“Jesus Christ,” he moaned. “What’d you do that for?” Said with the plaintive whine of bullies the world over, those who can dish it out but have never learned how to take it.

I used the wall for balance and pushed myself to standing. I yanked my towel off the floor and wrapped it around myself again. “Because you deserved it,” I told him.

Surprisingly, he didn’t argue with me. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him with that one kick, his nose sitting sideways on his face. I wondered if that was all it would have taken, years ago, to end things between us. No long drawn-out fights where it was my face bloodied and bruised, no blow job in Land’s car to make Jimmy Ray finally disappear. It might have worked. Or I might have ended up dead and dumped in the woods somewhere, Junie left to be raised by Cal or, God forbid, my mama. Second-guessing the past wasn’t going to do me any good. All I knew for sure was tonight, this moment.

I watched, warily, as Jimmy Ray shoved himself up to sitting, leaned his back against the wall. “Can I get a towel?” he asked.

I went into the kitchen, gathered some ice in a dish towel, and brought it back to him. He wiped the blood off his face and then tipped his head back, pressed the ice pack to his nose with a groan. “Damn, girl,” he said. “You got me good.”

I slid down the wall and sat beside him, legs out in front of me and crossed at the ankle in deference to the towel I was still wearing. “I didn’t blow up Matt’s trailer.”

Jimmy Ray glanced at me. “Yeah, I figured that was a long shot.”

“But you thought you’d break into my apartment and strangle me anyway?”

“I was pissed,” Jimmy Ray said with a shrug. “Got cops crawling all over my place. Besides, if I really wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Your mama be damned.”

I turned to look at him. “What’s my mama got to do with it?”

“Back when we was together, your mama used to give me what for. Told me if I ever went too far, she’d use my dick as fish bait.”

I stared at him, momentarily speechless. Sure, when I was a kid, Mama had lit into anyone who’d wronged me. But as an adult, I thought she’d stopped caring even that much. Once, when she’d seen one of the black eyes Jimmy Ray had given me, she’d told me I’d gotten myself into that mess and I had to get strong enough to find my way back out. It had never occurred to me that she’d given Jimmy Ray any kind of warning.

“What?” Jimmy Ray said, amused. “Why’d you think that broken wrist is the worst you ever got? Hell, I was a little worried about that one, to be honest. Thought maybe my pecker was a goner.”