“You should go in,” he said, stroking his hands up her arms as if she could be cold with the smoldering furnace of unrequited physical lust that burned between them.

“I don’t have a curfew, Aldo,” she reminded him lightly.

“Yeah, but…” But what? It was a Saturday night. Neither one of them worked tomorrow, and all he really wanted was to take her home and make love to her until the sun came up. But…

She slid back into her seat and crossed her arms. “Okay, this slow thing was very respectful and admirable but, Aldo, don’t you want to run the bases?”

He closed his fingers around the steering wheel in a death grip.

She was going to make him say it. Make him say the one thing that could never be taken back or forgotten…

“Gloria, I went through some trauma,” he faltered. Jesus, was he really tap-dancing around this? Was he really about to admit to the woman he’d been hung up on forever that he was afraid that his dick didn’t work anymore?

She was waiting for him to continue. But he had no idea how to get the words out without humiliating himself. It wasn’t fair keeping this from her.

“Aldo. I told you I was raped. I was beaten. Then I confessed my gigantic crush on three of the members of 98 Degrees that I’m still not sure I’m over. Can what you’re choking on be worse than all that?”

He couldn’t look her in the eye. He stared through the windshield so hard he was surprised the glass didn’t shatter. “I’m afraid I might not be able to…function in the way…that I used to before…”

“Your leg?” she asked, confusion etched on her face in the streetlight.

He shook his head. One quick jerky motion.

“Your—oh. Oh!”

He wanted to die on the spot. Wither up and turn to dust so he’d never have to look her in the eye again and see…pity? Disgust? Disappointment?

“Aldo.”

He grunted.

“Aldo, look at me,” she ordered, her voice firm.

It took everything he had to pick up his head and look Gloria in the eye. “We’ll take it slow,” she said. “Okay? I won’t force you into anything.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you. You deserve amazing. You deserve Old Aldo.”

Gloria scoffed. “I don’t know how someone can be so conceited and self-conscious in the same sentence.”

“It’s just that this recovery sometimes feels like I’m hanging on by my fingernails. If we try…that, and it doesn’t work… I don’t know if I could ever recover.”

She pulled his right hand off the wheel and laced her fingers through his. “If we’re talking about what I think we’re talking about, allow me to one-up you. I’ve never had an orgasm.”