47. Memphis

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

memphis

T here was no big dinner together in the kitchen that night.

I could ask them all not to treat me differently just because they knew, but it wasn’t fair of me to expect them to be able to do that immediately either. It was a lot to hear, and it was even more to try to process once you had a minute to be alone with it.

Jersey focused hardest on questions about the men who’d picked us up originally. What names they’d given me, or if they were the same men who stayed in the house with us; if they maybe had any identifying factors about whether they were police or even the Marshalls who were involved. Utah wanted to know every detail that I could recall about the house and its location, the people who stayed inside it with us, and who the buyers might have been. In the most unpleasant twist I’d ever experienced, Indy said no words at all.

Trista, though? Her interest was on the years in between escaping that house and getting recruited to work for her stepfather. It was something that was probably always in the back of my mind, gnawing away at the fine fibers of who I was as a person. It was also something that I’d put a considerable amount of effort into not looking at too closely, for fear of what might actually be there.

Em and I walked through the woods for two days. I remembered distinctly having no sense of where we were to even begin to choose a direction that made sense. There was nothing out there to suggest which way would take us toward civilization, especially when we were looking at it in the dark. We’d left the house in the direction that took us away from the driveway that was perpetually swallowed by trees and fog. My only assumption was that we’d moved away from whatever road might’ve been out there somewhere. At some point, I recalled coming to the very clear conclusion that simply dying in those woods was still a better outcome than staying with those people any longer.

When we finally stumbled our way out of those woods, the first hint of other people that we encountered was just a gas station on the side of a road. We locked ourselves in the bathroom of that building and cried until the manager had to use his keys to open the door. Neither of us spoke a word to anyone. Em wouldn’t talk unless I told her to at that point, and I couldn’t think beyond the daily reminders that no one outside that house would help us even if we’d asked, screamed, cried. If we were taken to cops, the cops who visited us regularly would find out about it and they’d get their hands on us again, only to return us to our rightful owners since our parents hadn’t wanted us.

All of this to say that, when a pleasant old woman offered to stay with us while the manager left to call the police about two obviously lost and distraught girls, Em and I bolted right out of that place. Retelling the story now, though, it hurt so much to think about the track our lives could’ve taken if we’d just stayed there and waited for the police. If I’d just taken a minute to breathe back then—if I’d been able to grasp that we were being fed endless lies to keep us alone and afraid—we might’ve had a chance to just go home to our old lives.

I spaced out hard in the middle of that conversation while my brain spiraled out of control with thoughts about our parents. I’d never even attempted to find them. I never wanted to find them. I didn’t want to see them or face them again. I didn’t want to even give myself the opportunity to ask why because I didn’t want the answer to break my heart. Having to suddenly realize that they might’ve spent almost a decade in absolute agony over losing us was every bit as crushing as it had been when I believed they hadn’t wanted us at all.

“Memphis?” Trista asked quietly to bring me back to the moment at hand.

“Let’s call it a night, guys,” Utah said and stood from the place where he’d been planted on the couch next to me for the last hour. “Give her a break. We can pick it up again tomorrow.”

“We can all stay out here with you if you want,” Triss offered. “Living room sleepover again.”

“Again?” Jersey asked from where he was sprawled across the floor with his arms crossed over his entire face.

“You didn’t get invited to the last one,” Triss said. “You were the reason it was necessary.”

For as much as it helped to be reminded that I was surrounded by other terribly broken people who were still trying to trudge their way through healing too, I was certain they all needed a break from my presence to be able to absorb everything we’d covered today.

I watched Jersey take the pillow from under his head just to throw it across the room at Triss. She dodged it with almost no effort and laughed.

“You’re losing your touch, old timer.”

It was the clearest sign that we all needed a break from this day when Jersey only smiled and dropped his head right back to the floor rather than responding to her in any sense.

“I think I just want to be alone for a while,” I said once she looked back at me. I put my hand in Utah’s when he held his out to pull me off the couch. I hadn’t considered it until he was following me down the hallway that Utah might also want a break from me. I told them I wanted to be alone, but I hadn’t really meant him.

The terrible gut-sinking feeling that hit me while I imagined how much it would hurt for him to reject me for the first time was nearly enough to send me right back into sobs. No matter how much I reminded myself that he should be allowed space and time to process what I’d told them all, it was the furthest thing from what I wanted. The way that I craved his calm stability tonight couldn’t even be put into words. How I’d ended up in this awful predicament was ridiculous. Of all the times to be trapped in the abyss of overthinking, all I wanted tonight was freedom from it.

But being the one to lead Utah down the hallway meant I had to decide if I was stopping at my own room or if I was welcoming myself up to his room. Bypassing my own for his would take any choice out of it for him. So, I stopped at my door to turn and face him. He was hugging me the moment that I stopped moving.

“You know where to find me if you need me.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to be around me right now, Utah.”

“I meant what I said, Memphis. There’s nothing you could say or do that’ll change my mind. If you need space, that’s fine. If you don’t, I’m right here.”

My arms locked around his waist in an instant. “You’d still stay in here with me tonight?”

He chuckled and tightened his arms around me. “Angel,” he said before pausing to sigh. “Why would you tell me it’s okay if I don’t want to be with you tonight if you don’t want that? Why can’t you tell me what you do want? Don’t set me up to fail.”

“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told you that I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sticking with that defense.”

He shifted his arms a little lower down my body to hold me tighter before he stood upright and lifted me right off the ground. He kicked my door the rest of the way open to carry me into my own room.

“For someone so very tiny, sugar, you’re a giant pain in my ass. You know that?”

He dropped down on top of me on my bed and his hand went straight to my cheek.

It didn’t even seem possible to have had the kind of royally shitty day that I just lived through, only to feel like none of it really mattered all that much once Utah was this close. I raised up on my elbows to kiss him and found that, even with my entire body touching his, I still wasn’t anywhere near close enough. I laid back another time and put my arms around his neck to pull him down to me instead. He kissed me, but just once and very quickly before he shook his head and pulled away.

“I can’t keep kissing you like this tonight, Memphis. You imploded every bit of the self-control I used to have, and this is just not the night for me to be lying here thinking about fucking you.”

“So, don’t fuck me tonight. Make love to me, Colt. You said nothing would change this; nothing would keep you from touching me. Prove it.”

“Memphis—”

“Please,” I interrupted. “You took it all away once before. Do it again. Set me free again. Let me feel just you.”

It probably wasn’t fair to ask so much of him.

It probably wasn’t healthy for me to turn to sex for comfort, especially now that he’d been given the background to why I’d originally felt the way that I did about sex.

But this was Utah. His kind of safety came with an all-consuming touch that had the ability to burn the memories right out of my soul.