Page 75 of Close to the Edge

Then, unable to sit still, I surged to my feet. “Lily—”

“I want to leave. Now. Please.”

No.Hell, no.

One look at her face showed my firecracker was back, ready to rain fire and brimstone on me if I didn’t grant her wish.

“Lily, we need to talk.”

She shook her head. “I need to pack.” She darted down the hallway so fast she was a blur.

I followed because, fuck it, I was tired of feeling like shit.

I knocked. At her silence, I entered. She was holding a top, staring blindly into her suitcase. I took another moment to memorize her face.

Her head snapped up, and her face tightened. “What do you want, Caleb? We said everything that needed saying last time.”

“No we didn’t. I have more to say.”

She looked mutinous for a moment, and then her cute chin lifted. “Fine, let’s hear it.”

My fists tightened, the magnitude of my need an overwhelming weight pressing me down. But I pushed ahead. “I don’t want you to leave. We’re not done. Hell, we barely even started. I want you back.”

A look flashed through her eyes but it was gone too quickly to read. “Wanting me back suggests you had me in the first place. Did you?” she queried almost carelessly.

“What?”

She threw the top into the suitcase. “Let’s forget that for a minute. You want me...back...for how long?”

I frowned. “Lily—”

“A week? A month? Two months?”

I shrugged. “It’s something we can figure out together.”

She laughed, an acid-tipped sound that whipped blades through me. “How? What criteria would you use? When the sex isn’t so hot anymore? When your next exciting case came up?”

“If you want a time frame I’m not going to give you one,” I snapped with more heat than I’d intended.

She paled. I reached out. She flinched. This wasn’t how I’d intended it to go. At all.

“Lily, I—”

“Why did you become a fixer, Caleb?” The question walloped me from left field. Her voice was wooden but her sharp eyes were prying beneath my veneer.

I didn’t want to be analyzed. Not while this rawness lived inside me. “Why the hell not?” I snapped again.

“That’s not an answer. Shall I tell you what I think? You enjoy the control it gives you. But more than that you enjoy the transient nature of your work. You don’t have to invest in the long-term. You go in, all guns blazing, you fix whatever’s wrong. And then youleave. Don’t you?”

I stared at her, trying to summon fury and detachment. All I achieved was a widening of the chasm between us. Fuck it. “Yes,” I threw out.

It was the truth, after all.

She whirled to face the window, then almost immediately turned back again. “Well, there’s your answer. You can’t guarantee anything beyond your nextfix. That’s what you live for. That’s all you’ll ever care about. But you know what else you can’t guarantee? That your neat record will hold out. Sooner or later you’ll have to accept that some things can’t be fixed.”

The raw ache intensified. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I just know that I don’t want to be your next fix, Caleb.”

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