He tossed the cigarette and crushed the butt under his boot. He looked at her the way he always looked at her when they were about to do something stupid. With love that had become a bad habit. With fear he wore like a second skin. With that secret knowledge that if he told her right now run, leave, save yourself, she would laugh first and then slap him.

They had met two and a half years earlier in a diner outside Baton Rouge. He had just gotten beaten up by two men who caught him cheating at cards in a back room bar. She had just emptied the diner register pretending to be the employee taking the night deposit to the bank. They met in the restrooms out back, where both had ducked in for completely different reasons. He was bleeding. She was laughing.