“Has he ever behaved badly when he was with you, given you the impression he might be dangerous?”

“No. Never. But maybe he’s never been fully provoked.”

“In the clip from Fatboy Burgers that’s been posted all over the internet, Tobias behaved better than Axel.”

“He did,” she admitted. “He was the one who defused the situation.”

“Seems to me that’s exactly what he did when Axel came after him with that bat, too. I mean… Let’s face it. If he’d wanted to cause some damage, I’m sure he could have. He looks physically capable of it.”

Harper pressed three fingers to her forehead. “Are you trying to soften my heart? Because I can’t let someone who’s been in prison for thirteen years—for attempted murder, no less—be around my children.”

Finished with his eggs, Terrance got up to carry the plate to the sink. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just… I don’t know. He seemed cool, I guess. I liked him.”

“Not nearly as much as I did,” she grumbled and shuffled back to bed.

29

After Axel had come running up with that bat to announce to Harper and her family what an evil person Tobias was, and Tobias had driven home feeling as though he’d just been kicked in the stomach, he’d decided that he had to get away for a while and immerse himself in nature. Do shit that was so physically demanding it required his full concentration and left him so tired at the end of the day that he drifted off to sleep immediately. After all, he couldn’t allow himself to deaden the pain he felt the way his mother did; he had to use better “coping mechanisms,” or so the psychologist at Soledad had told him. So he’d turned off his phone, because he didn’t want to talk to anyone, and put it in the glove compartment of his truck the second he’d delivered the watch Harper had given him to her front door. Then he’d driven off, left town.

Although it smacked of avoidance, he’d been staying at a lodge in Yosemite National Park for almost a week, hiking from dawn until dark—rain or shine. But he still couldn’t think of Harper without feeling as though he had a thousand pounds of sand sitting on his chest and couldn’t breathe.

At least he was giving himself some time to tamp down emotions he shouldn’t have allowed himself to feel in the first place. He’d been an idiot to think what had started between them could end any other way. He’d just gotten so caught up in her he’d begun to hope that she might be able to see beyond his past mistakes.