We went out the side door into the chill of San Francisco. We were South of Market, a little further south than the really hip places. It was seedier here, the smell of salt water thick in the air.

He hit the button on his key fob and the lights on a black sedan across the street blinked on and off. He opened up the back seat for me and I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t think that’s totally necessary,” I said, and he shut the door with a nod and a small smile. It was like my attraction was a banked fire and the fear that had doused it was gone, and I could feel the heat coming back.

My promises to try and be an adult felt like empty threats against the power of this feeling.

The inside of the car smelled even more like church.

“Why does your car smell like Mass?” I asked after he sat down in the driver seat and started the car.

He put the car in drive. “I was at church when Bates called me for help.”

“Church?” I asked. “Really?”

“Church. Really. Where am I taking you?”

I gave him the address for my place, a good twenty-minute drive away.

“So…what exactly are you?” I asked.

He glanced over, his eyebrow raised. “What am I?”

“You carry a gun. But it’s not loaded. You work for Lazarus, who is—”

“Nothing you should say out loud or to anyone. Ever.”

His scowl meant business, but I was too tired and too high from my night to be entirely cowed.

“You read books in bars.”

“You listen to them at the gym.”

He said that like there was no difference between us.

“But we’re talking about you. Yesterday you were covered in blood and today you go to church. I can’t keep up with all these pieces of you.”

“I’m a man, Abby. Just a man.”

The way he said it put a lance through my stomach, pinning me to the seat, making it hard to breathe. It was a warning in a way, a declaration.

I am a man.

My hormones turned over like some dumb dog looking for a belly scratch. The attraction was back and better than ever. It was attraction with a vengeance.

This ride home might not have been the best idea if my intention was to stay away from him.

And then as if to make everything worse, in the silence of the car, my stomach absolutely roared. Like in three-part harmony, for at least five seconds.

My stomach growled so loud that Jack looked at me, shocked.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Is there… a dog in your backpack?”

“No. It’s my stomach.”

“That wasn’t a dog?”

“No, I just haven’t eaten—”

“Ever?”

“Okay, let’s not get carried away.”

“Would you like some breakfast?” he asked. “Or dinner. I guess.” He glanced at this watch. “It’s two a.m. You could pick.”

Weighing the pros and cons, gauging my bravery and possibly my stupidity, took a long time. So long that the light faded from his face and it was sad to see it go. It felt rare and it felt precious and I wanted more of it.

“I would love breakfast,” I said. “There’s a Denny’s not too far.”

He gave me a little scowl, even though he seemed to be glowing just for me. “We can do better than that.”

“Well, lead on, breakfast man.”

Instead of turning right to merge onto the highway, he pulled a U-turn in the deserted road and headed south. His sleek sedan made short work of the twisty roads leading us along the back way toward South San Francisco. A fairly shitty town near the airport.

“Really?”

“Trust me,” he said. “Best diner in the Bay area.”

“Do they have pie?” I asked. “Because if we’re coming all the way out here, I’m going to need pie.”

“They have pie. Homemade pie, even.”

His grin was cocky and I realized the farther we got away from the Moonlight Lounge, the easier he seemed. And I wondered briefly what would happen if we kept on driving, through the last of the night, into the dawn.

Would he take off that tie? Roll up his sleeves? Would he smile more? Laugh? I imagined us on Highway 1, the sun coming up over the mountains, his hand on the back of my seat.

I imagined him a different person.

I imagined myself a different person.

“Abby?” he asked in the manner of a guy who’d been trying to get my attention for a few moments.

“Sorry,” I said. The vision of us in the sunrise so clear it was disarming. “Got caught in a daydream.”

“About what?”

“I was wondering what would happen if we just kept driving.” I was bold with guys, but this was out there even for me. Perhaps it was the exhaustion making me so reckless, making me reveal so much.

He glanced at me, his face blank with a kind of astonishment.

“I can’t,” he whispered.

“I can’t either. That’s why it’s a daydream.”

“Where would you go?” he asked. “If you could keep driving?”

“Idaho,” I said without skipping a beat.

