When he said things like that, Josie felt dizzy and mindless, like a happy drifting cloud with no direction. Despite his declaration, she huffed and pushed out her bottom lip, pouting like a child.

“Okay, I’ll let you go on one condition.”

“You’ll let me go? Am I being held hostage?”

“I guess it depends,” Josie hedged.

“On what?”

“Whether you’re here against your will or not.”

“Touché,” Tristan consented. “Well, the first phase of hostage negotiation is that you tell me your demands.”

She brought his nearest hand closer to her face, inspecting the small scars across his knuckles. She kissed each one reverently.

“Tell me about that night in the alley.”

Tristan frowned and curled his lips in on each other, as if locking his confession away. It occurred to him that Josie had already shared so much that he owed it to her to share this.

“Next we have the standoff. Ideally, this results in a peaceful ending,” he said. “But sometimes it ends in violence.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Josie answered.

“Fine. I’ll terminate negotiations by giving in to your demands.”

“Good. I love winning.”

Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself to reveal secrets never spoken aloud before.

“I met Fiona when I was sixteen. She was beautiful, in that bought-and-paid-for kind of way. She was sad like me. I found out from a friend that her twin brother had recently died. I felt connected to her. At first, she ignored me. No matter how hard I tried, she dismissed me. She told me she wasn’t interested, but I never gave up.”

Tristan paused and glanced at Josie, nervous about her reaction.

“So not everything comes to you so easily?” Josie asked, grinning.

“No, not everything. After a few months of friendship, something changed and suddenly Fiona wanted more. By the time we graduated high school, I was completely infatuated with her. I was valedictorian of our class, had plans to go to Harvard and then law school. Fiona accused me of abandoning her. She cried and begged me to stay. I asked her to come with me, but she said her father would never allow it.”

“What did you do?” Josie asked.

“I blew off Harvard and enrolled in UNO. My parents were outraged. They said I was throwing away my future for a girl. They were right. I knew they were right, but I didn’t care.”

He could picture the fight in his head, his mother sobbing into her hands, his father throwing things around the house, cursing and shouting. He remembered feeling numb and unaffected by the theatrical meltdown. Tristan had only wanted to be with his girl. It was as simple as that.

“A few months after we moved in together, her father came for a visit. He was an intimidating man, loved to bully people with his money. He offered me a job. Said I’d be paid well and all I had to do was be available to deliver packages. He wasn’t the kind of person you turned down. That’s where it started. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was delivering illegal weapons, drugs, and cash to some of the dirtiest crooks in the South. Just like that, I was sucked into a life of crime.”

“Did Fiona know?”

He nodded and fiddled with the hem of his T-shirt. Of course Fiona knew, she knew everything. Tristan knew nothing.

“After a while, I dropped out of school and did her father’s work exclusively. I got my first tattoo after someone tried to kill me, the Day of the Dead skull on my shoulder. I also bought my first gun that week. I dealt with the shadiest people. They all feared me, and for a moment I felt like a god. The power, the money, it all got to me. My parents begged me to come home. Instead, I cut them out of my life.”

“How’d you end up here?” she asked, interlacing her fingers with his and pulling their joined hands into her lap.

“The guy in charge of the West Coast had been taken out and I was ordered to relocate. We moved four days later. When I wasn’t working, I was with Fiona. I could tell she wasn’t happy, not with me or our life. The more I tried, the more she resented me.”

Josie just shook her head, unable to imagine not being happy with Tristan.

“One night, I was supposed to accompany a delivery from Tijuana, but it was our anniversary. I wanted to do something nice for her. I got Padre, my second-in-command, to see about the delivery while I stayed home to surprise Fiona.

“She finally came home around eleven, but she wasn’t alone. From where I stood in the kitchen, I could see her kissing this guy with all the passion that she’d never given me. It was a side of her I’d never known. He fucked her, bent over our six-thousand-dollar leather sofa, and I just stood there.

“It was Fiona’s voice that broke me out of my trance, her declarations of love for that man sent me over the edge. Before I knew what I was doing, I pulled my piece and placed it to the back of his head. She screamed when she saw me. She begged for his life. I wanted to see his blood on her hands. But I didn’t do it. Instead, I threw everything that was important to me in a bag and left.”

“I would have probably killed them both,” Josie commented.

Tristan shook his head. He’d been a part of so much violence, he hadn’t had the will to destroy another life.

“I emptied my bank accounts and drove down to San Diego. I got a new apartment and had no idea what to do with myself. My jealousy and hurt consumed me. I tried to drink away my anger. That only left me worse off. One night I just walked. I walked and walked until my legs hurt and my high had disappeared. I saw this graffiti on the corner of your building. This boy’s face seemed familiar. I was drawn to it.”

“That piece is you,” she stated.

“Yeah. Maybe subconsciously I recognized that. I just lost it.”

“You were so wrecked that I couldn’t take my eyes off of you,” Josie admitted.

“I remember your face, lit by the moon that night. When I got home I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined you or not. I figured I’d made you up.”

“But you didn’t.”

She leaned over and kissed his jaw, then his chin and eventually his lips.

“So you could say that my graffiti led us to each other.”

“You might say that. I might say that your dangerous illegal activities captured my attention long enough to have a mental breakdown in an alley where I was more likely to be mugged than find you.”

“There’s nothing dangerous about what I do.”

“Right. There’s only being arrested, felony charges, going to prison. No big deal. Eighty percent of graffiti is gang related. That’s supersafe.”

Suddenly, the door burst open and Alex came barreling in.

“Damn, Josie, I told you to lock this door. You want some crackhead to walk in here?”

His voice boomed through her apartment before Tristan caught his attention.

“Oh, you’re still here.”

Tristan stood when Alex entered the room, his eyes assessing what he thought was a high-risk threat. Immediately, his hand slid along his waistline, searching for the gun that currently sat tucked beneath the front seat of his car. He cursed to himself and practically growled. His muscles twitched, readied for confrontation. Josie marveled at the ability of Tristan to switch from geek to guardian in a matter of seconds.

“Tristan, this is my neighbor Alex,” Josie said, standing between them now, not prepared for this introduction so soon. “He sort of keeps an eye on me.”

Tristan’s shoulders relaxed and he held out his hand. They gripped each other tightly and shook once before retreating back to their corners. As men often do, they sized each other up. A prickly air hung between them, and Josie could almost hear the snarling warnings between the two. She knew Alex relied on his size to do half the job of intimidation, but it was clear that Tristan wouldn’t be intimidated by the devil himself. She felt only a small tinge of shame at being turned on by the manly display of bravado.