Monday evening, a bang on my door interrupted our supper. The front door was thin and hollow, making the pounding sound echo through the small space of our home.

Max looked up from the quesadilla I’d thrown together and scowled at the sound through his smudged glasses. I let out a slow breath and debated whether I should open it or not.

The sound was angry. That much was obvious. And to be honest, I didn’t know what was waiting for me on the other side. It could be an angry neighbor. Mr. Cavanaugh from two trailers down always had something to complain about. Or it could be one of my mom’s associates come to collect… well, it could be anything. Money, stolen possessions, car keys from when she’d confiscated them the night before at Misty’s.

Mom was a lot of things, but she never let the men drive home drunk after a night of whoring. I always found that strangely admirable.

There was a short break and then the pounding started up again.

“Ruby, I know you’re in there!”

Damn, it was Ajax.

Setting my quesadilla down, I jumped to my feet. Ajax wasn’t going to go away. My car was out front, he knew I was home. If he wanted to talk, there was no stopping him.

Max made a grumbly sound and took a big bite of his supper.

“Be nice,” I whispered.

He rolled his eyes and pushed some tortilla chips around his plate.

“And eat your beans,” I ordered.

He rolled his eyes for a second time but picked up a fork.

I should probably discipline him for all the eye rolls, but I was a big eye-roller myself, so it felt wrong to punish him for something I had yet to get a handle on.

Straightening my scoop neck tee and artfully ripped up jeans, I walked the few steps from our dining table to the front door. Ajax stood on the other side, a dark shadow of a man cast in the light of the setting sun.

There was a time in my life when I thought there had never been a more attractive man than this one. At one point, when Max was little, and I had still thought I needed someone to save me, Ajax had been my knight in shining armor.

Not even Logan Cole could live up to the hero I’d made Ajax out to be.

Not even Ajax could live up to the hero I’d made him out to be.

I met Ajax Mendino three years ago when he’d moved to town to train horses. He was four years older than me, dark haired, dark skinned and dark souled. I’d been drawn to the wildness in him, the raw power that seemed to vibrate through him. We’d met on a rare night out, when Coco was home on fall break and dragged me to Pug’s for country night. “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum was playing and he’d asked me to dance. I’d had just enough whiskey and Cokes to say yes.

After a night of laughing, drinking and touching, he’d swept me off my feet in a literal sense and carried me to the back of the bar where he’d all but ravished me right there, in public. I’d left the bar with the burn of his five o’clock shadow all over my jaw and puffy lips from greedy kisses.

I had never been kissed like that before. Never been desired so desperately. And my poor, neglected heart had jumped with excitement.

Ajax had taken my number and then texted the next day. His interest had surprised me. With a toddler at home and zero experience dating in high school, I hadn’t expected contact for at least three days. That was what chic flicks and sitcoms told me was normal. It was my only standard to gauge by.

I’d asked Coco her thoughts, but she was as excited at the prospect of me dating as I had been.

It was easy to fall for Ajax after that. He took me out on the weekends and texted at least once a day. Whenever we were together, he’d always found a way to touch me, make me feel special. He would always tell me how beautiful I was. He was everything I had never had before.

I hadn’t let him meet Max right away. I’ve always been protective of my son, especially in this town. And I’d never told him about his dad before. He was only two, so it wasn’t like he was asking a lot of questions, but I was afraid Ajax would confuse him.

They ended up meeting by accident three months later. Max and I were grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and we ran into Ajax. Max didn’t care about the man talking to Mommy, but Ajax especially didn’t seem interested in my son.

I had always been up front about being a mom. It wasn’t something I could have hidden in this town anyway, but I was proud of my baby. Besides, I talked about him too often to keep him a secret. But it didn’t click until that moment how very uninterested in my son Ajax was until that moment.

He ruffled Max’s hair before he took off and it always struck me as weird how he handled my child like a puppy.

I would never know if it was Max or me in the grocery store looking completely domesticated in yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt I’d tied at the waist, but Ajax’s texts stopped coming as regularly after that. And two weeks later Coco saw him with another woman at Pug’s, dancing and making out and leaving together.

Since then, I made him get tested before we ever hooked up. I should have ended it with him when it was clear he didn’t want me exclusively. He’d never made the promise or even alluded to us being in a monogamous relationship. But… I had hoped. I had done the one thing I promised myself I would never do again after I found out I was pregnant with Max.

My stupid, fragile heart had fluttered when I was around him. My brain had unwittingly started making plans about our future. I’d been thinking about introducing him to Max and my mom before the grocery store, planning out how the occasion should go.

