“Yeah.”
“We have some time to offer an opinion. And I’ll remind you again, it’s just an opinion. Ultimately it’s the prosecutor’s decision on whether they want to take it or not.”
“Right.” Dawson tried not to sound pissed off about it, but he could tell he hadn’t quite pulled it off.
“It’s going to end and be over, and you’ll be able to get back to your normally scheduled life soon,” Simon soothed.
But even as he thanked Simon for the call and promised to review the plea that came through in his email, he knew that was untrue.
He couldn’t turn back the clock.
When Brynn had declared she wanted a divorce, everything had changed. He’d been forced to pull the blackout curtain back on his unhappy marriage and take a hard look on how long he’dbeen skating by with just “fine.” Then, the shit about the money had come out, and everything had gotten worse, capped off by suddenly sucking at his job.
He’d never be able to put all those genies back in their bottles. Dawson knew he was forever changed by what had gone down last year.
He knew who he’d been; he just didn’t know who he was going to become.
It was difficult not to imagine his dad giving him a blunt look and saying, “and who you are has got nothing to do with you? You make your own self, Daws. You always have.”
He could sit here and mull over all the shit, marinate in every way he’d gotten fucked, or he coulddosomething else.
Dawson stood and grabbed his keys, not even letting himself think.
A minute later he was riding the elevator down to Cam’s floor.
He didn’t text, because he was afraid if he did, he’d chicken out.
But right now, all he was thinking about was how he feltbetterwhen Cam’s sunshine was soaking into him. At the dinner, he’d been jealous because he’d wanted it onhim, and the only one keeping him from having those rays was himself.
Dawson knocked on the door once, then again.
He was just about to do it a third time when suddenly there was no more wood under his fist, the door swinging open.
Dawson nearly swallowed his tongue.
Cam was wearing only a pair of low-slung sweatpants.
It wasn’t like they didn’t all strip down in the locker room on a frequent basis. They did. There was no real room for privacy in professional sports. But Dawson had tried not to look—not at Cam, not atanyone. And before that, what felt like an eternity ago, but was actually only like a few weeks, he’d not even beeninterestedin looking at anyone. He’d been too busy feeling sorry for himself.
Well, he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself now.
He was fuckinglookingand didn’t know how to stop.
Cameron wasn’t the hottest guy in the world or the most ripped, but there was something about the graceful slide of one muscle into the next—traps to pecs to abs—that made Dawson’s throat dry and his tongue too big for his mouth.
“Hey,” Cam said happily, eyes lighting up at Dawson’s presence in his doorway. “What’s up?”
“I . . .uh . . .” At some point, and at a point that couldn’t have been that long ago, Dawson had considered himself fairly charming. He’d gotten around Baltimore’s single scene, guys and girls alike, before he’d met and married Brynn.
But Cam short-circuited his brain.
He wanted to touch him, and not just with his hands, either.
Cam raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”
“I’m not gonna be if Aidan figures out I’m looking at you like this,” Dawson confessed. And okay, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but apparently the brain molecules that hadn’t just been fried within an inch of their lives had lost their connectivity to his mouth.
Cam had the nerve to actually look shocked. “What are you talking about?”
