Different night. Different town. Different guy.

Same situation.

A guy hurt someone Jordan loved. The last guy had hurt his sister. This guy touched his girl. It didn’t matter if Tabatha chose to do it. She felt put in a situation where she had to, or her mom was in danger. To Jordan that meant this guy took advantage of Tabatha, i.e., he hurt her.

The last time all the guys took hits. This time, at the end of an abandoned dead end, Jordan pushed the guy away and began circling him.

“What’s going on? Why’d you ditch DeVroe?” The guy was looking at us, edging backwards. He was skittish, jumping as Jordan kept moving around him.

“You touched Tabatha Sweets.”

Jordan’s head was down. He kept going, swinging his arms at his side, a gentle sway, as if he were slowly warming up. What he was doing was the opposite. He was fighting for control, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in his tone. The danger rippling from him, even as he towered over Harper by a few inches.

The guy’s massive throat moved as he swallowed. “Wha—you know Tabatha?”

“Did you know she was only with you because of her father and the threats to her mother?”

Harper didn’t answer, jumping to the left as Jordan circled on the right. He jumped the other way as Jordan completed his move, and so on. They kept dancing around, except one was prowling and the other wanted to hide.

“Wha–what are you talking about?”

“Answer the goddamn question.” Jordan lunged. He was in Harper’s face.

Harper cowered, his legs trembling. The front of his khaki shorts darkened. Liquid moved down his leg.

Jordan saw it, his eyes skimming down.

No one mentioned it.

“Did you know Tabatha was whoring herself to get your dad off her dad’s back?”

The guy looked frozen in place, unable to answer.

“DID YOU KNOW?!”

“Yes! Yes.” Harper’s eyes closed. He gritted his teeth, flinching, then he looked at the ground. “Yes. I knew. I knew that’s why she was with me.”

That’s all Jordan needed.

His eyes were still hard, looking dead as he skimmed over us. He wanted to do more than hurt him. His gaze fell to me, then to Cross. It stayed on Cross, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was remembering a time we had to plead with him also. Hurting was fine. Permanently hurting was a whole different ballgame. And beyond that, never go there.

I moved forward, my voice low. “No, Jordan.”

He swung away, but I saw the strickened look there. It mingled with something so cold that it seared me. It brought me back to my room, a night when I was a little girl and heard my drunk father bring home some friends. The same night that had been the last night I slept in her house.