Looking back, I was embarrassingly naïve.

Instead of ending it with him, I’d let him string me along, whenever was convenient for him. I’d just wanted something to make me feel good, even if it was just for a little bit, even if it was only temporary… even if I’d feel worse afterward. It wasn’t like I used him like a drug, I’d reasoned. I didn’t beg for my next fix or feel particularly addicted to him.

But he was the only one interested in me. And so that made me say yes, when I knew I should have said no. That made me compromise who I thought I was as a human and female and adult when I didn’t want to be any of those things… when I just, for even the shortest time, just wanted to be someone that was loved.

No, not even loved. Just someone that was seen… cared for… Someone that was wanted.

That had changed over the last year though. Ajax wasn’t the carefree Casanova he’d been at the beginning of our relationship. His job had gotten more stressful and I suspected he had money problems.

Plus, it was one thing when Max was little and didn’t notice Ajax or question where I was going and when I was coming home.

It was something else entirely now that Max knew kids with normal, nuclear families and had started asking questions about his dad. I couldn’t give him a normal family and I sure as heck couldn’t answer questions about his dad until we moved elsewhere. Ajax was another problem I didn’t need.

For the last six months, I’d been distancing myself from Ajax as much as possible and we hadn’t hooked up in at least seven or eight months. That he was standing at my door said something about how desperate he’d gotten.

He lifted his head and grinned at me, flashing straight white teeth. His longish-hair was tucked behind his ears and he had a few days stubble along his square jaw. “Rubita,” he murmured in that husky voice that used to make me shiver. It had an edge to it tonight and I didn’t like the gleamy look in his dark brown eyes.

I folded my arms over my chest and glanced back at Max. “Ajax. What are you doing here?”

“You haven’t answered my texts lately.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

He ran his fingers over my hip, dipping them beneath my shirt to find bare skin. I shifted my body to block Max’s view. “You’ve never been too busy for me before.” He grabbed both of my hips and pulled me onto the small deck landing with him. “I miss you, amor.”

Grabbing blindly for the handle behind me, I tugged the door shut to save Max some lifelong trauma from his mom getting hit on.

I should have cut things off completely with Ajax right then, but there was something about the stiffness in his shoulders and the tight grip he had on my hips that stopped me. “Now’s not a good time. My son’s home. We have to do homework before bedtime.”

“Always excuses with you,” he growled at the same time he stepped closer, bringing our bodies flush against each other. “I want to see you again, Ruby.” His lips dropped to my ear. “Be with you again.”

My stomach churned with anxiety. I thought about Levi at the restaurant. You haven’t changed.

Was that true? Was I still the same girl from high school? What kind of girl had I been in high school?

Careful. Quiet. Desperate to get out of here.

I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t careful—Ajax was proof of that. I wasn’t quiet either. I’d given up keeping my opinions to myself and getting run over.

And I was no longer desperate to get out of here.

But maybe there were things that were the same. This trailer for example. The way I let other people treat me. This moment for example, with Ajax’s hands on me and my inability to push him away.

Still, I couldn’t make myself say the final words to him. But it wasn’t because I didn’t feel them. There was something about him tonight that felt dangerous and I was more concerned about Max’s safety than I was my own pride.

“Tonight’s not a good night,” I said instead of the other one hundred things spinning through my head. I untangled myself from his grip, putting space between our bodies. “Text me though. I, uh… it would be fun to catch up. I’ll get a babysitter.”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t answer my texts. That’s why I had to come all the way across fucking town.”

I wanted to shush him. No doubt Max could hear him. This door did nothing to stop sound. “I will,” I promised quickly. “I’ve just been busy lately. Text me. I’ll answer.” With a hell no, but he didn’t need to know that.

Ajax’s eyes flicked to the door and then back to me. “Okay, fine. I’ll text you.” He took a step back and his feet tripped over each other. He stumbled before righting himself. “Fucking answer, Ruby.”

I nodded quickly, fear pooling in my stomach like ice water. Was he drunk? High? “I will.”

Turning around, he jumped down the stairs and jogged to his Bronco. The engine rumbled to life and he tore out of our gravel drive and down the narrow park road like he was being chased.

Leaning back against the door, I realized my heart was racing and my hands were shaking. God, was he on drugs?

On what kind of drugs?

I stepped back inside my home and locked the door, including the chain at the top, but I still didn’t feel safe. Max had finished his supper and had settled quietly in the chair next to me. I could feel his unease and hated that I had caused him to feel that way.

“Let’s go to Coco’s.” I finally said, texting my friend as I stood up. “We’ll take the ice cream and make brownie sundaes with her.”

