She put an empty table between them, the hair prickling on the back of her neck.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded again. His bark drew the eyes of everyone in the bar.

“I’m leaving,” she said quietly. “I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back, and if you ever touch me again, I’m going to the police.” The words poured out like water rushing over the falls. They’d been lodged in her throat for so long they’d strangled her.

His once handsome face twisted into a gruesome grimace. His cheeks flushed red. The veins in his neck corded into a topographical map. But they weren’t within the walls of his trailer. They had an audience.

It was a thin veneer of protection, and Gloria clung to it.

He laughed, a slow, dangerous wheeze. “You’re going to be very, very sorry.”

A chill ran through her body, lodging itself like an iceberg in her heart. She’d made a miscalculation. Her eyes flicked to Sophie behind the bar. The woman was watching her. She nodded toward the phone. A subtle signal.

Gloria gave a small shake of her head.

No. She needed to do this on her own. Make the break.

“Glenn. I’m serious. We’re done. You’re done hurting me. It’s never happening again. If you try it, I’ll take out a restraining order against you.”

He’d been a king on the basketball court in high school. Big, mean, aggressive. He’d fought his way to win after win. She’d thought winning fueled him, that hero’s adoration. But instead, it was the attention, the recognition that he was someone not to be messed with. A man. Respect through fear. Just like his father. His father drank and beat his wife…until his untimely death of a heart attack at forty-five. So Glenn drank and beat his girlfriend. Because that’s what men did.

He reached across the table quick as a snake, his meaty hand settling on her arm in a painful grip. “Let’s go have ourselves a little talk,” he said pleasantly. But there was menace behind the words, laced like poison ivy around the trunk of a tree.

Gloria fought against his hold. It always started the same, that hand wrapping its way around her upper arm and choking the blood out of it. The last three months had been so bad she’d never healed. Just bruises on top of bruises.

“Stop it,” she gritted out, desperate to yank her arm free. But it was a comedy, her small frame trying to deny his hulking strength.

He towed her toward the door like a man with a dog.

“Gonna settle up?” Titus called nervously after them.

Glenn didn’t deign to answer, just shoved the front door open so hard it bounced off the wooden, shingled exterior.