I scurried from table to table. It was lunch time and Dolly’s was packed. It had rained again the night before, and all the farmers in the area were in town to compare notes and share their misery. Levi had thought he and Dad could finish our harvest in a day and a half, but it had taken a little over two and a half. At least Dad’s crop was in, which a lot of farmers couldn’t say. It’d been a near thing, and they’d finished in the rain.

Dad had tried to pay Levi, but all he would accept was a full tank of diesel, which was no small thing. The two tanks of fuel the McCormick’s combine consumed was $1,200, but that was fuel that would have been burned during the harvest anyway. In effect, Levi’s help had cost Dad nothing.

I hadn’t been there when they finished. I was at work, but I heard from Grandma later that Mom had shed a few tears in private over Levi’s help. It would be wildly overstating it to say Levi had saved the farm, but there was no question in anyone’s mind that his help had been invaluable, and he’d done it out of the goodness of his heart.

I’d had dinner with Levi at my house both nights, but I hadn’t seen him since. He and his Dad were out doing contract harvesting. Dad normally didn’t contract harvest, but since his crop was in, he was this year. Farmers helped each other when times were hard, and with all the recent rain, times didn’t get much harder.

I passed orders around a table. Normally I tried to loiter and chat a little, which it helped with my tips, but today I was rushing from table to table as fast as the kitchen could pump out the food. I saw Steve and a couple of his running buddies step in. All the tables were taken, and there were two in front of them, but we were starting to catch up.

Steve and his two friends were next to be seated when the McCormick’s entered. Levi and Steve studiously ignored each other as they waited, Levi talking with his parents. Two tables opened up about the same time and they took their seats. For the first time in almost an hour, nobody was waiting for a table.

Since the incident with Steve five years ago, I’d avoided the McCormicks. If they sat in my section I’d asked one of the other girls to cover their table, but we were so busy today, and with Levi sitting with them, I decided I needed to suck it up. When I arrived at their table, Levi was his normal, warm self, while Will and Judy were much cooler. I could feel the old shame closing in around me, but I forced it away as I took their order. I’d done nothing wrong, and I refused to act like I had. I moved to Steve’s table to get their order.

“Hey, babe, how’s it shaking?” he asked as he put his hand on my ass.

I’d already learned that telling him to stop only made him bolder, so I just ignored him as much as possible. “What can I get you?” I asked, stepping aside so he couldn’t touch me.

He snickered. “She’s still mad at me because I told her boyfriend to fuck off the other day.”

I ground my teeth. “Are you ready to order or do you need a few minutes?”

Steve picked up one of the menus and slowly looked it over. “You know, I think what I want isn’t on the menu.”

“Then you’re out of luck because that’s all there is. Look, we’re busy, so either give me your order or I’ll come back in a few minutes.”

“Jesus,” Steve muttered. “I’m just trying to be friendly. Give me the bacon cheese burger, onion rings, and a Coke.”

I nodded as I took his order, along with the orders of his two companions. He made a grab for me, but I was quick enough on my feet that he missed. As I walked away, Steve and his friends burst into laughter.

Steve got a pass from the town as long as he didn’t go overboard because he was Abby’s father. He played it off as harmless fun with the mother of his child, but I didn’t like to be pawed, and especially not by Steve. Today, however, he was worse than usual, and I suspected it was because he was once again trying to tweak Levi with what he’d done, the rat bastard. I bit my tongue. I’d already been threatened with losing one job for telling him off. I didn’t want the same thing to happen in Dolly’s.

Steve’s food came up before the McCormicks’, but I let his sit in the window until I served Levi, Will, and Judy. I wasn’t so petty as to spit in his food, but I didn’t have to go out of my way to provide good service either, especially when we were so busy.

We had a few tables empty when I slid Steve’s order in front of him. I topped off their glasses and turned to go. I wasn’t quick enough and got a light swat on my butt. I caught Levi’s gaze, and he was glaring at me, his face hard. I felt a sinking in my stomach. It was starting all over again.

“Everything okay? Need anything?” I asked as I topped off glasses at the McCormick table.

“We’re good, thanks,” Will said.

I hesitated a moment, looking at Levi, but he was ignoring me and staring at Steve’s table. Steve’s table burst into laughter as all three of them looked at me. It took every ounce of will I possessed not to slink but to walk away with my head up and my back straight.

I was working another table when Ed, one of Steve’s friends, called me by raising his glass, indicating he wanted a refill.

“I think want some dessert,” Steve said as I refilled glasses.

The way he was looking at me, and the smirk of the other two men at the table, told me I was being setup for something. “What can I get you?”

“I think I’d like to have some pie.”