He blinked at me, laughing.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “But I would go to Idaho. What about you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, you must have someplace you’d escape to.”

“I don’t.”

“Jack—”

“There’s no escape,” he said, not snapping at me but ending the conversation.

I was about to apologize—for what, I had no idea—but he cleared his throat and said, “It was a good thing you were there tonight.”

“I don’t know. Someone would have figured things out,” I said with fumbling modesty.

No escape. From what? What does he mean?

He laughed. “Maybe in a regular club.”

The Moonlight Lounge was far from regular.

“Is it a front?” I asked, not entirely sure of the lingo.

“It’s a vanity project. The Moonlight is just a thing Lazarus thinks he should have.”

A thing he thinks he should have. The words resonated through me, making me silent. Making me think. I’d spent a lot of time thinking that about things I wanted. Like wanting something was the only justification I needed for having it.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Why are you wasting time giving away shots when you could be managing clubs?”

“It’s a job,” I said, immediately defensive because my sister asked me this all the time. “And a pretty high-paying one. It’s not wasting time.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking his eyes off the road to watch me. “You just seemed so on fire tonight. So in your element.”

“Tonight was the only time I’ve ever done anything like that.”

“Really?”

It was a heady thing to have Jack see me as so capable. And to have him listen to me without question. It was like a drug, almost. And I was high on it.

“Really.”

“But you knew exactly what to do.”

“It’s not that hard,” I said, chipping at the polish on my thumb. It was already ruined. I’d have to redo it before our next gig. “Work in enough bars and I think it’s probably pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention.”

He made a low sound in his throat, driving with one hand draped across the top of the steering wheel. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? Most people don’t pay attention.”

“It wouldn’t have gone so well without you there,” I said.

His grin was wry. “I’ll be your backup any day.”

He slowed to a stop in front of a lit-up bank of windows in an otherwise dark stretch of buildings.

The J in the Jim’s Diner neon sign was burned out, the apostrophe was flickering, gasping its last breaths. Inside, weary waitresses in white button-down shirts took orders from truckers, washed in golden light from the lamps over the tables.

“It doesn’t look like much,” he said. “But it’s good.”

It looked simple and basic. Nothing fake.

It looked like an oasis. An island in a dark sea.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

We got out of the car and it was warmer here, away from the water. Jack waited for me on the curb, his eyes focused on an old apartment building across the street. The sign, Shady Oaks, sculpted in wrought iron arching across the entryway.

He stood there a long time, the wind whistling down the street.

“You know that place?” I asked, standing beside him as we looked at the dark apartment building. It looked like a relic of some kind, the architecture, the empty pool in the courtyard. Like something left behind. For people who had been left behind.

“Not really,” he said.

I wanted to ask then why we were staring at it. But he turned, his hand grazing the small of my back as he turned us toward the diner. “Let’s feed you before your stomach eats you from the inside.”

The bell rang over our heads as we walked in, and the smell of potatoes and coffee and bacon made my stomach growl again. Jack, beside me, smiled and lifted two fingers up for the hostess.

“Away from the window,” he said and she nodded, grabbing two menus for us.

Jack ordered coffee and I had a water and a hot tea.

“So,” I asked, shrugging out of my coat, watching the way he tried not to watch me. It was warm in this back booth. Cozy. The sound of the kitchen and the conversation in the other booths were insulation. It felt like the world was far away. “How do you know this place?”

“My mom was a diner expert.” He smiled as he said it. Flipping his spoon over as he talked, watching his own fingers because it was easier than watching me.

I understood the impulse.

“This was a favorite?” I asked.

“One of many. There was not a diner in the entire Bay area we didn’t spend some Sunday afternoon in. We’d go to church, confession, and then it was diner time.”

“What did she like about diners?”

“All of it. People bringing her food. The endless cups of coffee. My brother was picky as hell but he would always eat pancakes, so it was a meal without a fight.” He shrugged. “And what’s not to like about a diner?”

“Nothing,” I said with a smile. “Does she still go to diners?”

“She died, years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he said. “She left a big hole when she was gone that we all tried to fill.”

