Page 29 of Craving Dahlia

Heat washes over my face, and my stomach flips. I swallow hard, giving the cashier a tight smile. “Sorry, I grabbed the wrong card,” I tell her quickly, reaching into my wallet for my personal card. It works fine, and I grab the coffee, hurrying out to where my Uber should be waiting. That, too, declines, and I have to quickly switch the account to my other card, shivering in the chilly air as I wait for a second Uber.

Once I’m in the car, I pull up my accounts. My stomach sinks again, a fresh wave of nausea washing over me as I see that the joint account is frozen. I’d expected my credit card to be immediately cut off—I hadn’t even tried to use it after I left my parents’ house, and I’d believed my father when he said there would be no more deposits to the joint account. But he hadn’t said anything aboutfreezingit.

There’s fifteen thousand dollars in that account. Money that I’d planned to transfer and keep as savings in case of an emergency, while I got a less expensive apartment and figured out what my next steps were…especiallyif I’m going to keep the baby.

Panic washes over me, making my hands shake as I check my own personal account. There’s less than two hundred dollars in it, and I don’t get paid until this coming Friday.

Shit.I drop my phone into my lap, fighting back tears as I remember that my rent was due today. I’d planned to pay it before I left, but I’d been in a rush to get to the airport.

Which means now, for the first time in my life, I don’t have the money.

My eyes start to well up with tears again, shame mingling with the panic.I should have remembered to pay it. I should have been better with money. I shouldn’t have relied on my father, and been spoiled enough to think that this could never happen…

Every thought is full of recriminations, and I feel like an idiot. Like a naive, spoiled girl who thought that her safety net would always be there. But even though my father was always stern, even though I never knew if I was doing well enough to earn his praise, Ineverthought this would happen. I thought I was safe in my parents’ love for me, and that they would never try to force me to do something that would make me unhappy.

I never thought my father would give me an ultimatum like this.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.Tears are still streaking my face as the Uber drops me off, and I head up to my apartment. I look around, my chest tightening and a fresh sob spilling out as it hits me that this apartment that I love so much, my first place of my own out of college that I chose and decorated and made my own, won’t be my apartment much longer. That no matter what, I’m going to have to move.

I sink down onto my couch, trying to breathe, to stop crying. I run through solution after solution in my head, but I can’t come up with anything. I know if I asked Dimitri, he would force Alek to help, but I don’t want that. I don’t want anyone to beforcedto help me.

The sun is starting to dip below the horizon, flooding the city skyline with a palette of vibrant colors, when I hear a knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I frown, waiting for a moment to see if it’s a mistake and they’ll move on, when the knock comes again, harder this time.

“Who is it?” I yell thickly, getting up to walk towards the door. Whoever it is, I’m prepared to tell them to go away…until I hear a familiar voice from the other side.

“It’s Alek.”

10

ALEK

Ican’t quite believe I’m standing here, on the other side of Dahlia’s door, my hands shoved in my pockets as I wait for her to come and unlock it. I have half a mind to just turn and leave before she can.It was a mistake to come here,I think as my jaw clenches, and I’m just about to walk away when I hear the locks click and the door opens.

What the fuck am I doing?The thought runs through my head…and then I see her face.

She looks like she’s been crying all day. Her face is swollen and flushed, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair atop her head in a messy knot. She looks as if she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, and I feel a prick of something in my chest—something that feels very much like guilt. It prickles over my skin, like pins and needles after a limb starts to wake up, and I feel my shoulders hunch slightly under my jacket. I don’t like the feeling.

I don’t want tofeelat all.

“What are you doing here?” she croaks, and I have half a mind to tell her that I’m not sure I know the answer to that any more than she does.

Her lips press together as she waits for my answer, impatient misery written across her face. She looks nothing like the vibrant, slightly awkward, flirtatious woman that I met at Hush, but even so, she’s still beautiful, even like this. I’m not sure anything could make her less so, and the throb of desire that ripples through me as I look at her is as frustrating as it is distracting.

I never planned to see her again after that one night. And now…

“Can I come in?” I ask gruffly, uncomfortably standing out in the hallway of her apartment. Growing up in the Bratva, I learned early to keep my senses alert and always be on my guard, but the fallout from what happened over the last five years has only made that worse. Now just being out in the open like this in a strange building for long is enough to make me twitchy.

Dahlia’s brows draw down in the middle as she frowns, and for a moment I think she might tell meno. That she might want nothing to do with whatever I’ve come here to say. I grit my teeth, meeting her tired, red-rimmed gaze.

“Fine.” She steps back, pushing the door wider as she crosses her arms over her chest and pivots, stalking back to the living room. I close the door behind me and lock it, following her as I try not to think about what happened between us in this entryway.

Either I’d forgotten just how good sex could feel, or Dahlia was better than anything I’ve ever had before. My stomach tightens at the memory of pinning her up against this wall, of her breathless moans and the heat of her body sinking into me, of how it had felt to press my bare cock against her wet flesh and sink into her.

A flood of heat rushes down to my groin, my cock stiffening, and I press the heel of my hand against it. The last thing I need is to have this conversation with a raging hard-on, thinking aboutspilling Dahlia back onto the couch and repeating that night instead of saying what I came here to tell her.

She’s standing by the large window at the far side of the living room, her back to me as I walk in. “Why are you here?” she repeats, and I let out a slow breath through tight lips.

“I came here to apologize,” I tell her stiffly, and she snorts.

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