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Ammo stepped in front of the door and just stood there, not moving. Sally-Anne barely managed not to bang straight into him.

“What are you doing? Get out of my way.”

“You just hit Aimee and called her a bitch,” Ammo said.

“So? She is a bitch and she deserved to get hit. She’s lucky she didn’t get worse.”

Aimee sucked in a breath. “Wow. You know, I really don’t understand what I did to make you all hate me so much. None of you ever gave me a chance, you detested me from day one. Why?”

What was so terrible about her?

“You stole Charlie from Kelly-Anne,” Sally-Anne said, turning to her. “Charlie was meant to be hers.”

“Well, if Charlie was meant to be hers, then why wasn’t he?” Aimee said. “All he had to do was tell me he wanted a divorce and then he could have been with Kelly-Anne. But you know what, Sally-Anne? He never once said that. He never once said that there was a woman back home who he was in love with, because he wasn’t in love with Kelly-Anne when I met him. He was in love with me. Now, you can tell yourself that’s not true. I don’t care. I know the truth of it. Charlie never mentioned Kelly-Anne to me because she didn’t matter to him. And maybe they were destined to be together at some point, but again, he had every opportunity to leave me and be with her for good, and he didn’t. So there’s actually no way I could have stolen Charlie from her, since Charlie wasn’t hers.”

Sally-Anne gave her a nasty look. “He told her that he loved her and that he was going to leave you. But that every time he tried to, you threatened to hurt yourself, so he had to stay.”

Oh, God. Had Charlie really said that to Kelly-Anne? Had he strung her on like that, telling her that he was going to leave Aimee, and that Aimee was stopping him?

“He never once said he wanted to leave me, Sally-Anne. Not once. You think I wouldn’t have let him go? I would have. Do you know why I was working three jobs? It was to save enough money to divorce his useless ass. I don’t know why he stayed with me. Maybe he just wanted to continue milking me dry. Although I think it was more likely that he enjoyed the rush of sleeping around on me, because it wasn’t just Kelly-Anne he was sleeping with, was it, Sally-Anne? A whole lot of women stood up at his funeral and claimed to have been sleeping with him. Who knows how many more there were? I was trying to leave him. I should have tried a long time ago. It would have saved me a whole lot of heartache and problems. But hindsight’s a wonderful thing. I wasn’t with Charlie to make Kelly-Anne miserable. If anything, staying with Charlie made me miserable. So you can hate me, Sally-Anne, but at the end of the day, I think the person that played us all was Charlie.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Sally-Anne said. “Now that he’s dead and can’t defend himself. But you don’t know the way Greasy Knob works. Charlie was always meant to be with Kelly-Anne.”

There was no reasoning with her and Aimee didn’t know why she was trying.

All she’d gotten for her efforts was a sore shoulder. And Kevin was moving around in her hair, clearly upset. He was well-tuned to her emotions.

“Get out of my way,” Sally-Anne snarled at Ammo, turning back to him.

“No,” Ammo said. “I’m tired of you people abusing Aimee.”

“I was not abusing her! And by refusing to get out of my way, you are threatening me.”

“Actually, you’re the one that shoved into her and called her a bitch,” Ammo growled. “Why don’t we call the sheriff and have him review the camera feed. Then we’ll press charges against you for assault.”

“Assault?” Sally-Anne started laughing. “I just bumped into her. It wasn’t assault.” But the laughter in her voice was tinged with a hint of hysteria.

Personally, Aimee had no interest in calling the sheriff or dealing with him. But she didn’t say that. Ammo always stuck by her, so she was going to do the same for him.

“Here’s the thing. I don’t care about you. I don’t care about this town and the way it’s run or the people in it. Only person I care about is her. So you step a foot wrong again, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that your life is miserable.”

Aimee sucked in a breath at that threat and the intensity behind it.

Something had changed between them since last night.

He’d always been intense and bossy, but he almost seemed more so.

As though he was fully focused on her. She kept catching him staring at her, studying her. So what was going on? Was it because she’d fainted last night? Did he feel some sort of responsibility for that? But that was nuts.

It was in no way his fault.

Or was it something else? She really wasn’t sure, and she didn’t feel like she could ask. Part of her was still scared that he was going to up and leave on her and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

You have to learn to stand on your own two feet.

“You can’t do that! Doctor Melton won’t let you!”

“Sorry, Sally-Anne,” Dr. Melton said. “It’s time for you to go.”