My right hand started shaking.

I dropped my head forward and tried to take a deep breath. I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.

I glanced back up to process the sight of the man again. He looked shorter… and no, this man had facial hair. Jeremy had never been able to grow facial hair.

And what would he be doing in Austin?

It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, I told myself, but still, I couldn’t ease the knot in my stomach or the way my hands were trembling and slick from sweat. It wasn’t him.

“We got it sorted—Diana, what’s wrong?” came Dallas’s voice going from his normal voice to a low, distressed one.

I was fine, I repeated to myself, trying to steel my spine, to stand up straight and catch my breath. It wasn’t him. On top of that, it had been three years. Three long years, and I wasn’t the same person I’d been back then.

“What is it?” Dallas asked again, stopping directly in front of me; his body long and wide, inches away. His voice was low as he noted, “You’re pale.”

When I raised my head and focused on the triangle of brown ink right above the collar of his faded brown T-shirt, I fisted my hand at my side, even as goose bumps spread out over my arms. “I’m all right,” I mostly lied.

“I know you’re not. What is it? You feel sick?” He dipped his face closer to mine, those hazel eyes finding my own even though I didn’t want them to. His eyelids dipped over his irises and that pale pink mouth formed the shape of a frown. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t help but look away, biting the inside of my cheek as I let out a breath that was a lot shakier than I would have wanted it to be.

“Someone say something to you?” he asked, his voice getting more worried by the second.

Shit. Shit. Reaching up, I scrubbed my hand over my eyes and met his gaze again. I was fine. What happened had been a long time ago. I wasn’t that person anymore. I wasn’t. “I thought I saw my ex,” I told him, as my throat burned.

Dallas’s expression dropped instantly, and I’d swear his shoulders did too. “Oh.”

“No. It’s not like that. We—” I glanced to my side to make sure the boys were still in the arcade. All three of them were together, hovering by a big game. “Things didn’t end well. I….” God. How could I still feel like such a fucking idiot after so many years? How? I was ashamed of myself for what had happened. How could I tell this man I respected so much that I had been a complete dumbass?

His eyebrows were knit together as he watched me. “You can tell me anything.”

I bit my cheek and tried to swallow my giant pride that had gotten in my way so many times in the past. “I’m not proud of myself, okay?” These stupid-ass tears that were becoming way too common in my life lately filled my eyes but didn’t go any further. “I was an idiot back then—”

“Diana,” he ground out my name, his forehead becoming more lined. Those shoulders that had fallen a second ago came back into position, tight and taut and broad. “You’re not an idiot.”

“I was back then.” I needed him to understand as I glanced toward the doors again, but luckily couldn’t see that familiar color of hair anymore. At least for now. “He… hurt me toward the end of our relationship—”

If Dallas was tall every day of his life, on this day, he seemed to grow half a foot taller. His spine extended, his posture turning into one that would belong perfectly on a statue. His Adam’s apple bobbed and his nostrils flared. And in the deepest voice I’d ever heard, he asked, “He hit you?” His question was pulled out like each word was its own sentence.

“Yeah—”

Those big hands fisted at his sides, and his neck went pink. “Which one is he?”

“Dallas, stop, it isn’t him,” I said, reaching for his shirt and grabbing a handful of it. “It was a long time ago.”

“A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough,” he ground out. “Which one is he, Diana?”

“Please don’t. I’m not lying. I swear it’s not him. He doesn’t even live in Austin. That happened back when I lived in Fort Worth.”

“Is it the guy over there in the green shirt?”

“No—”

“In the red shirt?”

“Dallas, listen to me—”

Was he shaking?

“Stop being stubborn. It isn’t him. And even if it was, I pressed charges against him. He went to jail for a few months—”

“Jail?” He turned around slowly to face me. His face… I’d never seen anything like it before, and I hoped I never did again. He was shaking. “Tell me what his name is, and I’ll put him six feet in the ground.”

I sucked in a breath and couldn’t help but smile at him, even with my eyes all teary. “It’s like you’re purposely trying to get me to love you, Dallas. I swear to God. You don’t even want me to stick my hand down your pants. You want me to want it all,” I laughed, trying to make a joke but failing awfully.

He blinked. Then he blinked again. He grew another two inches it seemed as he stared down at me, that angry face morphing into a serious but somehow slightly softer one.

I smacked him in the stomach with the back of my hand and then reached for his wrist briefly before dropping my hand. “I’m joking. I promise. Just listen to me, all right? I told myself a long time ago I never wanted to see him again, and the boys don’t know about that part of my life. They’ve been through enough shit in their lives. If you don’t let it go for me, let it go for them.”

He stayed quiet, staring down at me for so long, a shiver shot down my spine. It wasn’t until we both seemed to spot Trip about fifteen feet away on a path toward us that he dipped his face closer to mine, his fingers going to my wrist in the same way I had gone for his, but he didn’t move away or let go of me. Our eyes were locked on each other, staring, intense, as he said, “Tell me what his name is, and I won’t say another word about it.”

Trip was even closer.

Shit. I whispered his name. “Jeremy.” And then his last name as Trip’s voice reached us.

“Goddamn that line was long.”

Dallas dropped his hand and took a step back, and if it wasn’t for the fists he had at his sides, I wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong. But I knew, I knew as he glanced around the movie theater that he was looking for someone. He was looking for the man who I had let get too rough with me. Who had squeezed me a little too hard while he was mad over a story I’d told him about me cutting a male client’s hair. The same man who didn’t like the way I smiled at our waiter at a restaurant and had reached under the table and squeezed my thigh so tightly it left bruises. The same person who called me a whore and slapped me and punched me when I had gone out with my friends without him.

No matter how much I smiled at the kids when they came back out of the arcade, I still couldn’t push aside those memories of Jeremy.

If Trip thought the silence in the cab of Dallas’s truck was weird, he didn’t say a word. He was too busy typing on his phone’s screen as we dropped Dean off and headed home. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what Dallas was capable of saying. I didn’t think he had it in him to be so mad. Hadn’t Trip said something along those words before? How he didn’t get mad?