“Okay, what kind? We have apple, pecan, and lemon meringue.”

“I’m thinking a hair pie. Can you give me that? Maybe with a big sausage in it?”

I turned on my toe without a word, not dignifying his comment with a response. He grabbed at me again, and I roughly shoved his hand away as I danced out of his grip. I heard a hard bang and looked up as Levi rose from his table, Judy pulling at his arm before he shook her off.

“Levi! No!” she called as he stomped toward me.

She started to slide out of their booth, but he froze her with a look, pointing at her with a finger. His Dad continued to slide out, but Levi turned his back on him and stomped toward me. I felt sick at how he glared at me. Just like before, I’d done nothing wrong, but I was going to be blamed. Just when I thought I was getting my life back together, I was going to lose him again. I took his arm as he reached me, preparing to beg his forgiveness, but he shook me off without slowing. At first I was surprised, and then I wilted in relief. He wasn’t glaring at me, he was glaring at Steve, behind me.

“Levi…” I began, trying to stop him before the situation got out of hand, but he ignored me.

“If you want to keep those hands, you’d better learn to keep them to yourself,” he snarled, glaring at Steve. Ed and Tony, Steve’s companions, watched with wide eyes.

“Or what?” Steve replied with a sneer.

“Or I’m going to make it so you can never grab a woman with them again.”

Will arrived. “Levi, let it go!”

“Yeah, Levi. Do what your daddy says.”

Levi reached in, grabbed Steve by the shirt, and hauled him out of the booth, knocking dishes and glasses everywhere.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Will called, getting between Levi and Steve, trying to separate them. “Knock this shit off right now, both of you!”

I could see the fear in Steve’s face as the entire restaurant scrambled out of the way and watched in stunned silence. Levi held Steve an inch from his nose.

“If you touch her again, I’ll shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll need spelunking gear to find it,” Levi snarled.

Steve freed himself with the help of Will. “Back off, fly boy, before I kick your ass.”

“You want to take it outside?” Levi challenged.

“Knock it off!” Will roared, shoving at Levi. Levi had to take a step back to keep his balance, but he wasn’t backing down.

“Come on!” Levi snarled. “Be a man!”

Steve reddened but recovered and sneered. “I got better things to do than mess with you.”

“What’s the matter, Steve? Afraid of someone that can fight back? Is that why you had to wait until Ella was drugged to make your move?”

“Fuck you, McCormick!”

“Knock it off!” Will roared again. “Levi, shut the hell up. Steve, get out of here before I turn him loose on you!”

“Fuck you, old man! I don’t need your protection!”

“Then let’s go,” Levi growled, stepping around his dad and heading for the door.

“Levi! No!” I cried, running after him. I caught up to him before he’d taken two steps and grabbed his arm. “Please, don’t.”

He looked at me. “This shit stops, and it stops right now,” he said, holding my gaze.

“Please,” I said softly, begging him with my eyes. “You’ve made your point. Please, let it go…for me.”

He watched my eyes a moment before the tension seemed to flow out of his body. “Okay. For you,” he said as he held my gaze before he kissed me. It was an innocent kiss, the type of kiss lovers gave each other in public every day, but it made me tingle anyway. Maybe he was my gallant knight after all. He turned back to Steve. “This is your last warning, Calhoun,” he growled.

“I should have you up on assault charges!”

“Shut up and get out of here,” Will ordered again.

“What’s the trouble here?” Officer Randall asked as he strode in.

“Nothing,” Will said. “Just a little misunderstanding.”

Hank Randall looked the area over, taking in the stunned faces of the customers huddled together, the scattered dishes, out of place tables, not to mention Ed, Tony, Steve, and Levi’s pants and shirt stained with drinks and condiments from Levi dragging Steve out of the booth.

“A misunderstanding, huh?”

Will nodded. “It’s under control now.”

Randall looked at Dolly, standing behind the counter. “Dolly?”

“Nothing’s broken. Just get them out of here,” she replied.

“You heard her, boys. Out you go,” he said, jerking a thumb at the door. “Don’t make me have to make this official.”

“Fine,” Steve sneered. “It’s a good thing the cops showed up before I kicked your ass, McCormick. Keep your whore. I’m done fucking her—”

Levi lunged at Steve, knocking him back into the booth and going in after him before Will and Randall pulled him off. I wanted to cry as Randall snapped the cuffs on Levi. My sole consolation was Steve was in a pair of cuffs as well.

“I’m going to give them a little time to cool off and think about what they’ve done,” Randall said as he handed Steve and Levi off to a couple of other officers. “You can come get Levi in a couple of hours.”

“Thanks, Hank,” Will replied, giving me a hard stare.

