Page 122 of On The Edge

“Incredible? Beautiful? Intelligent?” I nod. “Yes, she is. She’s also confident and sure of herself and her decisions. You should be proud of the daughter you raised.”

“Oh, I am. I guess I’m not getting this whole thing. How it happened so fast. How the two of you are going to make it work. How you’re not going to hurt her.”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” Isn’t that what I’m struggling with? All those same things? “We’re opposite and yet we fit.” I move beside him and look at the engine he’s tinkering with. “What are you working on here?”

“Nothing. Everything. A problem I’ll invent to fix so that I can take a break. Marriage and family . . . they’re the best things in the world, they made me the man I am—but a man definitely needs a break now and again.”

I bark out a laugh. I knew I liked him. “Then I guess I can’t offer to help.”

“Nope. Not unless you want to break something so you can fix it.” He looks over to me, those green eyes of his locked on mine. “Same applies to Maddix. Don’t break her just to say you fixed her.”

I work a swallow. What must it be like to have a dad love you like this? To want to protect you. “Maddix can fix herself just fine.”

He nods, his lips in a straight line as his hands grip the front of the car. “I like you, Cruz. I do. But I need you to promise me something.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a good man if the past few days are any indication. And if you don’t love her, you’re going to make whatever reason you break up with her about you. Not her. You live two very different lives and should this . . . run its course, be the man I think you are and take the blame yourself. Take it because you care about her. Take it because you know she’s worth it.”

His words stay with me long after the last empty beer bottle has been picked up and the strings of lights that zigzag the backyard have been turned off.

“Thank you for today,” Maddix murmurs as she drifts off to sleep, a soft smile on her lips and my heart in her fucking hands.

She owns my heart. Believes in me.

And somehow her father does too even though I don’t deserve that either.

“You’re a good man if the past few days are any indication. And if you don’t love her, you’re going to make whatever reason you break up with her about you. Not her.”

I will do everything I can to protect her heart, Gavin. Especially letting her go . . . even if it kills me in the process.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Maddix

“This is absolute insanity and fucking incredible all at the same time,” Tessa says as she spins around and takes the whole of the hospitality suite in, her pass on her lanyard swinging with her.

“It is, isn’t it?”

I’ve gotten used to this—spoiled by it all really—but I still have a pinch me moment with each and every race I go to.

That I’m here.

That I’m here with Cruz Navarro.

That I’m in love with him.

I study him down below, standing just outside of the garage. The drivers’ parade is over, the crew is checking last-minute items on the car, and Cruz is getting race ready as he talks with Otis.

“There something you want to tell me?” Tessa asks quietly as she steps up beside me.

“Not that I know of,” I say just as Cruz looks up to me and gives a soft smile that has me sighing in the best way.

“Oh, because now’s about the time you tell me that the fake turned to real.”

“What do you mean? I told you we were sleeping together,” I whisper. “That we were having fun.”

“Yeah, but you never told me you had fallen for him.”