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“Yet, knowing all this, and knowing I care for you, you don’t want to see me anymore,” Quinn said, biting each word out. “You don’t want to try to make it work.”

“I care for you, too, and I had hoped we’d have a lot more,” I said. “But last night was just too much for me. Remember, I had to find out your past from someone else? I think maybe you didn’t tell me about it from the start because you knew it would be an issue. Not your pit fighting—I don’t care about that. But your mom and Frannie . . . Well, they’re your family. They’re . . . dependent. They have to have you. They’ll always come first.” I stopped for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek. This was the hardest part. “I want to be first. I know that’s selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. I’ll be wrong. But that’s the way I feel.”

“Then there’s nothing left to talk about,” Quinn said after a moment’s thought. He looked at me bleakly. I couldn’t disagree. His big hands flat on the table, he pushed to his feet and left.

I felt like a bad person. I felt miserable and bereft. I felt like a selfish bitch.

But I let him walk out the door.

Chapter 14

While I was getting ready for work—yes, even after a night like the one I’d had, I had to go to work—there was a knock at the front door. I’d heard something big coming down the driveway, so I’d tied my shoes hastily.

The FedEx truck was not a frequent visitor at my house, and the thin woman who hopped out was a stranger. I opened the battered front door with some difficulty. It was never going to be the same after Quinn’s entrance the night before. I made a mental note to call the Lowe’s in Clarice to ask about a replacement. Maybe Jason would help me hang it. The FedEx lady gave a long look at the door’s splintered condition when I finally got it open.

“You want to sign for this?” she said as she held out a package, tactfully not commenting.

“Sure.” I accepted the box, a little puzzled. It had come from Fangtasia. Huh. As soon as the truck had wheeled back out to Hummingbird Road, I opened the package. It was a red cell phone. It was programmed to my number. There was a note with it. “Sorry about the other one, lover,” it read. Signed with a big “E.” There was a charger included. And a car charger, too. And a notice that my first six months’ bill had been paid.

With a kind of bemused feeling, I heard another truck coming. I didn’t even bother to move from the front porch. The new arrival was from the Shreveport Home Depot. It was a new front door, very pretty, with a two-man crew to install it. All charges had been taken care of.

I wondered if Eric would clean out my dryer vent.

I got to Merlotte’s early so I could have a talk with Sam. But his office door was shut, and I could hear voices inside. Though not unheard of, the closed door was rare. I was instantly concerned and curious. I could read Sam’s familiar mental signature, and there was another one that I had encountered before. I heard a scrape of chair legs inside, and I hastily stepped into the storeroom before the door opened.

Tanya Grissom walked by.

I waited for a couple of beats, then decided my business was so urgent I had to risk a conversation with Sam, though he might not be in the mood for it. My boss was still in his creaky wooden rolling chair, his feet propped on the desk. His hair was even more of a mess than usual. He looked like he had a reddish halo. He also looked thoughtful and preoccupied, but when I said I needed to tell him some things, he nodded and asked me to shut the door.

“Do you know what happened last night?” I asked.

“I hear there was a hostile takeover,” Sam said. He tilted back on the springs of his rolling chair, and they squeaked in an irritating way. I was definitely balancing on a thin edge today, so I had to bite my lip to keep from snapping at him.

“Yeah, you might say that.” A hostile takeover was pretty much a perfect way to put it. I told him what had happened