Page 12 of Cash (Big Hot Alphas 4)

Chapter Five

Cash

The phone call comes just as my parents and sister and I are getting on the road.

Sir, I’m calling about Dani Harlow. We’re contacting you because you’re the last person she called. She was just admitted to the hospital—

After that, everything is a blur. I tell my dad to stop the car. To turn around. I tell the woman on the phone that I’ll be there soon. Palm trees smear past the window as we speed toward the hospital and I fill in my family about what little I know: that Dani apparently got caught in a rip current, that she nearly drowned, that she’s alive but comatose in the ICU.

“Oh, Cash,” my mom says, covering her mouth with her hands as she twists around to look at me. “Honey. I’m so, so sorry.”

I don’t think it really hits me, though, until an hour an a half later, when the doctors finally let me visit Dani. When I see her lying in the hospital bed, looking so vulnerable, her eyes closed and all those tubes keeping her alive—fuck.

Devastation rips through me.

I sit with Dani for what both feels like forever and no time at all. When the doctor comes in to check on her, I search his face, trying to interpret his expression, but I can’t tell jack shit. Even when he turns to me and comments about her condition, I still can’t fucking tell what he’s really saying.

When the doctor leaves the room, I get up and follow him, calling out after him once we’re away from Dani’s room.

“Is she going to make it?” I say.

The doctor’s shoulders drop. “To be honest, son, we really don’t know yet.”

“But there’s gotta be—” My jaw clenches. “Just tell me. If it’s bad, just tell me.”

“We’ve run tests, done scans,” he says. “At this point, all we can do is keep monitoring her and wait.”

I hate that Dani’s fate is out of my control. Hate that this doctor can’t do anything more for her. But I also understand that it’s pointless to get angry about it.

“Okay,” I say, exhaling a breath. “Then I’ll just keep waiting.”

I head over to the waiting room to find my parents and sister. My parents are talking quietly and my sister is paging through a magazine, which she sets aside as soon as she sees me walk in.

I give them the lack of update, then tell them I’m going to stay with Dani. They offer to stay longer in the waiting room, but I refuse to let them spend the rest of their vacation like this.

“Go,” I tell them. “Enjoy yourselves. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

After they leave, I return to Dani’s room and take my place again in the chair beside her bed. At first, I just sit there, like I was doing before. But after a while it no longer feels like enough. So I begin talking to her. Who the hell knows if she can hear me. But I do it anyway. I tell her how much I love her, and I tell her about the best memories I have of the two of us, and I tell her about all the things I’m looking forward to when she wakes up.

Three days pass.I don’t realize it at first, though. Time doesn’t feel the same anymore. All I know is that suddenly my parents and sister are there at the hospital again, and my mom’s hand is on my shoulder, and she’s saying, “Cash, honey. Our flight leaves in two hours.”

But there’s no way I’m leaving Dani. No way I’m going home while she’s like this.

“I’m staying,” I say, no room for debate in my statement.

After a moment, my mom’s hand squeezes my shoulder, and then my dad’s hand does, and then my sister’s arms wrap around me from behind.

“We’ll be thinking of her, Cash,” Felicity says. “Take care.”

“So how long have youtwo been together?”

I look up at the nurse who just came in this morning to check Dani’s vitals. She’s smiling kindly at me from the other side of Dani’s hospital bed.

“Oh, uh…we actually just reconnected. But we were together years ago.”

“Yeah? That’s sweet.” The nurse checks something on one of the monitors and presses a button. At the same time, something beeps beside me. After a second, I realize it’s my phone. I pick it up and see that I just got a text from my buddy Holt back home:Hey man, you back in town yet?

Staring at the screen, I freeze, unable to type anything. I know I should probably just respond with something like,No, something came up, I’ll explain later,but Holt is my closest friend—has been since we moved to San Diego—and to be honest, it would help to talk to him about all of this. He knows about my relationship with Dani in high school, and knows that I never really got over her.

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