Max immediately jumped to his feet with his usual energy. “For real?”

I smiled at him. “Get your shoes on. I’ll grab everything we need.”

Coco lived in town above the hardware store. She had the cutest apartment with a fire-escape ladder next to her entrance. A lot of the shops on Main Street had little homes above them that were rented out. I’d fantasized about getting one for Max and me one day, but I’d never been able to afford it. Plus, if I was going to move, I wanted to move away from this town, not deeper into its tangled web.

My gorgeous friend greeted us at the top of the stairs, throwing her arms wide so Max could give her a running tackle hug.

Coco was half Chilean, half cowboy. Her parents owned a small ranch outside of town and so she grew up with goats and chickens and one pig they called Oscar. We’d been best friends since kindergarten had put us together in the same art center.

Coco was the one person I could always count on. She’d been there for me during high school when I couldn’t imagine things getting worse. She’d been there for me when I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant. And she’d been there for me ever since. Her older sister, Emilia, shared the apartment, but Em had been gone for the summer on an extreme and borderline insane backpacking trip across the West Coast—the entire West Coast. It was called the PCT or something like that.

“This is a fun surprise,” Coco said as I pulled out an extensive number of supplies for brownie sundaes—including pineapple, strawberry, caramel and hot fudge sauces. Max and I took ice cream very seriously. “And random,” she finished.

“Sorry,” I told her quietly while Max mastered her TV and all its extras in less than three seconds. How was he just born with the ability to control technology? Half the time I had to have him show me how to use our small, uncomplicated TV. I could never get it to play Netflix. And I needed Netflix. “Ajax showed up unexpectedly and I got a weird vibe from him. My mom’s working all night. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t feel good about hanging around home.”

She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and said, “You know you’re always welcome here. Always.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, truly grateful. She’d offered to kick Emilia out several times and let Max and me move in, but I just couldn’t do that to her. Living with a kid was hard when he wasn’t your kid. Plus, it was good for my mom to have us around. We kept her on the up and up—you know, paying her bills on time and providing food that wasn’t only pizza. Also, us being all up in her space meant she couldn’t bring a random guy home with her every night. And Max got to spend quality time with his grandma.

It was a win-win for everyone.

Plus, Emilia needed Coco. Even though she was the elder sister, she was ridiculously flighty. Coco was pretty much a full-time babysitter.

Not just for Em, but kids too.

Coco owned the only competitive dance studio within seventy miles. She was a legit drill sergeant when it came to her four-year-old’s in bikinis shaking what their mamas gave them.

She’d studied dance at college, but a torn ACL that never recovered properly had kept her from going on to do anything professional with her skills. Unless you counted the two years after college she’d worked on a Disney cruise ship.

But even that was too much for her injury. She moved back home last year, rented out this adorable place above Ace’s, and opened her studio to empower the next generation of J. Los. I was just happy to have my friend back.

And for a place to crash occasionally that wasn’t my mom’s.

Max loved Coco’s apartment too. And since Coco was pretty much a fixture in his life since the second he was born, he loved her too.

“You think something’s going on with him?” She moved around the counter to sit at one of the stools on the other side.

I pulled out a mixing bowl and got to work on the brownies. “Yes. For sure. He was out of it tonight.”

“Alcohol?” she mouthed.

Shrugging, I focused on cracking eggs into the bowl. “I didn’t smell anything on him, but he was… I don’t know… off.”

“Drugs then?” she murmured.

I shrugged again. Drugs were a common problem in small town Nebraska. Without a lot of ways to entertain oneself, the local riffraff found all kinds of outlets to get into trouble. Drug use was a big one.

Just over the summer a meth lab had blown up about twenty miles outside of town. One guy had been killed inside and the other had been carted off to county, awaiting trial.

“I’m glad you came over,” she said seriously. “I was going to call you anyway.”

“About Ajax?”

She rolled her big brown eyes. “Obviously not about Ajax. He’s a loser. I’m glad you finally see it.”

“Hey!” I protested before licking brownie batter off the end of the spatula. “I distinctly remember you pushing me toward that loser and telling me to loosen up.”

She laughed. “Yeah, for one night! I didn’t think you’d become his booty call!”

“Wait just a second!” I glanced pointedly at Max. “I’m no one’s…” I mouthed booty call. “But, to be fair, we could say he was mine.”

She laughed and held her hands up. Thankfully, Max seemed super into the show he was watching. “Sorry.”

I just shook my head at her.

“Anyway, I was going to call you because guess who I ran into after my last class tonight? He was coming out of Pug’s, flanked by Finch and Mercer.”

