“Woah, are you okay?” Jess reached across the table for me as I coughed, managing to choke the food down despite my sputtering. I paused as I caught my breath. Jess’s eyes were wide as she looked at me. But then her gaze flickered up, over my shoulder, and she gave an awkward smile as she said to someone, “He’s okay.”

Shit. Fucking shit.

I glanced back in time to make brief eye contact with the man who’d stepped out of the truck. He was old, with a long lean frame and gray stubble on his cheeks. His hair was greasy and grown out to his shoulders, but beyond his haggard appearance was a stunning familiarity that made the food in my stomach turn sour.

His mouth twitched in a crooked smile before he turned away and kept walking. He recognized me; I’d seen it in his eyes.

I hurriedly gathered what remained of my food, setting my tray on top of Jess’s empty one. “Come on. We need to go.”

Jess blinked at me in surprise but followed me as I threw our trash away. I grasped her hand before we ran back across the street, looking over my shoulder with paranoia all the while.

He wasn’t supposed to be back. Fuck, he wasn’t even supposed to be alive.

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Jess said the moment we were both back in the car. I felt better with the AC blasting on us and all the doors closed, the tinted glass hiding us from the world.

Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it wasn’t him.

But that truck…it was the same one he’d driven for so damn long. And the way he smiled, the sharp angles of his face, his dark eyes…so much like his son.

“You saw that old man?” I said, shoving my wallet in the center console. She nodded. “That was Manson’s dad. Reagan Reed.”

Her eyes widened as she turned in her seat, looking back across the street. “Shit. I take it he hasn’t been in town for a while?”

“Not since the funeral,” I said, pulling out of the lot and back onto the road. “We thought he was dead. Hoped he was dead, I guess. Don’t mention this around Manson, okay? I’ll tell him, but don’t bring it up.”

“I won’t.” Her eyes were on me as I drove, studying me. Clever girl. She’d figure me out if she kept trying. “He scares you too, doesn’t he?”

I sighed, my fingers flexing on the wheel. She’d never gotten the whole story — she’d heard some of the surface-level things Reagan was capable of, enough to know what kind of man he was, but nothing more. It wasn’t my story to tell, and besides, I didn’t want to scare her.