Page 38 of Edge of Danger

“You could’ve gotten yourself clean by now.”

He had never seen so much disdain packed into a single eye roll. “Fine. But it isn’t true. What Robert said isn’t true at all. He set me up, lied about me and he took Walker away. Why he would do that when he was only going to hand him over to you, I have no idea. I’ve never been able to understand him.”

That made two of them.

“How did you get involved with him in the first place?”

She shrugged with a sigh. “I was a cocktail waitress at a casino in Eagle Pass. He was in there a lot. Charming. Handsome. I had just lost my parents not long before that and was on my own. Lonely.” Another quick hand under her eyes.

Brax bit back his sympathy in favor of letting her talk. Hadn’t he wanted to know the truth about her all this time?

“Maybe a week after we slept together, Robert stopped calling. Looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t care about me. But I was hurt and angry. Then I found out I was pregnant. I managed to get hold of him. He told me the baby couldn’t be his because he’d used protection. So I was on my own again.”

“I have to ask.” Damn it. This was a hard question. “Are you sure Walker is his—”

“He was the only one,” she snapped.

“Okay.”

“If he wasn’t going to help me I decided I would make it on my own. I worked hard. Took extra shifts. Started cleaning houses on the side to make extra money.”

“While pregnant?”

“I had to support the baby somehow, didn’t I? But it was okay. I guess it felt like I had a purpose again. A direction. Without my parents, I’d lost my way. Nothing bad, but I was drifting. I stopped taking my college classes, stopped seeing friends. With the baby to work for, there was a reason to get out of bed every morning.”

She looked down at her hands. “Robert showed up at the hospital when Walker was born. Said he was sorry and that he wanted to be part of our lives. I was stupid enough to believe him. He even stuck around my apartment for the first two weeks. I told myself he wasn’t as helpful as he could’ve been because he didn’t know anything about babies. But there were other things that weren’t so easy to explain away. Like the way he kept peeking out the window from behind the curtains.”

“I have a feeling I know where this is going.”

“He got a call after two weeks. I don’t know who it was from, but it was enough to get him to pack up his things and tell me he was only using me and Walker as a way to hide out. He didn’t really want to be a father. I shouldn’t expect to see him again.”

Brax winced. He could almost see it playing out in his head.

“It was okay, though. There was another single mom in my building who worked during the day shift. I watched her little girl along with Walker while she was working, and she watched Walker for me at night so I could work.”

“You must’ve been exhausted.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “But we were making it. I could pay the rent, keep him in diapers and get formula and clothes, feed myself. It was hard, but it was good. He was worth it.”

Another heavy sigh. “Robert came back when Walker was almost two months old, and said he wanted to be part of our lives again. This time I told him to get lost.”

“Good for you.”

“It wasn’t good enough for him, though. I know that now. A couple of days later, I was leaving the casino when a man bumped into me. That’s all I remember. He bumped into me, and everything got blurry. Somehow I made it home, but I was fuzzy and my coordination was all off. When CPS showed up, I was completely unable to pull it together.”

Her breathing picked up speed. “They took Walker away. Pulled him out of my arms. He was screaming. I knew in my head that I had to do something, but I couldn’t understand anything coming out of my mouth no matter how hard I tried to make sense. All I remember is them saying somebody reported me for neglect and drug use. It was a nightmare. The sort of thing you see in a movie. It kept getting worse. Robert made it look like the whole ‘being on drugs’ thing was the norm. I know now that whoever bumped into me must’ve injected something, but I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t prove I was a good mother. He got a judge to permanently revoke my parental rights.”

She snorted. “I didn’t have any money or any way to prove I was innocent. I didn’t know what to do.”

Walker stirred and fussed. It gave Brax an excuse to get out of the car. Sitting there wondering what to believe—whether it was right or wrong to take what he knew about Robert and allow himself to believe his brother would go that far—would drive him crazy before long.

He unstrapped Walker and held him against his shoulder. Tessa got out on her side. “Do you believe me or not?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head, color bleeding from her face. “You think I’d make up something like this?”

Brax faced her in front of the Jeep. “Do I think Robert would stoop to anything? Yes. Do I believe he’d completely make up something like this? It’s hard. Why would he even want a baby?”

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