In the light of day, he looked older than Tourmaline remembered. Balding. Camo T-shirt sticking to his concave chest. He looked terrible, really—as if a crow shit him on a fence and the sun hatched him out. His expression clamped down tight and he started toward her with a steady look in his eye.

So much for avoiding him until she left town.

Blindly, she scrambled for the kick start. She would not cry. Or stop. Or be scared.

She was just going to fly. Standing over the handlebars, she kicked. The engine coughed and didn’t turn over. In the moment she needed it most, it wasn’t going to start. She dropped her eyes, panicking.

Mistake.

A scabbed, dirty hand clotheslined her, crushing her windpipe and snapping the back of her head against the concrete pillar.

“Hey there, T,” Wayne sneered. “Long time no see.”

He squeezed and she was choked down to the past.

The clock said six a.m. She could taste the sugary cereal she poured herself while watching This Old House. She could taste the warm milk. The feel of the scratchy carpet under her legs because the couch was too disgusting to sit on. The way a younger, less haggard-looking Wayne had kicked through the living room in his boxers, sat on the broken couch above her, and silently poured cereal into a cup. How his leg had hit her arm and not moved, and the milk in her stomach had soured. How she pulled herself tighter into a ball and realized, with her mother still sleeping in the bedroom, why Dad forbade her to come over here. Why she had to lie and say she was at Anna May’s if she wanted to spend time with her mom.

It wasn’t because he hated Mom. It wasn’t even really the drugs. Wayne had chewed and stared bleary and red-eyed at the television, and even though she’d moved, his leg had found her arm again. He could hurt her. There was no one here to stop him.

He finished his cereal and Mom woke up. Tourmaline left when the sun hit the cardboard on the windows and the air was filled with the deathly fumes that smelled like dead cats rolled into burning carpet. And for that day, she was safe. On her way home, she promised herself she’d never come back again.

But she had.

Just once.

And now she was here, pinned under his hands, with no one to stop him.

She clawed at his hands. Tried to kick out his knees with her one free leg. She was going to stop him. Snarling, she got her hand up and shoved her fingers into his eyes.

“Bitch,” he exclaimed, twisting away, hand slipping.

She pushed him off and righted the bike, heaving all she had down on the kick start.

Still. Didn’t. Start.

Wildly, she looked for Wayne, trying to see him before he caught her unawares again.

His friends had him by the arms, dragging him away. “Cut it out!” one of them yelled. “Don’t you know who that is?”

“Oh, I know.” He shook them off and started right back for her.

She kicked. The engine choked and died. Her pulse seemed to slam out the curses. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Her daddy will kill you, man. That’s Harris’s kid. Remember Ray?”

Somewhere in her panic, deep inside, she froze and looked at the men, all tangled up like wildcats on the bank as they tried to hold Wayne back. Who’s Ray? Her leg was already coming down hard on the kick start, and underneath her, the engine exploded.

Wayne paused. He remembered Ray.

The question still hung in the air—horrifically unanswered—but Tourmaline popped the clutch and hung on. Without even realizing she knew what to do, she slipped the clutch and sank back.

It was just enough.