“You have a brother?”

“Yeah, a younger brother. I mean, I do in a technical sense, but we aren’t really… talking, these days.”

“Oh no.” I was really bringing the bummer tonight.

“I haven’t actually seen him in two years.”

“Oh my god, I couldn’t even imagine not seeing my sister for two days, much less two years.”

The waitress arrived with my little tin pot of hot water and I got busy unwrapping my tea bag and getting everything just right.

“Your sister, is she older or younger?” he asked.

“We’re twins.”

“Jesus,” he said. “There are two of you walking around?”

“We’re not identical.”

“Probably a good thing. The men of San Francisco could not take two of you.”

“We’re really different, actually. She’s like an artist. Lives in her head most of the time. Kind of hates people. Or is scared of them. Hard to say.”

“That’s my brother. Only not an artist. He’s an athlete. But he definitely hates people.”

“We should introduce them.”

“So she could be scared of him?”

“She’s tougher than she thinks. She’d survive.”

He smiled at me so wide he revealed a chipped tooth. One of the incisors. But then, as if he realized what he’d revealed, he lifted his hand to rub his mouth, hiding the flaw. And I wanted to tell him not to bother. That there was no need to be embarrassed. Or hide. I liked the flaws.

I took a sip of my tea, burning my tongue because it was still too hot, but I could not say these things. I didn’t know how much further down the rabbit hole I could go with this man and survive the trip.

“What sport does your brother play?” It was so much easier to ask him about his brother instead of him. And it was obvious that he was so much happier talking about his brother instead of talking about himself.

His face was relaxed, his wavy dark hair falling into his eyes, and my fingers twitched as I imagined how his hair would feel against my skin.

I imagined doing it, just reaching forward and sweeping it away from his eyes. I imagined how still he would get with surprise, how startling it would be for both of us.

But how it would be a relief too.

I imagined him closing his eyes, the relief of my touch would be so sharp. So clear. Too much almost in this restraint we had between us. This carefully choreographed not touching we were doing.

“He’s a wrestler,” Jack was saying, and I snapped back into the conversation, embarrassed by my daydreams. “Now he does some kind of MMA thing. He’s good at it. Like scary good.”

“Is it dangerous? The MMA thing.”

“Of course. He wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.” He took a sip of his coffee and then frowned when he realized the cup was empty. “Where are your parents?” he asked. “Still in the city?”

“Florida,” I said. “They used to just go part of the time, but a few years ago they sold their house up here and stayed there year round.”

“You miss them?”

“Not as much as you would think. My parents didn’t really parent us. They kind of left my sister and me alone to raise each other. I was sick as a kid.”

“Sick? With what?”

“Allergies. Asthma. I missed most of second grade because I was in and out of the hospital with pneumonia. And then my sister missed most of second grade because she wouldn’t go to school if I wasn’t going. And I think Mom tried to kind of split us up and find a way to be in between us so she could be in our lives, but we were just such a unit. Such a team, we didn’t let anyone in. We still haven’t,” I said with a laugh.

“What do you mean?”

It was strange how far this conversation had gotten, like we’d just been drifting down this river and I was only now looking up to see how unfamiliar this territory was.

“Neither one of us has had serious boyfriends. Or real friends either. It’s still us against the world.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “That is weird, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “It seems kind of nice. I tried so hard to be on a team with my brother that I joined the high school wrestling team, just so we could do it together.”

“High school wrestling?” I asked, smiling.

“Desperate times,” he said with a smile. “I would have joined the marching band for my brother, and I have no musical ability at all.”

“Hold on,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m just trying to imagine you…”

It was a fucking delight to imagine this dangerous man as a kid. An awkward high school student. A gangly wrestler. Curly hair sprouting up from his head gear.

“It wasn’t pretty,” he said. And I couldn’t agree, but I said nothing.

“Were you any good?”

“I was terrible.”

“You’re joking.”

“Awful. Like the worst kid on the team.”

“And you did it anyway?”

