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PROLOGUE

Salereat memories froulations Too h support or backbone from my mother

We lived in Loveless, a tiny Texas toith an achingly accurate nahter, and if that didn’t coh inherent expectations, the man as beloved behind the pulpit but a tyrant in our hoher I was meant to be quiet, compliant, and conventional Problem wasthat was never me

When I was nine, I convinced my ed for so that wouldI was so proud, so excited when Ilike that wasn’t per to make a spectacle of herself He wouldn’t stand for it It was how everything into take a stand and defy hi she so desperately wanted Anything that went against ot kicked to the curb along with any sense of uniqueness and enjoyment My parents wanted to squeeze me into a too-small box, painted white and tied with a bow of tradition Me being h

It was a situation er sister was the apple of irl I loved Poppy with all entle and kind but she was also docile and obedient, ready to ju to be perfect and compliant like my adorable little sister I had no plans to end up a happy ho to fit into the conventional mold of the traditional Mexican woman like my father so desperately wanted me to So at nine years old, I decided that I would ht at the end of the tunnel, I just had to be patient

When the time cauy rown, but I had to get out I had to runI just didn’t see any other way to survive I fled Loveless, shaking the dust offback

I have very few regrets about the choices I made for myself back then To this day I aood or bad I’-willed I’ve made my oay in life, and have, up to this point, been extremely successful at it There’ve been times when I stumbled There’ve been times when I lay alone in the dark and wanted to cry There were quiet moments that snuck up on me that reminded me my parents weren’t the only people I ran from in that tiny Texas town But overall I tried to accept full accountability forand that was the way I liked it

I still kept in touch with h she had o She still lived in Loveless So deep was my hatred for that place and themyself to attend my sister’s nuptials, which had of course taken place under my father’s watchful eyes in his church I liked to et a feel for whichever big city I was calling home for the moment Her visits had becoet in touch with her every so often for a quick chat on the phone

At first ypsy ways had landed me in Phoenix and then Reno, all before LA had called to me, which had then been quickly followed by New York I had tried New Orleans on for size and had a blast in Austin for a few years Most recently I had landed in Vegas, and sohts, the noise, the constant flow of people, the way it really felt like a transient town, had stuck I stayed in the neon jungle for far longer than any of the other places on the list and settled in to a really profitable career that hinged on all those decisions I hadto dooreat job, a killer aparte of soot a call out of the blue froendary in od in the tattoo industry He was the tattoo guy other tattoo guys wanted to be He was the artist you wanted to say had worked on you He was groundbreaking He was famous The list to apprentice under hi Phil was a supre to his son, Nash, he was sick and his odds on pulling through were slim to nonexistent Nash had inherited Phil’s shop in the heart of don Denver and had also been tasked with getting a new tattoo shop up and running in the more trendy Lower Don--"LoDo"--part of the city Phil had thrown er

I had only as, and I had just wanted to meet the notoriously handsoeous exa, polite, and so about his de for hours and hours He offered to tattooto say no I spent the next day under his needle and ended up spilling aze It was like being absolved of every sin I had ever committed by a very tattooed and cool pope

When he asked where I was frohed When I rew up in a very conservative town in Texas called Loveless, I could feel soe in his demeanor He became more intent, asked a truckload ant, beautiful, and very traditional Lady of Guadalupe tattoo was done on my calf, I felt like Phil knew ood-bye and I never really thought much past that encounter other than I had a killer tattoo frohts Nash’s call had taken uard, so I was prepared to blow him off I was sad to hear about Phil and I didn’t really want to leave Vegas Colorado was cold and had etting ready to hang up when Nash told me to look up the shop on the Internet To check out the artists and their work He told me that Phil was absolutely sure I would be interested in the job and theup, but my curiosity was piqued, so I did indeed pull up the shop on s were out of this world and the portfolios of the work its artists were producing were breathtaking But it wasn’t until I flipped over to the individual artists’ pages that as to Denver in the span of a heartbeat

There on the tiny screen of oodthat I had held in a war There looking back at rown-up version of the blue-eyed boy as the one person in my entire life to ever make me feel accepted The only person who had ever

Rowland St JamesRowdy The boy next door as so sweet, so wide-eyed, so afraid of being sent back into the systeed hi hiure out how to have fun, how to loosen up and have a good ti, sad eyes, my heart squeezed for him Every little kid should kno to play, should want to roll around in the dirt and cause a ruckus, and it seemed like every little kid did, except for Rowdy

I think I felt so bad for hier, and even then I didn’t want to think about how going inside with scraped knees or ripped clothes would go over with et yelled at, I would be punished, I would have all es--the few I had--revoked, and all the fun in the world wasn’t worth the repercussions it caused, so I typically resignedeveryone else enjoy theer had to sit there alone

That was how I first found out how artistically gifted he was Drawing on paper was clean and tidy, it was noret in trouble or end up grounded for playing tick-tack-toe or hang a few sheets of plain drawing paper and a few colored pencils to Roas going to unlock artistic potential that would blow es and landscapes that looked real enough they deserved to be fra on a wall somewhere The boy was skilled, and it was the first time I ever saw him really smile He loved to draw, loved to sketch and mess around with paint, so whenever we ended up cast off to the side, that e did together Draw and doodle I sucked at it, but I loved that it ap and obvious differences, Rowdy just understood what it was like to want more and be more than ere currently stuck with He was a kindred spirit, and he made my heart smile when my day-to-day was so dreary and desolate We were two kids just trying to make do in households that didn’t really want us or understand us Wein at our own families and our own lives, but at least we could stand outside together He was quite simply the best friend I ever had--he still was Soh, I wondered if he was content to be on the fringe with lass just because he was another person in my life as blinded by Poppy’s perceived perfection We watched everythingincluded or wanted, but he never took his eyes off of my little sister

I had always known that Poppy was the Cruz sister for hiot that in my last moments in Loveless Just as the Belvedere was about to peel out of ht of his brilliant sky-blue eyes in the rearview mirror I jued froed into so else I saw hie boy He was only fifteen, too young to have soto suddenly look so grown-up and like so else In that half of a heartbeat he beca heart Neither one of us was ready for the other; at eighteen I didn’t have a clue how drasticthe effects would last, but I had to kiss hiood-bye, had to let hih I was leaving and never co back

Only now, thanks to serendipity and Phil Donovan, Roas staring back at eous He was still blond, still ser, badder, and those blue eyes now had to cothat I suddenly wanted in the center of a crystal ball telling me that hata second to think, I called Nash back and accepted the job I think he said soh the blood rushing between ure out before I packed up and left, but I had a new destination and a clear goal in mind I wanted to see if it was still there, the synchronicity we had, the undeniable connection and pull that hadand too lost to knohat to do with it

It took aat, ned a deal to do sopoints I also had to break it off with Mr I Want More and head to New York for a photo shoot I had booked for a tattoo ot more and more anxious I wanted to be in Colorado, wanted to layto see what the years had done to him besides make him undeniably sexy He had always had the best personality Affable and laid-back even though his life had been anything but a bed of roses I always admired him I envied the way he seemed to just roll hatever landed in his lap I was the exact opposite I ht for survival, and it was exhausting