“Tell me what went down.”

Officer Randall spent twenty minutes talking to everyone, starting with me and Will. When he was finished with me, I went to Dolly. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”

She nodded. “Clean that mess up, and you can go check on him. When you see Levi, you tell him to steer clear of here for a while.” She softened, a smile playing at her lips. “I know why he did it, and I even admire him for it in some ways, but I can’t have him starting fights in here.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said. I started cleaning up the mess, thankful I still had a job.

Mackenzie stepped in to help. “That was really something,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I replied, keeping my voice down.

“I heard what Steve said. That was disgusting. I wonder where he was planning to get a big sausage?”

I couldn’t help but snicker. “I take it not from him?”

“Don’t you know?”

I sighed. “No. I keep telling people, I was drugged. I don’t remember any of it.”

Mackenzie shook her head. “He’s about average. He’s sure not packing like Levi. The bigger problem is he doesn’t know how to use it.”

I frosted over with Mackenzie’s comment. How did she know how big Levi was? Had he taken her up on her offer? “You have first-hand knowledge?” I asked, forcing my voice to be pleasant.

“With Steve, yeah. But come on, you haven’t noticed the package in Levi’s pants?”

I relaxed slightly. Levi was the largest man I’d ever been with. Not porn star huge, but bigger than most. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“Steve got what he deserved.”

“Yeah.”

“He needed someone to take him down a notch or two. I’m glad to see Levi do it. I thought he was going to kill him when he called you a whore. I hope my boyfriend would stand up for me like that… if I had a boyfriend,” she said, rather wistfully, I thought.

“Maybe, but now Levi’s in jail.” We finished up.

“Pfft,” Mackenzie said with a dismissive wave. “You heard Hank. He’s just giving them time to cool off.”

I nodded as I clocked out. “Yeah, I hope. Thanks for the help.”

She nodded and smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. She looked almost envious. It had been a long time since I felt like anyone envied me. I hurried to my car and drove straight to the police station. “May I help you?” the woman behind the glass at the desk asked.

“I’d like to see someone, please.”

“Regarding?”

“Levi McCormick and Steve Calhoun.”

“I’ll see if Chief Wilkoski is available.”

A moment later, Police Chief Peter Wilkoski appeared. He wasn’t in uniform, so he’d probably been called when the sons of two prominent families had mixed it up public. Wilkoski was a grizzled man in his sixties who’d served on the Hamlinton police force for longer than I’d been alive.

“How can I help you, Mary Ella? Come on back,” Wilkoski said, holding a door open for me. He led me to his office and gestured to a chair.

“I want to know what’s going to happen to Levi.”

“Want to tell me what happened?” I told it to him straight without sugar-coating anything. “Well, while everyone knows Steve could use a good ass-whipping, the law is the law, Ella. Steve wants to file assault and battery charges, and I think it’s pretty cut and dried Levi’s guilty.”

My heart sank. “What about Steve? Can I file, I don’t know, sexual harassment charges against him or something?”

Chief Wilkoski looked at me for a moment. “You can have him charged with battery, but are you sure you want to do that considering your history with him?”

“No, but Steve brought this on himself. Levi was just protecting me.”

Wilkoski sucked on his teeth a moment. “How about this? If I can talk Steve out of filing charges against McCormick, will you agree not to press charges against Calhoun? I don’t see any reason to make this any uglier than it already is. I don’t want Levi, or Steve for that matter, to have this on their record.”

“Done,” I said, leaping at the opportunity.

“Give me a minute.” I sat in the chief’s office and fretted for five minutes before he returned. “Levi is free to go, and no charges will be filed.”

“What about Steve?”

“He’s free to go, too, as soon as someone comes to get him.”

“Thank you, Chief Wilkoski, thank you so much! I owe you big!”

“Keep those two apart, Mary Ella, for Levi’s sake.”

“I’ll try, Chief. Thank you.”

I waited a moment before Levi appeared. He was a mess, but he’d never looked better to me. He visibly relaxed and smiled when he saw me. “Jesus, I’m glad it’s you. When they said I could go and my ride was waiting, I thought it was Dad. I’m not looking forward to facing him.”

“Let’s get out of here so I can take you home,” I said, taking his hand and dragging him out of the station. As I drove I told him what had happened with Chief Wilkoski.

“Thanks for bailing me out of that.”

“I appreciate what you did, but next time I don’t think I’ll be able to fix it for you.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry for dragging you into this again, but when he kept putting his hands on you, I couldn’t stand it.”

“Just…I don’t know, let it go, I guess.”

