Page 48 of Rejected Wolf's Secret Baby (Rejected Moons 4)

He doesn’t bother to deny it. “Do you mind?” he asks.

“Would you go if I did?”

“I’d ask you why first. I feel like you’re keeping your distance.”

“You feel like I’m keeping my distance after I let you meet Emmy? That’s about as personal as I know how to get.”

“I don’t think you would have let me meet her if you weren’t planning on leaving,” he says. “I think you took a gamble that it wouldn’t matter because you’d be gone soon enough anyway.”

Well, maybe thatwaspart of my thought process. “What do you want me to say?” I ask. “Whenever you’re around, I feel like there’s something you’re waiting to hear. It’s like you think I’m going to change my mind about sticking around.”

“I’m still holding out hope that you will,” he says evenly.

“Well, let go of it,” I say fiercely. “Do us both a favor. You’re not going to win this one, Brandon. This place isn’t my home. This isn’t my life.”

“So you do want me to leave you alone.”

“Are those my only choices? I thought you and I were going to be friends. Can’t we be that—just friends who like each other and spend time together and occasionally have sex?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You do it with other women.”

“I’m not involved with any other women.”

“Okay, maybe not right now. But youhavedone it with other women. What’s different about me?”

Brandon rakes a hand through his hair. “To tell you the truth, I wish I knew the answer to that. But I don’t.”

I close my eyes. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Neither do I,” he says. “That’s not why I came out here today. Kayla told me you’d be here, and I thought we could spend the day together. Have a good time. Not fight.”

“Be friends, in other words.”

“If friends is what you’re offering—”

“It is.”

“Then yes,” he says. “Friends.”

He steps closer to me and rests his hands on my shoulders. “Whatever we are to each other, I care about you,” he says. “This can be enough for me.”

I lean in and rest my head on his chest, very much wishing that I had more to give him.

29

ALICIA

Brandonstepsawayfromme. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

“I could eat,” I say, wondering what he has in mind.

“How long has it been since you’ve hunted? Properly hunted, I mean?”

I laugh. “I don’t hunt when I’m human.”

“Well, I don’t know. Some humans do that.”

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