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huh?”
    She headed back to the boy, pulling him into her arms and sitting under the tree with him in her lap. Cade watched them a long time, her rocking slowly, gently leading the boy back from his own brink. He watched, unable to tear his gaze away. Maybe there was…

Chapter Three
    Katrina pulled the door to Jimmy’s room nearly closed, leaving the sleeping child on his side under his blankets. His little fist was curled under his still-baby-soft cheek. She gave herself a second to just look at him, just to assure herself he was sleeping peacefully. The warm breeze blew his curtains out in a wisp, gently gliding over his small army of stuffed animals on the shelf, but he didn’t so much as stir, and she released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
    Jimmy had gotten under her skin right away, the first time he’d come to the bar with his mother. Those huge eyes, so afraid, unsure what he was supposed to do, where he could even stand. He was even younger than she’d been when she’d first come into this life. Ignoring him just wasn’t an option. Since Frank often kept Shana where he could see her, as if he expected her to make a run for it if the chance ever arose, that meant they came to the bar pretty often. But Cooper’s Tavern was no place for a child, so Katrina had pushed what little weight she had to allow Frank to let them set up in her back room, where Jimmy could play or sleep if nights at the bar grew long. It had been the beginning of a very unexpected love affair, and now the runt had a two-handed grip on that black hole in her chest he kept calling her heart.
    And then there was Shana.
    Katrina sighed, crossing the hall to start the conversation she just knew wasn’t going to go her way.
    She entered the living room, trying not to grimace at the sound of glass under her boot that signaled her arrival.
    Shana, straightening a dining room chair a few feet away, stopped moving, her shoulders stiffening with clear resignation.
    God. Sometimes it sucked to be right.
    “Jimmy’s asleep. Time to take a look at you.”
    “I’m fine.” Shana moved the chair firmly under the table, reaching toward the tabletop with the rag in her hand. Would have seemed pretty dismissive if she didn’t gasp halfway over and jerk her hand to her ribs.
    “Yup, fine like last time or fine like the time before that?” Katrina pulled the chair back out and gestured for her friend to sit in it. And they were that, friends, no matter what anyone else thought. Even Shana.
    She sat, scowling. With half her face an angry, swollen mess, it was actually almost menacing. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
    “Says the woman who sounds like she got into a fight with a deranged dentist.”
    Shana clearly didn’t want to laugh, but the puff of a scoff from her battered lips told the tale anyway. For a second, the joke did what it was meant to—gave her something nonsensical to think about. But it didn’t last. The tear streaked down from her good eye, followed swiftly by another. And another. She swiped at them with her hand, but she was shaking so bad, it only seemed to smear the moisture over her cheek until she gave up and covered her mouth with it.
    Katrina ground her teeth, trying to hold back her own tears. Instead, she took hold of that shaking hand. Knelt down so Shana could lean on her shoulder and cry. So she could muffle the terrified sobs neither of them wanted to travel down the hallway and into her little boy’s dreams. All Katrina could do, for those brief broken moments, was stroke the softness of Shana’s hair and curse them both for not being able to change this situation.
    “He was going to do it this time, Katy.” Shana’s horrified whisper sounded like a confession. “I saw it. He was really going to do it.”
    One of Frank’s favorite games was convincing Shana he could kill her whenever he felt like it. Nothing else gave him quite the same rush, it seemed. Katrina had heard