Page 13 of Rent an Enforcer

I add a streak of warmth to the middle of the canvas and try a different angle. “Are you on Facebook or anything? Instagram?”

“No.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“I don’t do social media.”

I nod like that’s a totally normal thing for a man under thirty to say. Maybe it is, though. Maybe he’s just private. One of those people who think social media rots your brain, which is probably fair. I’ve lost entire evenings to strangers arguing about nothing in comment sections, so I should know.

But it sits funny, for some reason. The pile of things I don’t know about him is already approaching Mt. Everest territory, and this is just one more thing to add on top. He’s in personal security and carries scars he hid under tattoos. Random people are afraid of him in restaurants. When his phone buzzes, he leaves, no matter what’s happening. Like whoever was calling owns him.

I want to ask more, I really do. But I’ve spent enough time with my own walls up around me to know what it looks like when someone has theirs up. Tristan’s are made of something thicker than drywall.

“You’re the first person who’s ever asked me this stuff, you know.” I focus on a tricky bit near the center of the canvas where two colors are fighting each other. “In real life, I mean. I have friends online. I talk to people in forums and group chats and stuff. But in person?” I shake my head. “You’re kind of... it. And you actually seem like you care about the answers, which is new.”

I feel his eyes boring holes into the side of my head. “I do care,” he murmurs. It’s so simple and so sure that I believe him completely.

Then his phone buzzes.

I don’t even have to look. I hear it vibrating on the nightstand in the bedroom, where he left it, and I watch the shift happen in real time from the corner of my eye. The softness in his body drains away like water through a crack. His jaw tightens and his eyes go flat.

I don’t say anything when he gets up. I go back to my painting, much too aware of the sound of him getting dressed. Whoever his boss is, they have terrible timing. I guess I should just be grateful we had this time together. Besides, I get the feeling it’s not the last time. It better not be, anyway.

When he reappears, he’s fully dressed, like he put on a suit of armor. He’s adjusting his cuffs when I hold up my paintbrush like a stop sign. “Before you go, I’m not letting you walk out of here a second time without a way to reach you. Give me your number. Please,” I add as a last-second thought.

He almost smiles. My phone is on the counter, and he picks it up, brings it to me so I can unlock it, then adds a new contact under his name.

I look at it, then at him. Tristan Gray. As if I’d get him mixed up with other Tristans, so he wanted to be sure.

He even kisses me at the door—shorter than last time, but just as panty-melting. My legs are trembling a little by the time his footsteps fade as he trots down the stairs.

Tristan Gray.

I’ve spent enough of my life online to be pretty good at detective work. I set the palette aside for now and open my laptop instead. I search his phone number, hoping a reverse lookup will help, but I end up with nothing. I try image searches of tattoo designs like his, which is a stretch, but I’m nothing if not thorough when I’m anxious. And I’m always anxious.

Nothing. He’s not anywhere. No results, no profiles, no mentions. It’s like he doesn’t exist.

I close the laptop and look at Socks, who’s been watching this whole thing from his cushion with his usual judgmental expression. “He’s hiding something,” I tell him.

He twitches his nose.

“I know,” I agree. “I like him anyway. That’s the problem.”

Then I go back to the painting because it’s the only thing that makes sense right now. The dark layers at the bottom are starting to look like something. The warm ones on top are fighting to cover them.

It’s two paintings at once. I just don’t know which one is real yet.

6

TRISTAN

It’s been three days since I’ve seen her, and my knuckles still look like raw meat.

The skin across the first two on my right hand is split and swollen, bruised deep purple. The left isn’t much better. It doesn’t matter how carefully I washed away the blood. The evidence is still there.

The guy deserved it. He owed money he didn’t have and ran his mouth when he shouldn’t have. What I did to his face was business. The kind I don’t think about afterward.

That’s not the issue. The issue is letting Stella see my hands like this, which I cannot do. Hence, the three days since I said goodbye to her in that tiny apartment. Three days that in some ways feel like months and in other ways only minutes. I keep expecting to smell her on me, keep catching hints of the taste of her at the corners of my mouth. My imagination, no doubt, but imagination is a powerful thing.