Page 1 of Hot Shot

PROLOGUE

TEN YEARS AGO

CASS

If I wasn’t about to leave everything I know and love, I’d be living the best night of my life.

It’s our last night in Vegas, and the three days we’ve been here have been heaven. We pooled our graduation money for the trip—me, Wilder, my cousin Remy, Wilder’s twin sister Shelby, and his best friend Tate—and drove two days to get here in the dead heat of July. In a week, we’ll be scattered to the wind for college, and I’ll be the farthest away at Oxford, so we figured why not go to Vegas and live it up for a minute? We’d never be together like this again.

We’re doing a pretty good job pretending we aren’t devastated about it too.

Wilder pulls me a little closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head as we walk toward our hotel off the strip. Like, a mile off. But as we pass the Bellagio, the music begins to play, the fountain springing to life.

Our friends whoop, running up to the fence, but Wilder and I hang back. I wind my arms around his waist.

Five years we’ve been together, ever since he sent me a carnation on Valentine’s in the eighth grade and asked me to the dance. I knew even then I wanted to marry him. Haven’t wavered once about it, even now, despite the fact that things are ending.

He’s leaving for Auburn next week, and I’ll fly across the ocean to England. We’ve known for a long time that this was coming. But neither of us bargained. We never promised each other we’d try long distance because we’ve never lied to each other before. Why start now? It would only prolong the pain.

Easier to be honest with ourselves and say goodbye.

Or that’s the idea, at least. So far, nothing about this is easy.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I mostly hear him from my ear against his chest, the sound muffled and marked by his heartbeat.

“Why do you ask?”

“You just sighed like eight times.”

We chuckle. He wraps his arms around me.

“I don’t want to go home,” I answer after a minute.

It’s his turn to sigh. “Me neither.”

“All summer, all through the last semester, I didn’t have to think about leaving because I was thinking about this. This trip. With you. And now it’s almost over and I…” My voice cracks. I swallow hard.

“I know,” he says, softly now.

“I wish there was another way.”

He rocks me just a little. “The only way would be for one of us to give up one dream for another. And then what?”

“You hate me for making you give up baseball, or I hate you for giving up my spot at Oxford.”

“Right.”

For a beat, we watch the fountain jump and whoosh and spray to the music.

“Why’d it have to be five thousand miles away?” he asks. “A ten hour flight. A thousand bucks,ifyou can get a deal.”

I lean back so I can peer up at him, smiling. “You looked?”

“Of course I fucking looked. I don’t want to leave you. Not since the eighth grade.”

The sigh I sigh hurts.

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