“What?”
“It’s what you do. You can’t stand to watch poor, pathetic creatures suffer. Look around you. I’m definitely more pathetic than most.”
“What are you talking about? This place isn’t you!”
“According to everyone in that town, it is.”
She inched closer to Luke, her heart beating wildly. “What did he say to you? What did Russell say last night to make you so angry?”
“He didn’t have to say anything to make me want to hit him. All he had to do was show up.”
“Luke! What did he say?”
Luke’s gaze was hard and impenetrable, but his throat convulsed with a hard swallow. “He said you deserved a better man than the son of the town drunk.”
Shannon’s mouth fell open. She knew Russell was threatened by Luke, but for him to say something like that—
“Don’t act so surprised,” Luke said. “After all, you felt the same way a few years ago.”
“I never felt that way about you!”
“The hell you didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. What happened back then has nothing to do with what’s happening now. Just forget all that!”
“Will you take a look around you?” he shouted. “How the hell am I supposed to forget?”
“By realizing you’re not the kid you were. And knowing that whatever happened back then doesn’t affect the man you are now. Not unless you let it.” She took a few steps toward him, putting her hand against his arm. “All this is past history,” she said gently. “You need to get over it, Luke. Just get over it.”
His eyes narrowed, his mouth settling into a grim line of rage. “Get over it? You think it’s that easy? Just get over it?”
All at once, he grabbed her arm. She tried to shake loose, but he held on tightly. He turned and headed for the dining room, dragging her along behind him. “See that?” he said, pointing to a hole in the wall. “Know where that came from?”
“Luke—”
“The back of my head,” Luke said, his voice quavering. “I’m damned lucky it went through the wall. If there had been a stud behind that part of the Sheetrock, I’d probably be dead right now.”
Luke was at least six feet tall. That hole in the wall couldn’t have been more than five feet high. Shannon’s stomach turned over with disgust.
And then he was pulling her along again, this time to the kitchen. He yanked open a drawer. “See this?” he said, holding up a rusty spatula. “This was one of his favorite weapons. It has holes in it. You know what that feels like across your bare legs?” Luke hurled it across the room. It hit a window and shattered it, raining glass down on the filthy wood floors. Shannon shied away hard, but he grabbed her arm again.
“Luke, please—”
Ignoring her pleas, he dragged her into one of the bedrooms and yanked up a loose floorboard.
“I wanted a dog so bad I could taste it,” he said, breathing hard. “Of course I did. I lived in fucking Rainbow Valley, where everybody has a pet. But my father told me if I ever brought a dog home, he’d kill it. And he’d have done it, too. You think I wanted to watch that happen?”
He reached into the hole and pulled out a stuffed dog. Brown, with dirty, ragged fur and black button eyes.
“A woman at the thrift store gave it to me. When we left, I put it under my coat so my father wouldn’t see it. If he had, he would have ripped it to shreds. That’s what passed as a pet for me. A damned stuffed animal.” Luke hurled it across the room.
Shannon pressed her hand over her stomach, sick with the realization of what his life had been like. But it was over. His father was dead and gone. This had to stop.
“I know he drank,” she said carefully. “I know he was terrible to you. But—”
“You don’t have any idea what my father did to me. None at all. You couldn’t even imagine—”
“But it’s over now. He’d dead.”
“It’ll never be over! As long as I’m drawing breath, it’ll never be over!”
“Luke, I know he hit you. But—”
“Hit me? You think that’s all there was to it? He hit me? Christ, I used to pray that was all he’d do!”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“He’d get mad for no reason,” Luke said, his breath harsh and raspy. “I’d hear him fly into a rage. Then he’d come into my bedroom and tell me whatever he was angry about was my fault.” He turned his