Page 51 of Close to the Edge

His lips flattened. But he blew out a breath a moment later. “Yeah, a bunch of people let me down. But more than that, they let mymotherdown when she needed them the most. It’s not a good feeling, being that helpless, so fixing became my thing.”

“When did you start?”

“Officially? When I was twenty. Unofficially, shortly after my mother died. There was a lot of fixing to be done in Trenton Gardens.” There was a hard, bitter note in his voice that drew shivers down my arms.

“I don’t know where that is.”

“Consider that a good thing, baby.”

I looked at his rigid profile, and burning with a need I couldn’t suppress, I tapped the name into my phone.

And grew colder. “Trenton Gardens, home of the most notorious gangs in South Central LA. Five people are killed thereevery week!” I read out loud with growing horror.

A flash of anger lit his eyes as he glanced at the phone, but then he gave a grim shrug. “Not exactly fairy-tale reading, is it?”

I put my phone away, my chest tightening with sympathy for this man with the hard exterior and flashes of tenderness. I wanted to know more, uncover his layers.

“I hear you sometimes,” I murmured.

His body tensed. “Excuse me?”

“In the night. You don’t sleep very well, do you?” I probed gently.

“What makes you think I’m not checking on things? Keeping you safe?”

“Are you?”

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Leave it alone, Lily.”

“My mother left just before I turned eight. I didn’t sleep through the night for a year,” I blurted. “My stepdad and I woke up one morning and she was...gone. Left a note to say she was never coming back and we shouldn’t try to find her. Even after we received papers the next week from her lawyer granting my stepfather full custody of me I still thought she would come back. Stephen was sterile and couldn’t have children of his own. That’s the only reason he kept me.”

Caleb cursed under his breath. “That’s his loss, Lily, not yours.”

I attempted to shrug his sympathy away, but my shoulders didn’t comply. “I wasn’t entirely blameless. It...hurt, knowing my mother could leave without a second thought, and my stepfather would’ve walked away if he had children of his own. I acted out. Sometimes.”

“That’s still not an excuse for what he did.”

“I know, but...” I shrugged.

“Deep down you wish things had turned out differently,” he said.

I sniffed away the unexpected tears. “Stupid, right?”

“No. Not stupid at all,” he murmured, reaching out to glide a finger down my cheek.

Damn, there he went, being all gentle again. A fat drop rolled down my cheek.

He cursed again as he turned off the ignition. A distracted look outside showed we were in SDM’s parking lot. It was still early enough that there were only a handful of cars around, the nearest one six bays away.

When his thumb brushed my chin, I tried to pull away, more than a little terrified of the softening happening inside me. He clamped his fingers in my hair, forcing me to look at him.

One brow was cocked, but his eyes were gentle. “I told you this was too heavy for this time of the morning. You should listen to me more often.”

Another tear slipped free. I tried to laugh it away. “I have no idea why I’m crying. I’m over all of that. Counting the days until I put him and Chance in my rearview.”

His fingers tightened on my nape. His other hand patted his lap. “Come here,” he commanded.

My breath caught. “Why?”

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