42. Memphis

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

memphis

K yle already made his way into the kitchen to see Jersey too. It was weird watching him interact with everyone again. Nothing in the world would have prepared me to witness these two particular men hug one another.

“He looks good,” I whispered to Triss when she stopped to stand beside me.

“Don’t be fooled. He’s still an asshole.”

“Imagine that,” Utah said and kissed the top of my head before he walked around us.

“What was that? Did he just kiss you? What is this?” she demanded rapid-fire.

“Yeah,” Indy said stopping to stand on my other side. “They’re fucking.”

“Will you please keep your voice down?” I asked with a sigh.

“They’re what?” Triss squealed. “You two bitches will send me pictures of him doing nothing all day, but that detail is what you choose to leave out?”

“Did she just call us both bitches?” Indy asked with a laugh.

“I did. Because you are.”

“It just happened, Triss,” I whispered. I watched her glare at Utah from across the room, but his eyes never left mine and it made all the blood in my body rush right to my cheeks again.

“Mhmm, sure. Just happened , my ass,” she said. “I’ll need details as soon as Jersey’s not around.”

“Seconded,” Indy added. “Let’s leave these three here and go to lunch.”

“That’s a horrible idea,” I said at the same time that Triss said, “Absolutely fucking not, Indy.”

“What are we doing first, boss lady?” Jersey interrupted from across the kitchen. “You want to learn to drive, or are we already too busy for that?”

“Tried that already,” Utah said. “Couldn’t teach her to drive.”

“ Couldn’t teach her to drive?” Jersey asked with a laugh before he looked back at me. “Tell me the smitten kitten was too nervous to remember how to do it himself?”

“She’s stubborn. Can’t teach her anything that she doesn’t want to learn, old man,” Utah said.

“Stubborn. That’s the excuse you’re going with?” Jersey asked.

“Stubborn. Yes. She’s short.”

“What?” I asked and laughed. “Those two things are somehow related?”

“Yeah,” Utah said as he shrugged his shoulders. “You even refused to fucking grow all the way to adult-size. Stubborn.”

While I considered how badly I wanted to be a shithead right back at him for that, I also remembered very clearly how that driving lesson had gone, and he was still being nice enough to not tell everyone in the room what had taken place.

“It was that truck, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t want to learn how to drive in that thing either,” Jersey said.

“My fucking God with this thing about my —.”

“Utah, please,” I interrupted him quietly while Jersey smirked.

“Is that how this works now?” Jersey asked. “She says jump and you ask how high?”

“No,” Utah snapped. “She says fuck me and I ask how hard.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually been this happy,” Indy said while our two resident titans tried to stare one another to death. “Should we just measure dicks and get it over with? I know I’m already half-hard. What about you guys? We can use my hand for scale.”

“Come on, Jersey Boy,” I said and walked toward the door in a desperate attempt to break the tension. “We should talk.”

“Persephone is still up and running,” Kyle said once Jersey was following me. “Ready to go anytime.”

Jersey crowded me the rest of the way out the door when I stopped to look back at Utah.

“He’ll still be here when you get back, Memphis,” Indy called after us while Jersey scoffed and guided me toward the garage.

“I really don’t have any interest in learning to drive right now, Jersey.”

“I haven’t touched her in months,” he said and picked up the pace to get to his car. “ I’m driving.”

The exhale that came out of him as soon as he had the overhead door open was enough to make me laugh out loud.

“Are you sure you don’t want to be alone for…whatever this is?” I asked.

“Fucking perfect,” he said. To the car. Like he was alone anyway. “Get in, Memphis.”

I had to wait there quietly and uncomfortably while the lunatic touched every inch of that dashboard and then the steering wheel. Then I had to cover my mouth to try not to laugh when he fucking groaned as he started the engine.

“Seriously, Jersey, do you want me to just go back inside?”

He laughed.

A very real laugh that wasn’t forced or unpleasant or done out of pure rage.

“Nah. I missed you. And I imagine you’ve got a nearly endless list of chores for me. Catch me up, buttercup.”

“Did you come back here with a refreshed list of names?” I asked and rolled my eyes. “Because, still and forever more, no.”

He smiled while he pulled the car onto the road. I didn’t bother to ask where we were going. My assumption was that there was no destination. He was just driving to drive.

“I really don’t expect you to go back to work, Jersey,” I said quietly. “Utah just called because—” I stopped when I wasn’t really sure how much I even wanted to share with him. “Because things are weird around here right now.”

“Utah, huh?”

“I really don’t expect or want you to talk about him either,” I laughed.

“I’m here now either way. You might as well put me to use. There’s not much else to do around here, anyway.”

I started scraping the nail polish off my thumb with my index finger. “The President’s organization has a human trafficking side to it.”

“That’s —. How in —? What?”

“Right. I still think I’m in a weird state of shock over it.”

“I wasn’t even allowed to kill people and there’s a whole set of them that has no issue with selling humans ?”

“I want to end it, Jersey,” I said quietly. “I need to.”

I disliked everything about the look in his eyes when they landed on me after that.

“But I don’t want you back in this if you’re finally in a better place,” I added quickly. “That’s why I didn’t call you myself. You look good, Jersey Boy. Better than I think I’ve ever seen you. I don’t want to undo that. Not even for this.”

“I’m glad you brought it up because I didn’t have a fucking clue how to go about telling you that you look worse than I could’ve ever imagined,” he chuckled.

“Excuse me?”

“You look fucking terrible, sweetheart.”

“Thanks? Maybe I didn’t miss you anywhere near as much as I imagined I did.”

“What’s going on, Memphis? What’s ruining your world? Point me in the right direction. Tell me how to fix it.”

“I don’t even know if there’s anything to actually do . I think so much of it is in my own brain this time. Everything feels wrong and unpleasant, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to start in sorting through it.”

“You know, I told Triss once that I didn’t want to be the burden that she felt like she had to fix. I told her that I wasn’t her problem to solve. It took me a long fucking time to realize that trying to fix myself alone was half the problem. Doing it myself left her alone just as much as it left me alone. I wasn’t her problem to fix. The whole thing was our problem to find a way through together. Things didn’t start getting better until I just told her one night that it was Liz’s voice keeping me awake all night; that the reason I couldn’t function in that one restaurant that one time was because there was a toddler with blonde hair at the next table; that I want to hurt people when I hear children laugh now. But after that, I didn’t need a solution to those things on the spot. Sometimes, Triss had one. She could see things that might set me off before I was even looking, and she was ready to do something about it. And even when she didn’t have a solution, she was just there.”

Of all the ways that I’d imagined this conversation going with him, it hadn’t ever gone this way in my mind.

“You don’t have to talk about any of it to find answers, sweet pea. You can talk just so you’re not alone in it,” he offered once I stayed quiet for a little too long.

“I never thought I’d see the day when you pushed me toward Utah,” I laughed.

“I didn’t say a damn thing about that punk. I’m right here when you decide he’s useless and you want to tell me about it, Memphis.”

“He’s a really good guy, Jersey,” I said and couldn’t stop myself from smiling while Utah’s face flashed through my mind.

“If you say so,” he sighed. “Tell me what we’re doing about this trafficking situation.”