“For Jesse? Yeah. Practice and the meets, the bus rides to the meets, that was seriously the best time we spent together. What was a little public humiliation?”

The laughter dried up from his face, his blue eyes lost their bright lights, and I imagined that both of us were wondering how those two boys in the back of a high school bus could grow up to not speak to each other.

I couldn’t connect those two dots. Something dark happened in between them, the brothers and the dots making their connection drop.

“You sound like a good brother,” I said.

“No. I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” He shook his head, the spoon for once still against the table. “But you sound like a good sister,” he said.

“It’s my sister who was good.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said with serious earnest eyes.

“I’m trying,” I said, “to be different than I was. To be better. I let a lot of shit happen because she felt guilty and I felt mad, and the whole world expected less of me and more of her, and I just took advantage of that for so long.” I shook my head, my face suddenly hot. Why did I keep talking like this? “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“It makes perfect sense,” he said. “My brother and I had a similar situation. I just… took care of things, you know. Like that was my job. Trying to clear the path for him.”

“That’s what my sister did for me.”

“She sounds special,” he said.

“I should introduce her to you. She’s so smart. She reads all the time too, you know.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you trying to fix me up with your sister?”

I laughed. “You’d probably like her better.”

“Impossible,” he said, whispered really into the still warm air between us, like a ship setting sail from his side of the booth making its way over to mine.

Our gazes held, awkward and naked. So much revealed.

He coughed, looked away, and I sagged slightly in the booth, feeling panicked nearly at my vulnerability with this man. How I’d been caught out. It didn’t sit well with me, this vulnerability—it made my hard edges want to come out.

He looked out the window, at the dark city outside. He was younger, right now, than he usually seemed. His dark hair flopping over his forehead, his shirt sleeves rolled up revealing his arms and tattoos. His blue eyes sad.

“Do you always get what you want?” he asked.

I took a sip of my tea and tilted my head, like I was pondering the weight of his question. “What do you think?”

“I think you get what you want.”

“I think you’re right.”

And I want you.

I didn’t say the words, but they were there just the same like a tiny skywriter had just written them in the air between us.

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you get what you want?”

“Never,” he said.

I blinked. “You never get what you want?”

“I never reach for what I want. I never acknowledge what I want. The second I want something I do everything in my power to forget it exists.”

“You tried to do that to me,” I whispered.

“And now look at us.”

“So… what does that make me?”

“Trouble.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“And special.”

Like the words set a match to a fire I hadn’t noticed, or couldn’t see, the atmosphere around us completely changed. The smile faded from his face and those blue eyes were hot and intense and I couldn’t breathe.

Desire, a dark and sudden lust, turned my bones to butter and I could only sit there and feel the power of him.

What have I done? I wondered in some distant way. This is too much. He is too much.

It was easy to toy with boys, young men with money in their pocket who liked the idea of a woman who looked like me on their arm.

But Jack… he was looking at me like he wanted to consume me. I like was something he needed. He told me himself he was a man. And I’d had so few men in my life. Boys sure. Guys.

Not men.

And none of them like him.

I looked back down at my tea, adding more milk. Spilling sugar everywhere.

“I can call you a cab,” he said. His voice low, slightly embarrassed like he’d revealed too much and he knew it. “We don’t have to eat.”

In about a month from this moment, I’d think about this and how so many things combined to keep me there. To put me and Jack on the road to disaster and pain.

I should have grabbed my coat and gone. Never looked back.

But I wasn’t very smart. Reckless was my middle name.

And the waitress arrived and asked, “What can I get you?”

And my body answered: Jack.

“Abby?” he asked. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I’ll have the pancakes,” I said, handing the menu over to the waitress.

Jack smiled, just a little twist to his lips and he was so handsome, so fully himself and fully a man, that my heart literally skipped a beat.

He ordered eggs over easy, and the moment to avoid our own end was over.

“What’s next for you after the Moonlight?” he asked.

“Wherever they send me,” I said with a shrug.

“You saving for school or something? College?”

“I’m just a shots girl,” I said, keeping mum on the subject of my little nest egg and the dream.

“That’s hardly true.”

