Page 133 of On The Edge

“It’s been a rough one. Not going to lie.”

“Okay, so this is the part of a breakup where I tell you to stick to your guns. I know you’re hurting and you’re sad and everything in between but, you, Maddix Hart, deserve the I love yous and the whole freaking fairy tale. And oddly enough, he does too. But you can’t cave now. If he doesn’t see it on his own, then he’ll never see it.”

“I know.” I rub the heel of my hand over my breastbone. “It just hurts so damn much.”

“I know it does. It does him too.”

I sigh. “Thanks.”

“Same time tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.”

But when I hang up and stare at my phone, I just want to pick it up and call him. Talk to him. Breathe the same silence as him.

Because yes, I still love him.

It would be so much easier if I hated him, but I don’t.

I hate what was done to him. I hate what years of abandonment has done to his thoughts.

But I don’t hate him.

I don’t think I ever could.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Cruz

“What the actual fuck, man?” Lachlan Evans pushes his way past my crew and into my face. The guys go to hold him off but I just step into the space.

Maybe if he hits me, I’ll actually feel something, because all I feel is numb. Nothing. Just utter white noise.

Well, all except for when I think of Madds. When I think of her, my body hurts in ways I never thought possible. Mind. Body. Soul.

I stare at the fury raging in Evans’s eyes and shrug before turning and walking the other way. The fight in me is gone. It has been for weeks.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” he thunders as he pushes me from behind. “What’s your problem, Navarro? You can impede on the track over and over, but you can’t fight me in the pits?”

“It’s not worth it.” This time when I walk away, he lets me. But it’s an hour later, after a shower and some press time, that Lachlan is waiting for me in the paddock to walk out to the parking lot.

“What do you want?” I groan when I see him.

“We go back a long way, right?” he asks, falling in step beside me.

“Your point?”

“My point is it’s fucking awesome if your head is all over the fucking place like it is right now because on the track you’ll slip up and I’ll be able to fly right past you. And my car is a fucking train wreck—Rossi’s too,” he says of his teammate. “So I’ll take every goddamn advantage you give me. But that also means you have half a chance of getting yourself or someone else killed. Your head’s not right. It’s not in it. Hell, it’s not even in this fucking universe. So you either tell me what the fuck is going on, or I go to Otis and tell him you’re drinking in the pits.”

“What the actual fuck?” I spit the words out.

“I’m worried about you. Enough said.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“Try me.”

I stop and stare at him. The god-awful pressure of the past few weeks is weighing down on me like the world’s on my shoulders. “It’s Maddix.”