45. Memphis

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

memphis

“ Y our name is really pretty,” Trista whispered against the top of my head.

“I didn’t think he’d react that way,” Indy said. “I’m sorry, sweets. And I wasn’t looking for you , Memphis. I wasn’t trying to dig up anything about you. I had no idea. I was just looking at missing kids from the area. Some of the cases have been open forever.”

“I don’t imagine he’s actually mad at you,” Trista added. “I think he’s probably just as shocked as the rest of us. It just comes out a little different when you care about someone.”

Jersey hadn’t bothered saying anything since he came back into the house. He only sat next to me with his hand on my leg.

And I couldn’t come up with words if my life had depended on my ability to speak. Too many things were happening inside my brain at the same time. I couldn’t make the thoughts happen clearly through the cloud of emotion.

Jersey peeled Trista’s arms off me and took the paper from the desperate grip I’d kept on it. I looked down at it with him. I hadn’t seen Emery in years, aside from brief glimpses of her through the security cameras around the house in Tupelo. I’d never had pictures of her to just keep, but seeing her face again this clearly was somehow more painful than even stopping to consider what it meant to have us both pictured on a missing persons flyer.

Utah was standing in the entryway to the kitchen when I looked back up from the paper in Jersey’s hands. He looked like he was in physical pain right along with me. Jersey folded the page again and placed it back in my hands before he kissed the top of my head.

“You come find me if you need me, honey,” he whispered into my hair. “Everybody else, out,” he said to the rest of the room before he ushered Triss and Indy out of the kitchen. I watched him stop in the doorway to the living room to turn around and point at Utah before he left us alone.

“Angel, I —.”

He didn’t finish whatever he intended to say. He came the rest of the way around the island to pull me out of the chair and crush me against him. I cried even harder with him holding me that way. He let me go just to move his hands to my cheeks.

“I’m sorry I didn’t put it together before this. Whatever you need me to do, sugar, I’m here for it.”

He spent a minute trying to wipe the river of tears from my face.

“I’m going to go put the truck back together,” he said quietly. “Then I’m coming back in here for you. We’ll go somewhere that we can be alone, so you can tell me everything you need to tell me about this. And we’ll figure out what happens next.” He paused just to kiss my forehead. “I’m sorry, Memphis. I’m so sorry.”

He stepped back away from me and paused again to search the depths of my eyes. He still hadn’t let go of my face. He looked like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to move at all.

“I’ll go tell New?—.”

Jersey cleared his throat from the doorway to interrupt and let Utah know he was already here to wait with me. There wasn’t even a glare exchanged between the two of them that time.

“I’ll be right back, angel.”

Jersey was back in the chair next to me as soon as Utah was gone.

“How old were you?” Jersey asked in a perfectly calm tone that absolutely did not match the rage I could feel vibrating off the rest of his body.

“Thirteen,” I choked out. “Em was only eight.”

I watched his elbows come up to rest on the countertop and his fingers lace together in front of his face. I was a little concerned that he was about to break every bone in his own hands with the way he was crushing them together.

“All those times you tried to tell me that you could see why I would relate to Triss just because she was alone,” he said and sighed. “And there you were, living with everything else that she felt. Honey?—”

“Please,” I interrupted. “Jersey Boy, I know this is a lot for you to suddenly have to swallow. But please, I need to know that we can still go about our lives acting like this never happened. I can’t revisit this every day.”

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply while Utah made his way back into the kitchen. Jersey nodded to him and stood up. He squeezed me against his side and kissed the top of my head another time.

“I won’t bring it up as long as you can promise to come to me if you need me to do something about it, Memphis.”

“Deal.”

He and Utah stared at one another for a couple seconds longer before Jersey left the kitchen again.

Walking out to that truck with Utah was the most unpleasant feeling I’d experienced in a long time. Every emotion under the sun seemed to be trapped in that moment with me, swirling around my head like a tornado on cocaine. I felt like an asshole to realize that keeping this from Utah had hurt and upset him. I felt disgusting that this man, who I’d only recently started sleeping with, was suddenly aware that all of my sexual experience came at the hands of several men I didn’t even know. I was horrified that the flyer he’d given me opened my eyes to some things I hadn’t actually considered before just because I refused to think about that part of my life in too much detail. My whole fucking heart hurt to have to think so much about Em. And while the logical part of me could accept and acknowledge that it was completely absurd to feel shame about the things I’d lived through, it was still there. It was always there.

Without any words spoken between us, Utah parked the truck in the same place in that field where he’d managed to give so much back to me, without ever realizing that’s what he was doing at the time. I wondered if he was aware of it now; if he was replaying that night in his head like I was. He was so patient, so gentle. He was everything I needed him to be, without me ever even telling him why I needed those things from him.

He put his hands under my arms to lift me until he could sit me right at the edge of the tailgate before hopping up next to me. He’d gone out of his way to leave space between us the last time we were here. This time, he made sure every inch of my side was against him.

