When Luke was seventeen, he got arrested for vandalizing Henry O’Rourke’s Jeep Comanche with a baseball bat. They were at a party in the O’Rourke cornfield and everyone had their trucks parked around the bonfire. Beers, kids, shitty music. He remembered that Anna was drunk and kept trying to put her hands under his shirt. Everything went south when Henry made a comment about Luke’s Chevy.

[i]Where’d you get that? You steal it?[/i]

[i]Mind your fucking business,[/i] Luke said, tossing an empty beer can into the fire.

[i]Answer my question.[/i]

[i]Get away from me, Hank. You’re drunk.[/i] In truth, his dad had felt bad for him after their mom died, so he bought Luke a truck. Sam was almost sixteen, so he’d gotten a shotgun instead. ‘My mom died so I have this truck now,’ seemed stupid coming out of his mouth, so he said nothing.

[i]We all know you don’t have the money,[/i] Henry said with a smirk, [i]and someone like you would rather steal it than get it the hard way.[/i]

Whether Luke chose not to remember or he’d been so angry that he truly didn’t know what he was doing, he got his baseball bat from his front seat one second – and the next he was on top of Henry’s truck, smashing out the windows and denting the hood, the cab, everything. He could still hear Anna’s screaming. [i]Luke, stop! Fucking stop it! What is [b]wrong[/b] with you? Just stop![/i]

The judge gave him a hundred hours of community service, courtesy of his lawyer, who made a case that Luke’s mother had just died and he was seeing an anger management specialist. In turn, his father gave the Chevy to Sam and told Luke that he could work on the farm to pay off the legal fees. [i]I shouldn’t[/i], his father had said, [i]because you belong in prison, but you wouldn’t last a second there anyways.[/i]

[hr]

[i]He seems like quite the handful, as per usual.[/i]

Luke knew that if he clenched his jaw any harder, his teeth would break. How strange it was that his pulse was baseline when he invaded terrorist camps, but now that someone put his hand on his truck, his blood pressure could raise the dead. But it wasn’t about the truck, and he knew that. Just like it wasn’t about the truck when he was seventeen.

“Thank you for your input, Charlie,” he bit out. If anyone thought that she was going to sit there with her mouth shut, then she was not the woman that he’d fallen in love with. What the fuck was he giving her anyway? A business card? For what? They had two fucking cows.

He felt Anna’s hand at his wrist, and he stiffened. God he would pay money to shake off the past. To forget the sound of her voice when she begged him to stop swinging the baseball bat. “Luke,” she warned. “Don’t.”

Luke ran his tongue around the inside of his teeth and looked at Mack. “I thought I saw something else,” he finally lied. “I didn’t mean to round on you like that. Wasn’t in my right mind.”

The other man thumped him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot. No hard feelings, okay?” Mack tipped two fingers at them and gave Charlie a small smile that could only be an apology, and he went back inside the precinct. Somehow, this was worse than Anna arresting him in the parking lot for beating the shit out of another officer. It was way, way worse for someone to treat you with pity, like you we something to feel sorry for. He’d rather set the entire town on fire.

Anna gripped his elbow and sighed. “Listen. Being out and around other people would probably be good for you both.” So Luke didn’t act like a rabid dog when someone touched a fucking mirror. “I’m dating this new guy, and he has a pig roast the first Saturday of every month. Fire, music, kegs, food. You know,” she said, eyes moving from Luke to Charlie and back again, “…normal people stuff. When you want to. Open invitation.” She let out a deep breath and then put her hands up. “I’m just saying. Now, I’ll see you all later. And hopefully not because a law is broken, I’m begging you.”

Even after Anna left, Luke took a moment to get back in the truck. He closed the door and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

“What do you do when people treat you like that?” he asked Charlie. “Like they feel bad for you?”