Page 2 of Cash (Big Hot Alphas 4)

I nod. “Yeah. It was.”

“Think it’ll come back?”

Just do it, dude.

“I have to tell you something, Dani,” I say.

“Okay,” she says, giving me a quizzical smile. “What’s up?”

I knead the back of my neck. Fuck. I knew having this conversation was going to be painful, but it feels like someone’s ripping my heart out.

My mind drifts back to thirty minutes ago, when my parents sat my sister and I down at the dining room table and told us the news.

“So you know how the company my dad works for has offices all over?” I say.

“Yeah?” Dani says slowly.

“Well…he’s being transferred to San Diego. I just found out before coming here. We’re moving at the end of the month.”

Dani is silent for several seconds.

“What?” she finally says. “Are you serious?”

I nod.

“That’s…” She frowns, then presses her lips together. “Shit. That sucks.” Her voice cracks on the last word and she turns her face away from me.

I wrestle with what to say next. I want to tell her that it’s not going to change anything between us. I want to say that maybe somehow it will all fall through. Most of all, though, I want to say the thing I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to say to her for weeks now: that I love her.

But I’m pretty sure telling her that is just going to make this even more gut-wrenching than it already is.

“Maybe I can talk my parents into letting me stay,” I say. It’s a dumb thing to suggest, but I have to saysomething.

Dani finally looks at me. She smirks through her sorrow. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure they’lllovethat idea. I’m sure they’ll be totally up for renting their seventeen-year-old son his very own bachelor apartment.”

“Or you could hide me in your room.”

She laughs, then shakes her head. “You’re nuts, Cash.”

“I’mnuts?” I tackle her, pinning her hands against the grass and grinning down at her as she laughs and squirms beneath me. “You sure about that?”

“I take it back!” she shrieks, still laughing. “You’re not nuts. You’re—”

I cut her off with a kiss. When our lips meet, every kiss we’ve ever shared rushes through my head: all those endless, aching kisses, each one driving me crazy with desire for her, all the way back to our first nervous kiss at that random kid’s party a year ago. I’d never kissed a girl before then, but as soon as it happened with Dani, I knew I’d never feel the same way with anybody else.

“I want you, Cash,” Dani whispers between more kisses. “I want yousomuch.”

I understand what she’s saying. And, believe me, I want her like that too. The very thought of doingthatwith her makes me feel…fuck. I can’t even describe it.

But we can’t. If we do, it’ll make it so much harder to leave her. So we can’t.

I pull back and she blinks at me with her bright hazel eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say. Reluctantly, I roll off her and flatten onto my back, lacing my fingers behind my head. “I just can’t believe I have to leave.”

She doesn’t say anything for a while.

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