. A few guys asked her out, and she even went to a dance with one of them, but she’d always find something wrong with the boys who took an interest. I teased her that her standards were too high, but I suspected she was afraid to get close to people because her cancer had come back twice already.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It came back a third time in the fall of junior year.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dawson looked straight ahead, but I didn’t think he was seeing anything, at least not what was in front of him. “She did a few treatments but then stopped. There was nothing they could do that would extend her life more than a few months, and Bailey wanted to go back to feeling like a regular high school kid again for as long as she could. She started acting strange around me, and I thought she might be trying to distance herself to make it easier when she…”

Tears filled his eyes. It no longer mattered that I was mad at him. Reaching over, I took his hand and laced our fingers together.

Dawson cleared his throat. “Anyway, her mom pulled me aside one day and told me Bailey really wanted to go to the junior prom. I hadn’t told Bailey yet, but I’d already asked Allie Papadopoulos, the girl I’d been seeing, to go with me. But there was no way in hell I could let Bailey miss junior prom if she wanted to go, so I canceled with Allie and asked Bailey instead.”

I smiled. “That was very sweet of you.”

He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. Because I was an asshole seventeen-year-old and kept seeing Allie even though I’d told Bailey we’d broken up. Allie wasn’t happy about me going to the junior prom with someone else, but by the time the day rolled around, Allie wasn’t feeling well anyway.” Dawson took another deep breath. “Bailey’s treatments wiped her out pretty easily, so we didn’t stay at the prom long. Long story short, Bailey asked me to kiss her. She said she didn’t want to die without ever being kissed. So I kissed her—and, then, and then… I kept on kissing her…and we wound up having sex, even though I had a girlfriend and didn’t have those types of feelings for Bailey. After, she told me she loved me. I didn’t know what to say. I loved her too—just not the way she’d meant it. But I didn’t want to hurt her, so I said it back.” He paused and took a breath. “The very next morning, I woke up feeling like shit, and it wasn’t just because I’d cheated on Allie and crossed a line with my best friend. Iliterallyfelt like shit. My glands were swollen, and I was shivering even though I was sweating. A little while later, Allie called to tell me she had mono.”

Dawson closed his eyes. “I wasn’t at school the following week because I was sick. But apparently, Bailey told someone we were a couple, and it got back to Allie who was also home sick with mono. Allie got pissed and sent a text to Bailey telling her she was sleeping with me and I’d only gone to the dance with Bailey because I felt bad for her. Bailey called me crying and asked me if it was true that I was with Allie. I didn’t want to lie to her, so I came clean and told her the truth. The next week, before I could see her in person and try to fix things, Bailey came down with mono. I’d given it to her, and her weakened immune system couldn’t fight it. I broke my best friend’s heart and then killed her.”

My heart clenched. “Oh my God, Dawson. You can’t blame yourself for that. You didn’t know you were sick.”

“I knew my girlfriend hadn’t been feeling well, and I didn’t think before I kissed Bailey.”

“You were seventeen and doing what someone you loved wanted you to do.”

“I didn’t make the right decision.”

“What would the right decision have been? To not kiss her and break her heart by rejecting her? I think if I were in her shoes, I would’ve wanted the kiss more than a few more days.” I shook my head. “Did my sister’s cancer bring this all to the surface for you? Is that what’s been going on?”

“There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“What?”

He took a deep breath and turned to face me. “I was your sister’s bone-marrow donor.”

I blinked a few times. “What?”

He nodded. “I was her donor.”

“What? How? Why wouldn’t you have told me that?”

“I didn’t do it for the right reasons. I wanted to save your sister because of what I did to Bailey.”

“Did you think that would upset me?”

“It felt wrong. And then she got sick. And the doctors thought she was rejecting the transplant, and I thought—holy shit, I did it again. I decided what’s right or wrong for someone else, and they’re going to pay the consequences again.”

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