As insults went, it wasn’t the worst I’d had flung at me. I had been playing guitar in mostly white establishments since the age of eight, after all. But something about his dismissal cut me deep, digging into old wounds that had never properly healed. At that point, I’d been getting dismissed all my life. By my father, by club owners, by my mother, by school teachers who’d told me I’d never amount to anything because I was more interested in coming up with new song lyrics than learning what they had to teach. Hell, this whole summer with Mike had felt like a dismissal.

But at that moment, I just couldn’t take getting dismissed by Colin, too.

“I’m not your servant,” I informed him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Get out of here,” he said, advancing on me.

I tried to shove him back, and was shocked to find he’d been telling the truth. He wasn’t nearly as skinny as he appeared. He didn’t even stumble.

He, on the other hand, had no problem getting me to move. He pushed me toward the white picket fence. “Get out of here!”

I stumbled, but came back with a “No!” and stood strong.

Another push toward the fence. “I said get out of here, Beaumont girl!”

The insult of him referring to me once again by the name of my neighborhood made me erupt like a volcano. The next thing I knew, I was kicking at him and shoving him away from me, yelling, “No! No! Get your hands off of me!”

My endgame? I had no idea. Still don’t. In that moment, I just knew I wasn’t going to let him push me away or throw me off the Lancers’ property like a bag of trash.

At first he just kept on trying to corral me toward the gate. But for every little push he gave me, I shoved him, as hard as I could. Putting all my body weight into it, and swiping at him like a cat when he tried to advance on me again.

“I said git, Beaumont!” he yelled at me.

“And I said no!” I yelled right back.

He let out a low growl, and the next thing I knew, my back slammed into the wall beside the stairs, a hand manacling around my wrists, pinning them above my head before I could fight back, much less shove him away.

I tried to move, but he was stronger than he looked. He easily kept me pinned against the side of the Lancers’ mansion, his thin chest pressed into my soft one… and something else that wasn’t so thin pressed into my stomach.

That was when things got weird.

We’d just fought. Like, physically fought. And now he had my back to the wall, with what felt like a raging hard on inside his jeans.