“Oh, good grief. I don’t want to hear about the prodigal son’s return, okay? I’ve had enough of Levi Cole for a weekend.”

Her eyes lit up, just like every other female that had ever been introduced to the god among men that was Levi Cole. “Did you see him too?”

“He ate at Rosie’s on Friday. He hasn’t changed one bit.” Ha, take that, punk. Even though he couldn’t hear me or see me or have any way of knowing I’d just majorly dissed him.

She gave me a coy look. “I beg to differ.”

“Okay, he hasn’t changed in any of the ways that matter.” When she continued to blink at me, I explained, “He’s just as cocky and self-righteous as ever. I was around him for a total of five minutes and he happily reminded me of why I have never been able to stand him.”

“You mean, why you’ve always had the hots for him?”

I snorted. “Hardly.”

“Please,” she groaned. “He’s eye candy, Rubes. The best kind. You can hate him all you want, but you at least have to admit he’s pretty to look at.”

Laughing at her ridiculous yet fair assessment of Levi, I finally let out a pained, “Fine. He’s pretty. But only on the outside.”

“Does that mean you’re going to try to get out of Supper in the Square this weekend? Whenever someone’s in town that you don’t like, you always bail on me.”

“Ugh, I hadn’t even thought about Supper in the Square.” I slapped my hand over my forehead. “I told Rosie I would work it. May is out having her baby. And Jody is going up to see her parents.” The only other two servers at Rosie’s usually took over the Clark City tradition. Every fall, the restaurants around the middle of town would close and move their dining outside. The town would hire a band to play on the courthouse grass and every Saturday night from August through October, the whole town would come to the courthouse and have dinner outside under the stars. The last night was a big Halloween extravaganza—and this year, Halloween actually landed on the last Supper in the Square Saturday. Everyone came in costume; the kids trick or treated around the square and the food was supposed to be spooky-themed. The event was one of the highlights of Clark City. I avoided it like the plague.

But this Saturday, I was supposed to host for Rosie’s. Anybody and everybody would be out and about. Including, no doubt, Levi Cole. “What am I going to do? I’m going to have to call in sick. Do I look sick to you? I feel queasy for sure.”

A small smile tugged at Coco’s full lips. “It’ll be good for you, Debbie Downer. It’s about time you rejoined the land of the living.”

“I live in the land of the—”

She shivered, a look of disgust on her face. “Ajax doesn’t count.”

“But—”

“And neither does the school pickup line. Sorry, Ruby, now that I’m back in town, your days of hiding are over.”

I let out a sigh and couldn’t decide if I was happy about that or not. Coco had always been my link to humanity. When I’d rather sit on the sidelines, observing and judging, she dragged me into the center of the bar and forced me to dance with her. Granted for the last several years, she’d only made me get out of my house during her short holiday breaks. But now she lived here full time.

She was right. My days of being invisible were over.

And I wanted to believe it was only because of her. But Friday morning echoed in my head like a warning bell. Levi Cole had seen me too.

Whatever there was to say about him, he’d always seen me. Always. Granted, he was usually paying me negative attention, but it was attention all the same. In high school, he’d always felt like a giant spotlight following me around, lighting me up for everyone to see, shining light on all the pieces and parts of me I wanted to keep hidden.

He’d seen me. That was the only way I could express what it felt like to be noticed so completely by him. When all I’d wanted to do was blend in and stay invisible, he called me out and challenged me in a way no one else ever had.

It had done funny things to me back then and knowing I couldn’t risk feeling anything but animosity toward someone so much larger than life, I’d thrown my feelings at his nicer, safer, untouchable brother.

I’d fallen for Logan, so I could continue hating Levi.

When Levi left, I’d fiercely hoped to fade away into obscurity. The unplanned pregnancy had prevented that from happening, but the spotlight was dimmer than it ever had been with Levi. Even with the scandal of having Max, nobody had ever looked at me as keenly as Levi had. Nobody had ever noticed me in that all-seeing way he had. Nobody had ever made my nerves rattle and my insides fizz the way Levi had.

Not Ajax. Not even Logan. These fluttering and heart-flailing reactions belonged to Levi alone.

Thus, I’d been able to survive the last seven years in peace. But now he was back, and I’d already started to feel the effects of his return.

I ignored the uncomfortable flip of my stomach and turned back to my brownies. I didn’t even know if he would go to Supper in the Square anyway. He didn’t look happy to be back in town on Friday. Surely, he would deal with his farm business and then leave again.

Levi was maybe the one person in this town that wanted as little to do with this place as I did.

He’d just been smart enough to leave.

I was still working on that.