31. Memphis

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

memphis

H ow little I remembered of the night was both embarrassing and startling.

I threw up nothing for several painful minutes of dry heaving.

Then I threw up everything that had ever been inside my body since the moment that I was born, including my organs.

I hadn’t felt that disgusting in a long time. It only took me another few seconds of attempting to stand before I decided I was better off just crawling right into the shower next to me rather than even consider facing Utah like this again.

It made me feel sick all over again to have to think he’d seen me like this to begin with.

The view I had in that mirror was not a pleasant one. So, I ignored it and turned the water on in the shower.

I remembered small pieces of the evening. I remembered spending entirely too much time with some random bar man, thinking it might make Utah jealous. I couldn’t for the life of me recall what he looked like. I remembered dancing with him. He touched way too much of me for someone I’d never met before that night. I very clearly remembered fake laughing at everything he said, just for him to end up saying that he loved the way that I laughed so much that he wanted to know what I sounded like while I did other things.

Then Utah popped up in the doorway to intervene.

My knight in shining perfectly controlled stability.

I knew I kissed him. I knew I wanted him. I felt how much he also wanted me.

But I really didn’t remember a damn thing between getting in that truck and waking up this morning.

The water from that shower was an instant relief for the pulsing in my brain, but there was no combination of water, shampoo, and body wash that was plentiful enough to wash away this kind of embarrassment.

He’d kissed me though.

And the way that he’d held me against that truck.

He kissed me again this morning, even while I looked like a tube of mascara jizzed all over my face.

I leaned my head against the tile wall in so much frustration. Everything about last night could have gone so differently if I hadn’t gone out of my way to spend so much of it with someone else just to see if Utah would react.

I was the actual fucking worst.

I stayed in the water until it wasn’t even remotely warm anymore before I pulled the curtain back to find a bottle of aspirin and a sports drink sitting on the vanity next to Utah’s flannel. He even folded my clothes from last night, brought them in here, and left my phone sitting on top of them. I hadn’t even heard the man open the door. Then I tried to remember if I’d locked it, but I figured not having to wonder whether or not he’d gotten in here that quietly through a locked door was way easier on my pained brain.

I touched the screen of my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed my time frame to text Jersey and then wrapped the towel around myself. I thought about stopping at Utah’s room again to give his flannel back to him, but I wasn’t entirely sure about facing him already.

Some part of me kind of just wanted to keep it anyway. So, I did.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t smell breakfast while I tried to silently sneak down the creakiest stairs in the history of the civilized world. No part of me was prepared to face Indy’s questions about the night. I shut myself in my room to get dressed and towel-dried my hair just enough to keep it from dripping.

I couldn’t explain how it was possible to feel like I was simultaneously starving to absolute death and painfully nauseated at the same time. But I needed food like I needed oxygen, immediately. I stopped before I ventured back out into the rest of the house though, and against my better judgement, I put Utah’s flannel on over the shirt I was wearing and tied it together in the front, so it wasn’t all the way down to my knees. I jumped when someone knocked on my door while I was rolling the sleeves up a little.

“It’s open.”

“Hey,” Utah said quietly while he opened the door. “Just making sure you were?—”

His eyes never even made it to mine. They stopped completely on his flannel.

Shit.

“Uh —,” I sputtered out. “Right. This isn’t mine.”

I started to untie the bottom again, but he was across the room to stand right in front of me in the blink of an eye, simultaneously shoving my hands away from the fabric.

“Don’t you dare take it off.”

I held my breath while his hand moved from the little knot at the bottom to follow the line of buttons all the way up between my breasts until my chin was between his fingers and his thumb.

“You are?—”

“Hungover,” I interrupted to prevent him from saying whatever it was that would finish that sentence. He smirked and my heart stopped. Utah leaned down to just barely touch his lips to mine before he backed away again. I grabbed the front of his shirt to pull him right back and I just stared at him until he smiled and kissed me again.

“Is that something we can just do now anytime we’re alone?” I asked when he stopped kissing my mouth, only to kiss my forehead.

Something about the way he chuckled did questionable things inside my body. “We don’t even have to be alone as far as I’m concerned, angel. Come on. Brace yourself,” he warned while I followed him down the hallway. “Indy has questions.”

“What’d you tell him?” I whispered as we got closer to the kitchen.

“Haven’t told him anything. That’s why he has questions.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket from a text message while I followed Utah into the kitchen. Indy was already sitting at the island on his computer, but I ignored him for a second because of my phone. The message was from a number that wasn’t saved. I nearly threw up all over again when I remembered putting my number into that bar guy’s phone. I opened the message in the purest disgust with myself, already thinking of the ways that I could go about removing him from the connected world of the Internet.

