Page 128 of On The Edge

He’s on the rooftop like expected. His elbows on the ledge, braced there, and his face looking out toward the ocean.

For the first time in the longest time, I don’t know what to say to him. How to make it better. How to fix what his mom clearly broke tonight.

Or maybe it’s always been broken and tonight was the first time the superglue failed to hold it together.

“Cruz.” My voice is soft and there are questions in it. Are you okay? Do you need to talk? What can I do to help you?

“Please. I don’t need . . . just go.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.” I step up behind him and press a kiss to his shoulder. “Not tonight.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You never could.”

I get he’s hurting, and I get he is looking for a fight, but the bite to his tone hurts way more than it should. “You need to stop punishing yourself for your mom. You’re not why she left. You’re not why she comes back when she feels overlooked or left out. You’re why—”

“Why what? Why you were offered the job in New York and are moving there but didn’t have the fucking guts to tell me?” he shouts, his voice breaking and the expression on his face breaking my own heart.

What the fuck? How does he . . .

“It’s not like that.”

“No? Then what is it like, huh? What excuse do you have as to why you accepted a job somewhere but didn’t say shit to me? You going to wait till I head to the next race and then just disappear? You just going to up and walk away without saying a word? Are you—”

“What are you doing?” I raise my voice to the level of his when it all clicks into place. His thought processes. The ingrained assumption. “I’m not your mom. I’m not leaving you—”

“Could have fucking fooled me,” he grits out, the words like a knife to my heart.

“Really? Really?” The last one comes out at a fever pitch. “How can you say that to me? We haven’t discussed your deal in detail yet. We haven’t discussed what happens next. But if there is anything you should have seen about me, it’s loyalty. I stepped up to the plate for you to help you sign that stupid contract. And I’m the one who—” My voice breaks and the tears fall. “The one who is so goddamn in love with you, Cruz Navarro, that I love you when you refuse to acknowledge that you love me back.”

The words come out like a weapon when those words never should be.

Especially not to him.

Especially when love has never been a positive to him.

He stares at me as emotions flicker and fade over his features. Confusion. Disbelief. Anger. Fear.

And it’s the last one that stays the longest. It’s that one that makes my gut churn and the worry take root.

I reach out to touch him and he shrugs out of my touch. “Don’t.” The single syllable is more than a warning. It’s a death knell.

“Cruz. I shouldn’t have said it like that. I should have told you at my parents’ house. Hell, even before then, but I didn’t want to make this whole thing even more awkward than it was. You’re you and I’m me and it was like we lived in the bubble where we ignored time and parameters . . . but now those are ending. For all I know, you’re ready to move on to the next person because you haven’t said anything and—”

“Have you said anything?” he demands. “Have you opened your mouth because, if actions speak louder than words, taking a job in New York says a whole hell of a lot.”

“It was only offered to me a few days ago. Honestly, I was taken aback by the suddenness of it, but there hasn’t been a right time to bring it up to you—”

“Yeah, there’s never a right time to say goodbye. I get it. Why say it at all, huh?” He chuckles but it’s ice cold. “I’m fucking used to that.”

“Cruz.”

He starts to stride off and I grab his bicep. He grits his teeth, but he stops and stares at me. “You know, I thought I was in love with you, but I’m not. I’m in love with the idea of you. Of this. But it’d never work because like you said, you’re you—the perfect, moldable lackey—and I’m me—the fuckup you can’t wait to leave. And neither of us are going to change, right? Now let me go, Hart, because I’m done playing this game.”

Hart.

Not Madds.

Not Maddix.