Crack.

God, it felt good to hit something.

Well, he wasn’t giving it up. This was his thing. If Emily wanted to take a swing at his head with a putter twice a week, she could give it her best shot. What did she think he was going to do, instigate an earthquake from the batting cages? Make too much grass grow on the driving range?

That prickle crawled along his neck again. Michael spun.

Emily stood there, ten feet behind the chain link, her arms folded tight against her chest. Tendrils of white-blond hair had escaped her ponytail to cling to her neck in the humidity.

Michael could practically hear his father’s daily warning in his head: Don’t start something. Just leave them alone.

How was he supposed to leave them alone if they kept coming after him?

He automatically checked behind her. Still no cars in the parking lot.

“Back to take another swing?” he said.

She scowled, but didn’t look away. “No.” She hesitated. “I just . . . I wanted to—”

A ball rammed the fence beside his shoulder, rattling the entire structure. Michael swore, and Emily jumped. He turned to slap the button again.

When he turned back, she’d come closer, until only three feet of dirt and a chain-link cage separated them.

“I need this job,” she said, her voice full of false bravado. Like she’d had to dare herself to walk out here.

“Maybe you shouldn’t try to kill your customers, then.”

She licked her lips and fidgeted. “I didn’t . . . I thought you were going to—”

“Yeah, I know what you thought I was going to do.” He adjusted the grip on his bat and turned back to face the machine. No matter how careful he was, all they could see was his potential for damage.

Like he would have needed a bat. Didn’t she understand that? He hit the button. A ball came flying. He swung.

Crack.

“Well,” she said from behind him, “I saw what you did to Tyler last week.”

What he’d done. That was rich. “Yeah, poor Tyler.”

“He said you jumped him after school.”

Michael couldn’t even turn around. Fury kept him rooted until the next ball shot out of the machine. He swung hard. This one hit the nets and strained the ropes.

Of course Tyler would make him out to be the bad guy.

He tossed a glance over his shoulder. “I’m sure you got the whole story.”

She hesitated. “If you’re just coming here to hassle me, I’ll tell my parents.”

From any other girl, it would have been an empty threat. The kind of threat you stopped hearing in third grade.

From her, it meant something. Emily Morgan’s parents could cause serious problems for his family.

Michael gritted his teeth and made his voice even. “I’m not doing anything to hassle you.”

Ball. Crack. He brushed the sweat out of his eyes.

She was still standing there. He could feel it.

“Here,” she said.

He didn’t turn. “What?”

She was close enough now that the earth whispered to him about her presence. “I’ll get today,” she said. “For trying to kill you and all.” Then the fence jingled, as if she was fiddling with it.

Another ball was coming, so he couldn’t look. He swung and sent it flying.

She’d get today? What did that mean?

He turned to ask her, but she was already slipping through the tinted door into the office.

But strung through the fence was his crumpled five-dollar bill.

CHAPTER 2

Emily pushed rice and chicken around her plate and wished she hadn’t mentioned Michael Merrick to her parents. Because now they had a new topic to argue about.

As if they needed one.

“You’re going to quit that job,” said her father.

“I need my job,” she said.

“Oh, you do not,” said her mother. “What could you possibly need a job for? We give you everything you need.”

In a way, they did. She had her car, a hand-me-down sedan she’d gotten when she turned sixteen and her father decided he wanted something new. Her parents covered insurance. She always said she’d pay for her own gas—but they’d given her a gas card for her seventeenth birthday.

But she doubted they’d pay for a security deposit on a new apartment in New York City after senior year. Having a stash of cash meant freedom to do what she wanted to do.

“He didn’t bother me,” she said. “I think he was just as surprised to see me—”

“The last thing the Merricks need is leverage,” said her father, gesturing with his fork. “This deal was a bad idea from the beginning, before we knew how powerful that boy would get.”

Emily sighed. “I’m not leverage.”

“You could be,” said her mother. “I’m not having you come home looking like Tyler.”

Emily peeked through her bangs across the table at her brother. He wasn’t eating, either—his fingers were too busy flying across the face of his phone, his own mode of ignoring their parents. He was two years younger, but already stood about four inches taller than she did. He’d spent freshman year growing into his features, and now, for the first time, he looked older. The bruising on his cheek had turned yellow and purple, sharp and striking against his pale skin and white-blond hair. She studied the injury, remembering Michael’s sarcasm from the batting cage.

Poor Tyler. I’m sure you got the whole story.