4. Utah

CHAPTER FOUR

utah

W as she asking to go to New Jersey with me?

Had I blinked and nearly missed what she was suggesting? Or was I grasping at straws and just hoping that was her implication?

When I looked down at Memphis again, her bottom lip was being put through the punishment of a lifetime while she chewed on it.

“You want to go with me?”

She shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her feet. “We’re about to start working together. Wouldn’t hurt to make sure we know how to work together first.”

“And you learn best when you just do it yourself,” I added with a laugh.

“I just — I don’t know if I want to be there physically if you’re going to be killing people. I can’t imagine I’d do much more than be in the way during something like that.”

“It’s alright, angel. You stay good. I’m already damned. We’ll keep it that way.”

“That’s — unsettling.”

The extra half a step she added in between us after that made me smirk.

“I’m not going to make you do anything, Memphis,” I chuckled. “Just happy you’re tagging along.”

No makeup in the world could hide the pink that tinted her cheeks for just a few seconds.

“You’re going to be stuck in the truck with me for twelve hours there and twelve hours back,” I said. “Start planning your conversation topics now because if you leave it to me, I’ll do everything in my power to keep your pretty face that color.”

That turned her whole face bright red.

“You’re mean,” she said quickly.

“I feel like giving you that warning was about as nice as I could ever be.”

“What do you mean she’s going with you?” Indy asked from the kitchen island behind me while I cooked dinner for the three of us.

“Exactly what I said. She’s going with me .”

“Now who’s being a sarcastic twattle?”

He could probably sense my eye roll even without being able to see it.

“I have literally never used the word twattle in my entire life, you dramatic little shit,” I said on a sigh. “What does that even mean?”

“Twat waffle but combined and condensed. Twattle.”

“You have way too much time on your hands,” I huffed. “But wouldn’t that be twaffle ?”

“I didn’t come up with it,” he argued and laughed. “But let me just rephrase, huh? Why is she going with you? How did it come about that she might go with you? New Jersey is a long trip. Are we sharing rooms? Beds? At what point do you plan on fucking her, and will you please tell me every detail once it happens?”

“Indy.”

“What? You don’t let me leave here. I don’t get to do anything fun. Let me live vicariously.”

“I’m not keeping you here, Cinderella. You’re free to do whatever you like.”

“You gave me a radius of travel and an actual curfew,” he huffed at me. “We don’t call you Daddy Utah for nothing.”

“I asked you to stay within driving distance and not to stay out all night in case you got into shit and needed me to save your ass. Perfectly reasonable requests for the purpose of keeping you safe, Indy,” I said, turning to face him. “And please stop calling me that.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“What are we fighting about tonight, boys?” Memphis asked, taking her regular spot next to Indy.

“He wants us to stop calling him Daddy Utah ,” Indy said.

“Isn’t that in the neighborhood of blasphemy?” she asked.

I ran my hand along the stiffening muscles at the base of my neck. Triss pretty regularly called these two the tech twins, but what they really were was the bane of my existence and the source of every single headache once they joined forces. The more time I spent with the combination of the two of them, though, the more I was able to experience a semi-relaxed side of Memphis. Something about having Indy with us made her feel comfortable enough to not hold back the kind of snark that apparently lived inside her permanently. Having to tolerate their weird-as-fuck twin shenanigans was a small price to pay for those brief glimpses into who she really was.

She was right back to uncomfortable and tense by the time she was climbing up into the passenger’s seat of my truck to leave for New Jersey. I was almost a dumbass and nearly reminded her that we hadn’t even left yet if she still wanted to jump out and run for it.

“We’ll drive straight through,” I said to Indy when he appeared at Memphis’ window. “Don’t make us stay in the city,” I added after a couple seconds.

“Cozy countryside bed and breakfast. Hear you loud and clear.”

“Um—” Memphis started to say.

“He’s joking,” I interrupted Memphis to glare at Indy.

“You’re the only one available to be on Bible duty while this is happening,” he said to Memphis. “And please, please , do absolutely everything that I would do, as long as you report back to me after the fact.”

“ Bible duty ?” I asked.

“Okay. Bye, Indy,” Memphis said quickly and hit the button to roll her window back up. “Please start driving before he just comes around to your side,” she pleaded quietly.

“You want to drive?” I asked her once we were out on the road.

“I don’t know how to drive. I know you know that.”

That felt more like the comfortable version of Memphis.

“Alright. I’ll try that another way. Would you like me to teach you how to drive, you pretty little sasshole?”

And just that quickly, I’d managed to rip any level of comfort she felt right back out of this truck with a single question.

“Was it because I called you pretty or because I suggested you try something you’ve not mastered yet?” I chuckled.

“ Sasshole isn’t a word,” she said quietly, ignoring everything else I’d said.

“Why don’t you want to get your license?” I asked instead.

“If I wanted a license, I would just make one. It’s not like I could go to any license branch with my lack of proof of real identification and ask to take their driving exam anyway.”

“They didn’t try to make you do all this before you finished high school? You know, like the rest of us had to do? Or did you graduate high school when you were nine and you just weren’t allowed to drive that early?” I asked and laughed at myself, until I glanced at her, and saw she didn’t even so much as crack a smile.

“I didn’t finish high school.”

That explained a few things in one direction.

Opened up a plethora of questions in another.

“Well, from my experience with it, you really didn’t miss much,” I offered. “Football players who thought they were gods, cheerleaders who acted like they had gold between their legs, and rich kids who didn’t actually have to go to classes to get into the best college.”

“Sounds like I would’ve had a lot of fun knocking some kids off their pedestals.”

“Did you really send some kid’s dick pics all around your school?” I asked before I could stop myself. It’d come up a couple times around the house, but there never felt like a good time to ask if this actually happened, or if it was just a funny story that changed through the years to become something more than it was.

She smiled, though. And I watched that tongue stud slide between her lips, from one corner of her mouth to the other.

Had to shake my head to make myself go back to focusing on the road before I killed us both just by thinking about her mouth.

“He deserved it,” Memphis said.

“You couldn’t just let karma take care of him?” I asked and laughed. “Had to ruin his chances of ever getting laid again in that town?”

“ Let karma take care of him ,” she scoffed. “Like what you’re doing by hunting down these detectives? I don’t think it works that way anymore, Utah. I used to. If you put good things out into the world, you’d eventually get good things back. And vice versa with the bad.”

“And now?” I asked. “If that’s what you used to think, what do you think now?”

“I’m tired of waiting for karma to level the playing field for me. She’s got too much to do in a world like this and not enough time to make sure it all happens. Sometimes karma just needs a violent shove in the right direction. But sometimes, I imagine karma needs a vigilante-for-hire.”

That was somehow the saddest thing I’d ever heard.

And the hottest.

I knew there was a broken person beneath the makeup she wore. I had no idea why or when it might’ve started, but I had a pretty good case built for the belief that anyone who’d accepted employment from our previous organization hadn’t done it because they were the straight and narrow kind of person.

Even with those assumptions, I hadn’t really believed that level of quiet rage burned beneath the surface of this woman.