“But it is.”

“You could run that club,” he said.

“Someone needs to. You telling me I should try for the job?”

“I’m saying you could do it. In a heartbeat. But you shouldn’t work there.”

“You shouldn’t work there either,” I said.

“Ten minutes in my car and you think you know?” he asked.

“One glance of you reading at that bar and I knew,” I said. “Why aren’t you going to college?” he asked.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I am. Why aren’t you going to college?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“You’re not interested?”

“No, but I’m not very smart,” I said, wondering why in the world I was telling him this.

“That’s bullshit.”

“No, it’s pretty much public record. Years of report cards don’t lie. My sister, she got all the brains.”

“School only measures one kind of smart.”

“Well, it’s the only kind that matters in this world.”

“My brother was terrible at school,” he said, arranging his knife and fork in a particular way. “But that doesn’t make him not smart.”

“You don’t know me, Jack.”

“I know you’re smart about the club. About people. I know you’re a natural manager and those girls you work with look to you as a leader. That makes you pretty smart.”

I could feel myself blushing. Like a bad one, like from school when I’d get called up to the board to answer some simple math problem, only the numbers would be inside out and I’d be so scared I couldn’t do anything.

“Thank you,” I murmured. “That’s… no one’s said that to me before.”

“That can’t be true.”

I flipped back my hair and gave him a level look. “What do you think men say to me?”

His eyes took me in in pieces. My long white-blonde hair. My sparkling blue eyes. My cheekbones and collarbones, sharp enough to cut glass.

“I can imagine.”

“Right. Not a whole lot of compliments on my brain.”

“Then they aren’t seeing you the way I see you.”

They weren’t empty, these compliments. They were real because nothing about this man pandered or lied. It was obvious. It was why I was attracted to him.

“What about you?” I asked. “You’re so smart, reading on the job and everything. You go to college?”

“I dropped out after three years.”

“Dropped out?”

“Two years ago.”

“Why?”

“Family stuff.”

“Your mom?”

“No, she died when we were in high school.”

My heart stuttered for him, squeezed in my chest in recognition of the difficulty of his choices. “You should go back. You must have been close to getting a degree.”

“I’m about ten credits short of a degree in economics.”

My jaw fell open, which made him laugh. “Get the fuck out. Economics?”

He nodded, looking slightly embarrassed and also pleased at the same time.

“What were you going to do with that degree?” I asked. I’m not sure I’d ever met anyone with a degree in economics.

“No idea,” he said. “Grad school, probably. Law school maybe.”

“Jesus.”

“It was so long ago, I’m not even sure who I was at that time.”

“It was two years ago!” I cried.

“Right.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it either. “But so much happened. I feel like that kid I’d been, he was someone I knew a long time ago. Someone from the neighborhood or something. An acquaintance.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out across this table, because I could see that these old wounds still hurt. The blood was fresh. I touched his hand and fast as a snake, he grabbed me. My fingers in his. It wasn’t hard, his hold on me. But it was firm. And hot and real and I curled my fingers around his, like his hand was the only thing keeping me from blowing out the window.

He looked at me, a long time, long enough that I felt naked and not in a good way. Not in the way I liked or was used to. For the first time in a very long time, I felt awkward.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I breathed.

He didn’t let go of my hand and we both sat there like the rest of the world didn’t exist, and he’d been sending me so many mixed messages I didn’t know what to do. I felt brand new to this game.

“Everything,” he said, his voice a low gruff whisper, full of intention and heat.

Our eyes caught, tangled and I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe or think. And for a second I was sure I was going to crawl across the table into his lap.

Or maybe he was going to shove the table out of the way, get down on his knees in front of me, and hold my face in his hands.

And he would kiss me. And it wouldn’t be like any other kiss I’d ever had. It would change everything. It would change me.

It was so powerful, this kiss, I could taste it. I could feel it unraveling me.

And it hadn’t even happened.

“So?” I said in a voice that just barely didn’t shake. “What are you going to do about it?”

He pulled out his wallet, threw down forty dollars and stood up.

“Let’s go,” he said.