Page 66 of Close to the Edge

She stared into her coffee. Then shrugged. “Your guys didn’t have a chance to check out the bistro first. And I knew I could be alone here.”

I.Notwe.

I waited a beat. “You’re pissed.”

Her mouth firmed. “Give the man a prize.”

My jaw clenched. “Enough. You’ve made your point with your little tantrum.”

Anger flashed across her face. I watched her rein it in. “Fine. Talk to me, then, Caleb. Convince me I didn’t just sleep with an asshole who couldn’t even be bothered with conversation after he fucked me.”

“Jesus...”

“Leave him out of it. This is between you and me.”

Absurdly, I wanted to smile. But her beautiful face was a picture of hurt she was trying to hide. I dragged a hand down my stubbled face. “Full confession. What we did kinda...blew my mind.”

Shock replaced hurt, and then her expression slowly softened. After a minute she nodded. “Me, too,” she whispered, blushing fiercely.

“Okay. Now that we’ve got that squared away, how can I make you feel...less pissed?”

She grabbed a sliced bagel, tore a piece, but didn’t eat it. “I want to know you, Caleb. Tell me something.”

I took a deep breath. “You know I grew up on the rough streets of LA.”

Her hand trembled as she stared wide-eyed at me. “Yes. Was it after you lost your mom?”

Christ. I weighed the option of evasion against the return of her hurt, and grimaced inwardly. “It was before. And after. She was a manic-depressive. The moments of light in her darkness were very few but for the first nine years of my life she had medical insurance and a decent doctor to prescribe her the right medication.”

“Caleb—”

My fingers brushed her lips, silencing her. “I don’t like telling this story. Let me tell it once and be done. Okay?”

A small nod.

My chest tightened as memories flooded in. “She lost her job and the domino effect of no insurance, losing our house, ending up at a halfway house, then a shelter, sent her into a deeper hole. I was eleven before we were assigned a place in Trenton Gardens.”

Lily winced but I couldn’t let her sympathy affect me.

“But it was too late. She’d lost the will to...” I took a breath. “I was the only thing she fought for. Every time social services tried to take me away, she would fight to keep me. I’ve no idea how she did it, but she won. But then she would spiral back into darkness. I couldn’t help her. I called every helpline I could find, wrote a dozen letters every week to anyone I thought could help. The doctors we managed to see were hopeless. Twice, she tried to end her life. Every time they sent her home from the hospital with a damn leaflet. I even pawned her jewelry to pay for an appointment with a private doctor. The pills he prescribed helped. When she ran out I called my social worker and asked her to help me get her more. She just...laughed at me.” Anger and despair I hadn’t felt in a long time swelled inside me. I withdrew my hand from Lily’s, clenched it in my lap and took another breath. “Anyway, she succeeded on her third attempt.”

“Oh, God...”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. I opened my mouth to tell her not to cry for me. Then stopped. Iwantedher soft sympathy. It was a salve to a wound that had never healed. Shedding tears for my mother was one of the many things I hadn’t been able to do for her. Maybe Lily’s tears would be enough to let her know how sorry I was for failing.

Lily got up, walked round and slid into my lap. “I’m so sorry.” Her arms circled my neck. I hugged her close, breathed in her goodness. And just like in the bathroom, I never wanted this moment to end.

I never wanted to let her go.

Which was crazy. We’d only known each other for a week. And...dammit, I didn’t do feelings!

I looked around and grimaced. “Can we continue this at home?” I said, raising my eyebrow.

For some reason my cocked eyebrow made her smile. “Too wide-open-spaces for you?”

“Something like that,” I said, looking down at the table. “Breakfast is ruined, though.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t that hungry anyway.”

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