33. Memphis

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

memphis

I was almost annoyed that I really did feel better by that point in the afternoon, but I was even more surprised that Utah hadn’t made me own up to the fact his greasy food solution was behind it. I felt good enough for apple cider slushies, cinnamon donuts, and apple crisp. I felt good enough to sit on a weird cube of a hay in the back of a wagon while a tractor pulled us through miles and miles of apple trees. I didn’t even mind that it was the least comfortable thing I’d ever had to sit on in my life, because I spent most of that ride staring at the giant hand that was wrapped around mine for almost the entire thing. His fingers were rough and his palm was calloused, but he really did radiate pure heat, and that was somehow enough to make everything about his touch feel softer. He only took his hand away from mine once to put that whole arm around my shoulders to drag me the rest of the way against his side.

“We still shouldn’t be doing this,” I said quietly. “Someone might recognize one of us.”

He chuckled and kissed the side of my head.

“That’s the third time you’ve said that, angel. And that’s the third time that I’ll be ignoring it.”

“All it would take for everything we’ve worked for to unravel would be one person realizing who I am. Or who you are.”

“The longer you stress out about it, the longer I’m going to make you stay out here. We’ve only been through the apple side of this place. We haven’t even made it to the pumpkins yet.”

“You make some of the weirdest threats,” I said and laughed. “You’re threatening me with relaxation. With pumpkins .”

“I’d love to be able to threaten you with other things, but I think you’d probably decide I was deranged and ask me to just stay away from you.”

I wondered if he noticed the way that I instantly crossed my legs after that.

“Would it work?” I asked. “Would you stay away from me if I just asked?”

“Don’t ask me that,” he laughed. “I was trying to avoid sounding like a crazy person. Ask me something a normal person asks another normal person.”

That sent my brain in a thousand directions all at once. We lived odd lives, where everyone was usually safer with as little personal information exchanged as possible. So, none of us knew the others in-depth. I didn’t know every piece of his life story even though he’d shared a couple of the giant moments, but I spent months with only him and Indy. And I knew them. I couldn’t ask his real name. I couldn’t ask if he had siblings. It didn’t really matter how badly I wanted to know those things or how much I wanted to be the only person on the planet who could have that knowledge of him. It wasn’t supposed to work that way.

“What’s your favorite season?” I asked.

He smirked. “You know, up until a couple hours ago I think I would’ve told you I was a summer kind of person. With the view today, though, I’m going to confidently say I’m a fall man now.”

“Triss called you smooth months ago,” I said and laughed. “I guess I should’ve been spending all this time preparing myself for these lines. Maybe one day I’ll get used to it and figure out how to respond to them.”

“Then I will spend the rest of my life working on staying one outrageous line ahead of you.”

I shifted just enough to be able to look up at him to see his face.

The man continued sipping his hot chocolate without even glancing at me, like he hadn’t just casually referenced spending the rest of his life with me.

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked, and immediately regretted it when that brought his eyes back down to mine.

“Is that really the question that you’re asking me? Or are you still upset about Nevada?”

Both? Could it be both without also being embarrassing?

Nope.

It was embarrassing either way.

“That’s really the question,” I said quietly. He smiled because he somehow just fucking knew better, regardless of what I said.

“No, angel. I haven’t been in love. Yes, I have slept with other women. Yes, I’ve dated. Yes, I had a man-whore phase like most men. No, I’m not proud of it. I am, however, still clean. I do see it when other women look at me like a piece of meat. And I’m perfectly comfortable sitting here right now telling you that I just have no fucking interest in anybody else.” He paused to lean down until his head was against mine. “Did I cover it all to silence the overthinking for at least a few minutes?” he whispered before shifting to kiss my temple.

“Yeah. That, uh—that was actually very helpful,” I said and laughed. I tried to prepare myself for him to tell me that it was my turn, but it never happened. I found myself staring at him all over again when I realized that it was because he just didn’t care about any of those things.

Then I hated myself for a few seconds while I wondered what it might feel like to be that confident in myself. Utah wasn’t threatened by any man anywhere because he was that certain of himself. He wasn’t even interested in the possibility of men in my past because they had no role in my world now as far as he was concerned.

I still wanted those pieces of him that no one else had though.

“Aren’t you almost thirty? How have you never been in love?”

“Aren’t you almost twenty-two? How have you never been in love?” he mocked.

“I didn’t say I haven’t been.”

The way that he looked down at me told me he was very well aware that I hadn’t been, despite what I was saying now to mislead.

“I spent my younger years being an absolute plague on the civilized world, Memphis. I was mad and hurt. I wanted to turn right back around and unleash that on the world that made me that way. So, to some extent, I did. I wasn’t good for anyone for more than a night or two back then. Women can usually sense that shit from a mile away, so I wasn’t exactly attracting the homemaking, settle down, and have lots of babies kind of partners. I didn’t have anything to offer anyone then, so love wasn’t really on the table. I wasn’t looking for happiness. Anger will do that; blind you to the things that would otherwise be available to you if you’d only had a different perspective.”

“Did you really just try to turn this into a teachable moment?” I asked and couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

“No, angel. If you need to be mad right now, be mad. My experience doesn’t determine how you feel about yours. I’ll be right here either way. I just want you to be able to believe me when I say my days of fucking around are behind me.”

“I feel like men aren’t supposed to have this kind of emotional maturity before thirty.”

“Did you learn that from the vampires? Or the shifters? No? It was probably the stalkers, then. They’re obviously the most mature out of that lineup.”

I shifted away from that motherfucker so fast so that I could sit up to glare straight at him. He laughed and put his arm right back around me to pull me even closer than I was before, so there was absolutely no wiggle room between us that time.

“You’re not going anywhere now, sugar. I’ve tasted this,” he whispered while his thumb pulled my bottom lip down. “And I still want to taste the rest of you.”

My ability to breathe vanished right into the nonexistent oxygen around us.

“You’re even prettier when you turn pink,” he said.

“It’s cold out.”

“If you say so, angel.”

The soft kiss that followed left me with even less oxygen.

Until some child sitting across from us on the wagon started an entire chorus of “Ew” with the other toddlers sitting around us on their hay cube benches.

I’d nearly forgotten we were in public.

I pulled away from him in an instant while he chuckled at how easy it was to embarrass me. His arm tightened around my shoulders, and I turned my entire face into his body so I could hide from him and everyone else.

“You still don’t know these people. And what they think still doesn’t matter,” he whispered and kissed the top of my head.