Page 12 of Rent an Enforcer

I trace one with my eyes, a pale line that runs along his ribs and disappears under the dark swirl of ink on his side. What did that? A knife? Something worse? How old was he? Was he scared?

I don’t ask. He’s asleep, though even if he wasn’t, I get the feeling those aren’t questions he’d answer. But I lie here, looking at the map of him, all these marks and all this ink, and I think about how much a body can go through and still be warm and breathing and holding someone.

It’s like a light switching on in a room I forgot I had. I see something. Not the scars, exactly, but the idea of them. Lines hidden under other lines. A painting that’s two paintings at once. Something beautiful on the surface with something harder underneath.

I need my paints.

The need hits me so hard I’m moving before I’ve thought it through, sliding out from under his arm as carefully as I can manage. He shifts but doesn’t wake up, and I hold my breath until he settles. Then I’m padding across the apartment barefoot, grabbing my palette, squeezing paint straight from the tubes without mixing first because the colors are already in my head, and I need to get them down before they leave.

I set a fresh canvas on the easel and start blocking in shapes. Big ones first, dark underneath, layers of warmth on top. It’s not an ocean this time. It’s something else. I don’t know what yet. I just know it has to be dark at the bottom and lit from inside.

I don’t know how long I’ve been painting when I hear, “You always work like that?”

I jump so hard I nearly flick paint across the room. He’s standing in the doorway to the bedroom, watching me, up against the doorframe with his arms folded over his bare torso. He doesn’t look alarmed or confused. He looks like he’s been watching for a while and is perfectly fine with the view.

I’m okay with the view from where I’m standing, for the record. The man could model boxer briefs for a living.

“Like what?” I ask, pressing a hand to my chest, where my heart is trying to escape.

“Like the building’s on fire and the painting is the only thing worth saving.”

I look down at myself. There’s paint on my hands and my arms and somehow my left knee. The T-shirt is officially a lost cause. “It’s kind of an emergency situation when an idea shows up,” I explain. “If I don’t get it down fast, it leaves. And then I’m just standing here holding a brush like an idiot.”

He nods slowly, like it makes sense. “What’s this one?”

“I’m not sure yet.” I look at the canvas, frowning, tipping my head to the side. “Something about layers. Things underneath other things.” I glance at him and then away again, fast, because I’m not about to tell him he’s the inspiration. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “Eventually, it’ll tell me what it is. They usually do.”

He crosses the room in two long strides before settling on the sofa, his arms spread across the back. He’s like a study in contrast, something beautiful set against the drab upholstery surrounding him, looking relaxed but also slightly dangerous in a muscular, sexy kind of way.

“How long have you been painting?” he asks.

“Since I was little.” I go back to work, talking as I go. “My grandma had all these art books. Big ones, the kind with glossy pages. I used to sit on the floor and stare at them for hours.” It occurs to me this is the easiest conversation I’ve ever had. There’s something about having my hands busy that loosens the rest of me. The words come out without all the usual filtering and second-guessing. Is this too much? Am I being weird? Does he actually care, or is he just waiting for me to stop talking? None of that is present.

“Where’s your grandma now?” he asks.

“She passed two years ago.” I mix a darker shade and lay it into the bottom left corner. “It was just me and her for a long time. I was five when my parents died. Car accident. We were on a trip at the time.”

The brush keeps moving. It’s easier to say these things when the brush keeps moving.

“I was in the back seat, but I don’t remember anything about it,” I add, because I don’t want him to think I’m going for sympathy. I’m not. It’s just the truth. “I think I was too young to hold onto much of anything about them, honestly. But I have impressions. Warmth. I know they loved me. I think I can remember my mom’s laugh, but I might be making it up.”

I glance away from the canvas to find him watching me intently. Am I talking too much? It doesn’t seem like he minds. There’s no judgment on his face. I see that much clearly.

“Grandma raised me after that,” I continue. “She was careful. About everything. She was the kind of woman who would wake up in the middle of the night to make sure she locked the door, even though she had already locked it two or three times. She didn’t trust the weather forecast and thought leaving the house was basically asking for trouble.”

I stop myself because I can feel the edges of something I don’t usually go into. The way Grandma loved me, which was real and enormous, and the way that love came wrapped in a kind of fear that got into everything. I told your parents to be careful. They didn’t listen. Look what happened. She said it so often it became part of the walls. Part of me.

“Anyway.” I shrug, aiming for casual. “She did her best. I just think her best came with a lot of fear mixed in.”

When I glance over again, Tristan’s expression has changed. The softness is gone, replaced by something heavier. Quieter. Like he’s absorbing what I said and sorting it out in his head.

“I’m sorry,” he says. That’s it. He doesn’t add anything to those two words. Nothing about how hard it must’ve been or how he can’t imagine. Just I’m sorry, and it means more coming from him than a whole speech would from anyone else.

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” I turn back to the canvas because if I keep looking at his face while it’s doing that, I’m going to feel things I have no business feeling. “What about you? Any tragic backstory I should know about?”

“No.”

Okay, then.