I wondered what he expected me to say.

Was he waiting for me to apologize for keeping it from him?

Did he need me to tell him why I preferred never to venture back to that part of me?

Was he expecting me to rattle off the history of those days like I was reading it from a textbook?

Would he care if I just sat here and continued to cry, instead of successfully doing any of those other things?

Would it ruin whatever we’d started between us if I wasn’t able to tell him everything?

He’d given me pieces of himself. Did I owe him these pieces of me in return?

“I love you, angel. I don’t really care if I haven’t known you long enough to say that. I don’t care if it doesn’t seem possible to already feel that way about someone. Nothing changes that now. There’s nothing you could say or do that will make me feel differently.”

Did he think he was helping?

Was I supposed to be able to function better after that?

Because in addition to everything else, I suddenly couldn’t breathe, either.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Utah. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

He chuckled and put his arm around my shoulders to squeeze me.

“Don’t say anything because I want you to,” he said quietly. “Tell me anything you need to if you think it’ll help you understand this moment. Or what we need to do next.”

I looked down at the missing persons flyer that was still folded in my hands.

Think about it from the perspective of what needs to be done next.

Easier said than done.

But necessary all the same.

“Why was there a flyer at all?” I asked out loud, but really only meant it for myself. “What did they tell people? And why bother?”

I crumpled the flyer in my hands until they were both balled into fists.

“I guess, if you’re going to sell your kids for profit and freedom, you probably have to convince schools and police that they were taken from you,” I said quietly. “They left us at a mall. The guys who picked us up knew our names, our parents, our school. Then we spent two hundred and seventy-one nights waking up to be reminded the next day that if our parents had wanted us, they wouldn’t have gone through with leaving us at that mall. It was a choice they made, and they had several opportunities to back out along the way. They wouldn’t have taken the money. They would’ve reached out about getting us back. But it hadn’t gone that way.”

“Memphis,” Utah urged quietly. “Think about someone else telling you this story.”

“What?”

“You’ve been able to look into the lives of all these other people within our organization to see connections that they couldn’t see themselves because it hurt them too much to spend any time looking too closely.” He paused to sigh, and I realized he was struggling with what he wanted to say next. “What if your parents didn’t sell you, sugar? What if that flyer really was part of an attempt to get you both back? And it just went to a set of Marshalls who were already in on it? Did you ever try to find your parents once you were free?”

I shook my head. “No. I never tried to find anyone. They had cops there almost every day, just to show us that there was no one inside or outside that house who would help us. Why would I run back to the people who’d sold us into it in the first place?”

“That’s probably the easiest way to convince a bunch of kids that trying to escape was useless. That trying to be anything other than a submissive slave wouldn’t achieve much. Kids tend to believe the things adults tell them. Especially when those adults are authority figures who are supposed to be trustworthy. Cops, Marshalls. And even more so when those kids are already scared and don’t understand what’s happening. Any explanation is better than just not knowing, so you take what they give you.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said, and Utah squeezed me a little tighter.

“You counted the days?” he asked in a voice that sounded like he was being strangled.

“I counted the nights. They left us alone at night. Said we needed the sleep to perform better the next day, to heal and recover, to put on the best show the next time around. Earn the best money. Utah, I can’t —. I don’t think I can make it make sense. I understand what you’re saying. And I know it’s sound. I know there’s logic behind what you’re saying. It should make sense. But I don’t believe it?”

“You were groomed, Memphis. Manipulated. Brainwashed. Take your pick of the word. They’ve been in that business long enough to know what they’re doing.”

“I’m smarter than that.”

“You are,” he agreed. “But trauma does things to people. It’ll put you in survival mode so your brain can accept that you have to do whatever it takes to just keep going. Even if that means believing something when you should really know better, or doing things that you know you never should. Two hundred and seventy-one nights. Nine months, angel. You spent nine months in the worst scenario imaginable, and you were only a child. It’s okay if you don’t know how to make sense out of it.”

“I never tried to help those kids with their anxiety,” I squeaked out. “I just learned to sleep through their cries. I don’t think I’m a very good person to be in love with Utah.”

He jumped down from the tailgate so quickly that it startled me. He placed himself right between my legs and grabbed my face.

“You’re not going to convince me that you don’t deserve the way that I’m going to love every fucked up piece of you, sugar. Give up on that endeavor now. It can’t be done. I wouldn’t try to implode every wall you’ve ever built around yourself if I wasn’t strong enough to love what was on the other side. I wouldn’t leave you defenseless, but you don’t need the walls anymore. Not with me here.”

“Colt , I?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Growing up in group homes and with foster families was not the same thing as being forced into sex slavery, Memphis. Just because I lived in a house with other sad kids too doesn’t mean I’m better than you. It doesn’t make our experiences the same. My body was always mine. My mind was always mine. No one tried to take those things from me. I was in a position to consider other people. You weren’t. And you don’t have to feel guilty about that, angel.”