Unknown

Text me when you’re away from the psychopath, Memphis. I just want to know that you’re okay. He’s obviously got some problems.

I stared at it for a second before I noticed that there were earlier messages.

Ones that came from me, but that I had not sent.

A picture.

I was suffocating right here in the open air.

“How was the big night?” Indy asked.

“What the fuck is this, Utah?” I asked.

He was already at the door, standing there with it open, like he was waiting on me. He laughed when he noticed my phone in my hand.

“You want to have this conversation right now?” he asked while nodding toward Indy. That smug smile stayed on his face the entire time.

“Please want to have this conversation right now,” Indy begged as he smiled at me. I looked back at Utah, and he nodded toward the door.

“Let’s go,” Utah said.

“Go where?”

“Let’s go have a chat, apparently.”

I glared at him while I stomped through the door, but I was wholly unprepared for him to be right behind me when I whirled back around, thinking I was going to rip him a new one for being a phone creep. I managed to lose every ounce of my nerve with him standing only inches away from me while he smirked.

“I believe you wanted to yell at me for something,” he encouraged.

“I spend all day every day making sure no one can access any of our phones. All of the electronics around this entire house, for that matter. The last person I should have to worry about snooping through my phone is you, Utah.”

He started to walk toward me until I was backing away from him. He didn’t stop until the back of me was against his truck another time, and he put his hand on the side of my face.

“I’m sorry I used your phone to tell your other suitors to fuck off. I’ll be sure to use my own next time.”

“I don’t have other?—”

His hand moved from the side of my face to cover my mouth to interrupt me.

“But if you ever have me take you out for another night where the end game is making me jealous, when I have to watch you dance with some other guy, when you hand your number out to another man, I won’t play so nice. With either of you. Are we clear, sugar? I would never hurt you for real. Not without you asking me to do it But if I ever have to watch another man touch you like that again, you might as well be signing the contract on his life.”

I couldn’t speak, even after his hand slid off my mouth to allow it. He stood there and stared right through me, waiting for me to respond in some way. I couldn’t manage anything more than nodding my head.

“Good. Get in the truck.”

Then he opened the door for me like a perfect gentleman. Not at all like a crazy person who’d just threatened me and any other male who might ever find me attractive enough to approach me. I managed to look at him again once he was in the truck beside me.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To find you a hangover cure, baby.”

“You know those aren’t real, right?”

“We’ll find you the greasiest food that Indiana has to offer, and then you can tell me if you don’t feel any better.”’

I couldn’t imagine how it was supposed to help. All food sounded awful again by the time I was sitting across a table from Utah and staring at a menu.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I said, more to myself than to him.

“Somewhere else you need to be right now?”

“No. I just mean we shouldn’t be out here this often. Where people can see us.”

“Hiding in that house twenty-four hours a day is no way to live.”

“I’m not hiding. We just need—” I cut myself off before I could even bother. Fuck if I knew what we needed. I was winging it all day every day at this rate and that was the constant source of all my stress.

“You can dismantle an entire criminal organization and still enjoy life, angel.”

“Not if we get killed out here just because you decided I needed greasy food.”

“You’ll be thanking me in an hour, so you might want to tone down that attitude.”

I laid the menu back down on the table and rubbed my face with both hands.

Something about being told to tone down my attitude made me want to ramp that shit up until I could look for Jesus in the clouds.

He was so perfectly fucking calm about everything all the time.

It was somehow both the absolute worst thing about him and my very favorite thing about him.

When did I start having favorite things about Utah?

He laughed and it drew my attention back to his face, rather than just the Utah of my thoughts.

“What was that last thought, sugar?”

I stared at him from between my fingers, and realized I’d actually stopped rubbing my face with my hands and sat frozen with my fingers separated just enough for me to see out of them.

“What?” I asked, hoping I looked like I had no idea what he was talking about.

The way that he smiled suggested he knew otherwise, anyway.

“You’re adorable.”

Something about that word made me frown.

Adorable.

Like a child.

Then I fucking laughed at myself because I wouldn’t have reacted any better if the man sat there and outright said you’re sexy .

He couldn’t win. I couldn’t win. There was no winning here. Not with me involved.

The alarm on my phone went off to remind me to text Jersey, and I could’ve burst into tears right then.

Me

Got drunk for the first time ever last night and killed somebody. Used Seph to get the body back home. Now there’s blood everywhere in the backseat.

Jersey Boy

There’s a pond at the back of the property that nobody would know how to find. Almost 19ft deep. Concrete shoes will fix your problem.

While I sat there smiling at Jersey’s text, a different one came from Trista.

It was just a picture of Jersey standing at the end of what looked like a boat dock with his phone in his hand.