“Mitchell? What are you doing here?”

“I texted you and you didn’t answer. I called you and didn’t get your voice mail. Which means you blocked me. You blocked me.”

I’d seen Mitchell angry, but there was more to this than anger. His eyes were bloodshot, and bulging like overinflated balloons. He filled the doorway, hands braced on the frame.

Mitchell was usually put-together—laundry-pressed shirts, hair styled. But his blue button-down had a visible stain on the pocket and was beyond rumpled—so creased it looked as if he’d slept in it. His hair was lank, hanging over his forehead.

He should have been immersed in medical school coursework and studying and team-building—not driving fifteen hours, one way, to confront an ex-girlfriend who’d broken up with him seven months ago. There was no reason—no reason—for him to be here. A spear of dread cut through me, and despite the heat, I battled the urge to wrap my arms around my chest. I tried not to cower visibly.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” I swallowed and took a deep breath, striving for calm. “I asked you not to contact me again. If you’d complied with that request, you wouldn’t have known you were blocked.”

“What if I needed you? What if I had an emergency and I needed you?”

I shook my head. “You don’t need me,” I said, attempting to soothe his agitation. “You have your family. You have friends—”

“I don’t have anything thanks to you.”

“What—what does that even mean? We broke up. I said I wished you well and I meant that, but I don’t owe you my time, I don’t owe you my emotional support, and I don’t owe you any further explanations.” Annoyance doused my desire to pacify his baseless fury. “It’s over. Please leave.”

I moved to shut the door and he blocked it with a shoulder and shoved it open. It bounced into the wall from the impact, and I flinched and stepped back. Tux shot up the staircase behind me and I found myself wishing he knew how to dial 911. No one else was home.

I backed across the foyer, judging my options. I had three. My first instinct was to try to get around him, make it out the wide-open front door and scream for neighbors instead of retreating deeper into the house, but I’d have to practically go through him. He wasn’t big, but he was a man. Nope.

I could run through the kitchen and mudroom and into the garage, but I’d have to hit the button to raise the garage door. Mitchell was a runner. If he was right behind me—and he would be—he could easily reverse the door and I’d be trapped.

Option three: get to the keypad in the kitchen and press the panic button, which would call the security company.

Without another thought, I took off for the kitchen. I swatted a barstool over and heard him trip over it, cursing, as I jammed the panic button. He caught up and grabbed at my arm when the phone rang seconds later—probably the security company calling to ask the nature of the emergency or the code in case someone had pushed the button accidentally.

I only managed to knock the handset off its base before Mitchell threw both arms around me, imprisoning my arms at my sides. The phone skittered across the counter, still ringing. If no one answered, they were supposed to send the sheriff, the volunteer fire department, and probably an ambulance. I stomped Mitchell’s instep, and he grunted and loosened his grip enough for me to elbow him in the gut. I lunged out of his grasp, turning to run for the front door.

That was when we heard the rack of a shotgun and Mama’s voice at the door to the mudroom. “Get back, pendejo.” She leveled the barrel directly at his chest.

I reversed course and ran to stand behind her. Mitchell glared, hands half-mast, but didn’t move.

I was eight or nine when Mama bought the Remington 870. We were making dinner one night when we heard a knock at the front door. She looked out the window, didn’t recognize the guy selling candy door-to-door, and called, “No thank you.” Furious that she wouldn’t open the door, he banged his fist against it for five minutes, shouting racial slurs. We’d both started at the slightest noise for weeks after, and I’d taken to sleeping in her bed, too scared to be in my room alone.

So she did something she’d sworn to never do—she bought a gun and we both took lessons. It hadn’t been used for anything but target practice since.

“Get out of my house,” Mama said, nothing in her voice negating her willingness to unload a round of buckshot in his direction.

Mitchell’s face held a tempest, barely contained. He backed out of the kitchen, but he sneered his last words as though my mother wasn’t shepherding him out the door with the barrel of a shotgun aimed at his chest. “I thought you gave up Vanderbilt and threw me away because you wanted to do marine biology. Not because you wanted to fuck that trailer trash.”

A siren sounded in the distance as he bolted out the door. We heard his car squealing out of the cul-de-sac as Mama locked the front door and I ran to the window. He was gone. It’s a good thing I wasn’t holding that shotgun, I thought. I’d have shot him.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Boyce

When I collected overdue weed payments for Rick Thompson in high school, I got downright gifted at judging who was going to be a problem and who would cave after one look at my size or Maxfield’s merciless expression. When Pearl’s ex showed up at the garage, I didn’t waste time deliberating over likely whys and wherefores. Mitchell Upstone was going to be a problem. That was plain.

Sam and I were in the middle of her first supervised solo engine replacement—something she’d been looking forward to all summer. I prayed to God she didn’t set off on a rant at the sudden change in plans.

“Samantha, there’s really nothing more for you to do today. Call your daddy and go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“What?” she said, her bristly blond head whipping up, a squall brewing in her gray eyes. She must’ve learned to read me in the past few weeks, though, because she tugged her phone from the pocket of her overalls and dialed, sneaking a surly glimpse at our unwelcome visitor.

When Sam’s dad pulled up, Upstone quit pretending to examine my tools and read my certificates and gave me his full attention. The look he gave me was cold-blooded—no expression to speak of. No scowl, no narrowing of his eyes. His eyes looked dead, matter-of-fact, and that was a cause for concern, because his true interest didn’t lie with me and we both knew it.