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My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that I could see his lips pull into a slight smile, but he quickly dipped his head.
If you come back, I promise it won’t happen again.
Come back?
“What?” I squeaked. “You want me to come back?”
Dallas nodded and then typed something else.
You’ve been doing an amazing job, Nolan. I’d like you to reconsider quitting. You’re really good with the animals and you’re one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met.
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t.
“Dallas, you kept checking on me, even after I’d figured out how to do everything.”
I kept checking on you because I was worried about you. Not because I didn’t think you weren’t doing a good job, but because I was afraid you were too cold and I know how physically hard that kind of work is, even for someone who’s used to doing it. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t pushing yourself too hard trying to impress me or prove something to me.
I hated the flurry of warmth that went through me. “But you followed me home,” I said.
Because both the cars you drive are pieces of shit. I was worried you’d break down again and who knows if anyone would have stopped. Or the wrong person stopped.
I turned my head so I was looking out the windshield. He had to be lying, he just had to.
Right?
“Why did you ignore me for the last two weeks?”
I waited for my phone to beep, but it didn’t. I turned my head to look at him and saw that he, too, was staring out the windshield.
“Dallas,” I said softly. He flinched and then began typing.
At first, I was hoping you’d quit because the work was too difficult. Being around you is hard, Nolan. And not just because of what happened tonight. I never saw you as weak when we were kids. Never. I wish I could have been as brave as you. I wish I’d done things differently.
I waited for another message, but Dallas stopped typing. It didn’t really matter, because he’d said enough and I believed what he was telling me.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, because I really didn’t have a clue.
Come back to work, Nolan.
It was all he typed, but I knew it really was the only thing I could do. He clearly wasn’t interested in pursuing anything beyond a working relationship. He’d made that clear when he’d pointed out that what had happened tonight had been a mistake. And while I didn’t exactly share his feelings on the subject, I knew it was something that wouldn’t have led anywhere, anyway. At best, it could have been a friends-with-benefits kind of thing, even though we weren’t really friends, either.
I hid my disappointment and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dallas.”
With that, I got out of the truck and didn’t look back as I walked toward the house. We were back to exactly where we should be.
So why did I still feel like shit?
I spent a good five minutes the following morning taking stock of the light bruises on my body, including the huge hickey on my neck and the finger-shaped marks on my hips. If I hadn’t seen the proof of Dallas’s possession on my body, I would have passed the whole thing off as a dream.
Despite the fact that I could still feel the stinging in my ass that Dallas’s generously sized cock had left behind, I still couldn’t believe he played for my team. Not once in high school had I seen anything that even hinted that Dallas was attracted to men, and nothing in these past two weeks would have led me to believe it had ever been anything but women for him. I supposed it was possible he was bisexual, but it still blew my mind.
Not that I could really blame him for hiding something like that, especially when we’d been younger. Pelican Bay was, and always had been, a community steeped in its religious and family values. Since I’d been such an outcast at school, there’d been no one to officially come out to at the age of sixteen when I’d figured out I was gay. I’d been called “faggot” and “queer” often enough to figure people had come to the conclusion on their own, though I suspected they would have called me those things even if I hadn’t actually been gay.
For someone like Dallas Kent, admitting to liking guys would have been equal to committing social suicide. For all I knew, it could have impacted his ability to play professional baseball. So I couldn’t really begrudge him for wanting to keep the truth from people.
It did leave me wondering if he might still be hiding it, though, since he hadn’t mentioned anything when I’d inadvertently outed myself the night I’d had dinner at his place.
