Page 99 of Indiscretion

I squeezed my thighs together and winced. That was a pain you never forget. “Can we please not talk about this?”

“What goes up fast comes down twice as hard.” Ben demonstrated with his hand sailing upward and then hurtling back down. He ended with both hands opening and closing in an explosion-like crash. “His balls swelled bigger than my head, and he had to get eighteen stitches in his sac.”

“No amount of lidocaine took away the pain of the embarrassment of a female doctor and female nurse sewing up my ball.”

Ben laughed. “On the bright side, it gave you an excuse to show your junk to a girl for the first time. Pretty sure that’s what made Bailey fall for you, rather than me. I’m man enough to admit my buddy’s not only got me beat with his courtroom wins, but he’s got me beat in the dick game, too.”

Everyone laughed, though the mention of Bailey falling for me caused a tightness in my chest.

Naomi bumped my shoulder playfully. “Aww… Did you hurt your pee-pee when you were a boy?”

I tried to smile, and even thought I did a pretty good job of not letting it affect me the rest of the evening, but apparently I was wrong.

The restaurant was only a few blocks from Naomi’s sister’s apartment, and it was a nice night, so after dinner, I thought maybe we could walk.

“Are you okay to walk the five or six blocks to Frannie’s in those shoes?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

We walked side by side for two blocks, making small talk until Naomi abruptly stopped. “What’s going on with you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been talking about the weather since we left the restaurant. You don’t discuss thefall foliagein the City when we’re alone; you say dirty things.” Naomi looked into my eyes like she was expecting an answer. But I didn’t have one. Eventually she sighed. “What’s the deal with Bailey, Dawson?”

I blinked. “What?”

“I know you lost her, and she was someone close to you. But why can’t you talk about her at all?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. We were all having such a great time at dinner until Ben told that story. You clammed up at the mention of her name and…and you’re walking me home instead of walking me to your place where we could be alone and do the dirty things you should be telling me about.”

“I’m just tired. It was a long week.”

Naomi held my eyes. “Please don’t do that, Dawson. I know we agreed to take things one day at a time and not jump into anything serious, but you’re shutting me out.”

I swallowed. If any other woman had tried to dig into my past, I would’ve done worse than shut down. I would’ve had her in an Uber by now. But I didn’t want to shut Naomi out, I really didn’t. So I took a deep breath and looked away when I spoke. “I hurt her. And she’s gone. Most days I’m able to not think about it. But when I do, I hate myself for what I did. I’ll never be able to take it back or tell her how sorry I am.”

Naomi’s face softened. “Oh, Dawson. Have you ever talked about it with anyone? Like a professional or…anyone?”

My eyes slanted to meet hers. “No.”

“Do you think maybe you should?”

I held out a hand. “I don’t want you to go home to your sister’s tonight.”

Naomi smiled sadly yet put her hand in mine. “I was disappointed that you didn’t ask me to come over. I even packed a T-shirt and shorts and underwear in my bag, assuming you would.”

“Is it too late now?”

She shook her head. “No. And thank you for sharing about Bailey with me. I won’t push you to talk about it anymore, but I think you should speak to someone about it. You need to find a way to come to terms with whatever happened between you two.”

Chapter 28

DAWSON

13 years ago

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