Then the bell chimed, and everything changed.
The diner went dead silent—that particular quiet that meant trouble had walked in.
I didn't need to turn around. I could smell him—whiskey and cigarettes and that particular stench of mean that had colored my entire childhood. But I turned anyway, some masochistic need to face the monster from my nightmares.
Art Garrison looked like death warmed over. The last fourteen years hadn’t been kind—his face was a roadmap of broken blood vessels, his body soft and swollen from drink, his clothes stained and rumpled like he'd been wearing them for days. But his eyes were the same. Mean as a snake and focused on me with the kind of hatred that had made my childhood a war zone.
“Well, well,” he slurred, voice carrying through the diner like a cracked whip. “If it ain’t my high-and-mighty daughter. Too good to visit her old man, but not too good to come slutting around the Blackwood place.”
The chatter died instantly. Forks froze halfway to mouths. Dottie went pale behind the counter.
“Art,” she said sharply, hand already inching toward the phone. “You’re not welcome here.”
He ignored her, grinning that mean, yellow-toothed grin that used to make my stomach twist. “Just wanna talk to my girl.” He staggered a step closer, knocking into a chair. “Heard you were back. Heard you were spreading your legs for that Blackwood boy again.”
Laughter—his laughter—echoed, sharp and jagged as broken glass.
Heat crawled up my neck, shame and rage twining until I could barely breathe. My throat burned. My hands shook, but my voice came out steady, cold. “Leave. Now.”
“Or what?” He sneered, his lip curling. “You gonna run away again? Leave your poor mama to clean up your mess? She cried herself to sleep for months after you left. You know that? You fucking broke her.”
“While you beat her?” The words were out before I could stop them. My voice cracked like lightning across the room.
His face went dark. I’d seen that look before—right before the blow. His eyes went flat, soulless. “You got a smart mouth now, huh? City teach you that? Teach you to talk back to your daddy?”
He moved faster than a drunk should, crossing the diner in four heavy strides. The air shifted, that thick, charged silence before impact. His hand shot out and clamped around my upper arm, right where the old bruises used to bloom.
Pain flared, white-hot. My body remembered before my mind did—the sick rush of panic, the instinct to shrink, to disappear. I smelled whiskey and sweat and old rage. My stomach lurched. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
Not again. Not this time.
I jerked back, twisting hard, but his grip tightened. My pulse roared in my ears. The room blurred—chairs scraping, Dottie shouting, someone moving fast behind me.
But all I could feel was his fingers digging into my skin, the ghosts of every time I hadn’t fought back.
“You listen to me, you little bitch,” he snarled, yanking me half off the stool. Spit flew with the words. “You don’t get to come back here and play queen of the fucking castle. You’re trash. Always were, always will be. Nothin’ but the drunk’s kid who thought spreadin’ her legs for a Blackwood would buy her a new name.”
“Let go.” I kept my voice calm—forced it that way—even as my pulse spiked, even as every old instinct screamedmake yourself small, don’t fight back.
He leaned in close, his breath sour with whiskey. “Make me,” he hissed. His grip tightened, fingers digging into the same spot he’d always used to find—the one that bruised fast and deep. “Not so tough now, huh? Without your rich boyfriend to protect you. Bet he’s already bored with his little charity fuck?—”
The door didn't open so much as explode inward. Wyatt stood there like an avenging angel, taking in the scene in one sweeping glance—my father's hand on me, my face probably showing every bit of fear I was trying to hide, the way everyone sat frozen.
"Get your hands off her.” His voice was quiet. Deadly quiet in a way I’d never heard it before.
My father turned, still gripping my arm. "Well, if it ain't the white knight. Come to save your whore?"
Wyatt crossed the diner in two strides. His hand locked around my father's wrist, and I heard bones grind. My father released me with a yelp, but Wyatt wasn't done. He grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall hard enough to rattle the pictures.
"I said," Wyatt growled, his face inches from my father's, "get your fucking hands off her."
"Wyatt, don't—" I started, but he wasn't listening.
His fist connected with my father's face with a sound like a hammer hitting meat. Blood exploded from my father's nose. Another punch to the ribs. Another to the kidney. Each blow precise, deliberate, devastating.
"Wyatt, stop!" I grabbed his arm, but it was like trying to stop a force of nature. "You'll kill him!"
"Good," he snarled, drawing back for another punch.