He said nothing, but I saw the firm set of his jaw and the slight shake of his head. Shit. He wasn’t going to back away from this. Despite everything, it pleased the hell out of me. It felt so good to have someone willing to fight for me. I pulled to a stop in front of his house but made no move to get out of the car.

He opened his door and paused when I didn’t do the same. “Aren’t you coming in?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, especially now.”

“Nonsense. You just sprung me from jail.”

“Levi, no. Please don’t make me come in.”

“Ella…once again, you didn’t do anything wrong. What happened is all on Steve…well, Steve and me.” I shook my head, desperately wanting to avoid facing his parents. “You can’t hide from my parents forever.”

“Maybe not, but not now. I can’t.”

“You can. I’ll be right there. It’s time you showed them you have nothing to be ashamed of. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I know how hard this is.”

I remembered him coming to my house and facing my parents, how fearful he’d looked. I thought he was being overly dramatic, but now that the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t know how he’d summoned the courage to do it.

Hands shaking, I switched off my car and stepped out. As I rounded the front of my car, he took my hand and led me inside. Judy met us at the door.

“Ella? What are you doing here?” Judy’s voice was coolly pleasant. She was using the same tone Mom used when she was holding her tongue and being agreeable for appearances.

I thought I was going to die and wanted to flee back to my car, but as weak as my legs felt, I wasn’t sure I could make it.

“She got me out of jail. Would you rather I still be there?”

“No, of course not. We’d have come to get you when they released you, but you brought this all on yourself,” Judy said as she glared at me.

“Yeah, I know, but what if it was Rebecca or Kamron being groped like that? Would you have wanted me to just sit there?”

“That’s different.”

“Why? Because Steve hasn’t raped them?”

Judy looked like she’d been slapped, but she quickly recovered. “I can see there’s no talking to you right now.”

Levi nodded. “Yeah, I can see that too. Come on,” he said, tugging my hand.

He pulled me to his bedroom. The last time I was in this room we’d made sweet, tender love, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. He began roughly stripping out of his shirt as he walked into his bathroom. I sat on the bed, staring at my feet, afraid to move, afraid Judy or Will would come in and confront me as he bathed, listening to the water running in the adjacent room. No matter what I did, it always seemed to bite me in the ass.

The water stopped, and a moment later he appeared wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. My mouth instantly went dry. When I’d first seen him after he’d returned from the Air Force, I could tell he’d put on some weight. His arms were better developed and he’d filled out his shirt better, but I could tell every ounce of weight he added must have gone to muscle. He’d always been good looking, but now he looked like an athlete, every muscle and sinew perfectly toned and proportioned.

“Forgot to get some clothes,” he muttered as he opened his closet and pulled out a shirt and pants before retrieving underwear and socks from a drawer.

He acted like me seeing a perfect male specimen was just another everyday event for me. How could he not know I was dying to feel his body against mine? I’d hoped he’d dress in front of me, but he returned to the bathroom and stepped out again a moment later dressed. He pulled a small duffle from the top of his closet and stuffed in a few changes of clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting away for a couple of days.”

“Where?” I asked, working to keep the sound of panic out of my voice.

He looked at me, perhaps detecting my fear that he was leaving. “Just to the Hamlinton Inn. Things are too tense here. I’m snapping at my mother, and you can bet Dad and I are going to have words if I stay. We need a little space.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to become between you and your family.”

“What did I tell you? You’ve done nothing wrong. It’ll be okay. We just need a little breathing room, that’s all.” He finished stuffing items into the bag and zipped it. “Let’s go,” he said, holding his hand out.

I took his hand and meekly followed him out. “Where are you going?” Judy asked as we appeared, staring at the bag. She’d been waiting on us. Will stepped up behind his wife and placed his hands on her shoulders. They both looked angry, hurt, and terrified.

“I’m going to spend a couple of nights in town,” he said, his hand never leaving mine.

Their eyes flicked to me and back to him. “Are you going to come back?” Judy asked, a slight tremble in her voice.

“I think we could use a little distance at the moment.” He softened, released my hand, and went to his mother to kiss her on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you in a few days.” He returned to me and took my hand again. “I’m still willing to help with the contract work, if you want it,” he said, talking to his dad.

“Of course. You’re our son. Nothing will change that, and you don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

I thought Judy was going to cry as she pursed her lips. “You know you always have a home here,” she said, her voice thick and full of emotion.

He nodded. “I know.”

“Where will you stay?” she asked.

“The Hamlinton Inn. It’s just for a few days.” He looked at his father. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, if it’s dry enough.”

Will nodded. “Okay, son. We love you.”

“I love you too,” he said. We stood in an awkward silence for a moment before he nodded in parting, opened the door, and pulled me outside.