5. Memphis

CHAPTER FIVE

memphis

H e was quiet for a long time after my little karma revelation.

Regular people probably didn’t expect to hear a hobbit-sized woman who didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet talk about being a vigilante because karma wasn’t working quickly enough.

“What else did you miss out on doing?” Utah asked after a long stint of just country music and him humming along to it filling the silence.

“What?”

“No one taught you to drive. You didn’t get to graduate high school. What else did you miss?”

“I—I don’t know,” I said hesitantly. “I missed it. How would I know what it is?”

“Are you being a smartass just to avoid the topic?” he asked with a laugh.

This man paid way too much attention.

“Most things, I guess,” I finally admitted. “I didn’t get to do the prom thing. Not that I would’ve wanted to. I kind of swore off dances after the millimeter peter fiasco, but I didn’t have the option to decide whether or not I was really going. Slow dancing with a man sounds absurd, anyway. I’ve never been drunk. Never been in a bar. Haven’t been camping or stargazing. I haven’t been on a rollercoaster. Take your pick of all the things you did while you were young and dumb, and I probably didn’t do it.”

“I don’t suppose you have these things organized neatly in a spreadsheet somewhere?” he joked.

“I don’t. I usually prefer not to think about them at all.”

“Why does slow dancing with a man sound absurd?”

“Isn’t it awkward? What if one person doesn’t know how to do it? Where to put their feet and when? What if you accidentally move in opposite directions? What are you supposed to talk about while you’re just spinning in circles? Or do you just awkwardly stare at each other and hope the other doesn’t talk? What if somebody has bad breath? Does size difference play a role? Like I’d just be stuck staring at your chest the entire time or I’d have to break my neck to stare straight up at you. Too many complications.”

“So. You really overthink everything, huh?”

“I prepare for everything.”

“Yes, then. That’s a yes. You overthink everything. Have you ever exchanged logic for passion? Just given up trying to understand everything for the chance to only feel?”

“No.”

I probably answered that way too quickly.

“Why?”

“Why would anyone just choose to do that? Passion is fleeting. Emotions are untrustworthy. Logic though, that’s constant. It’s easy. It’s —.”

“Boring. It’s boring, Memphis. It’s a boring fucking way to live. You’re not experiencing anything that way. You’re just existing.”

He was quiet again after that and left me with my mountain-sized thoughts about whether or not joining him on this trip had really been a wise decision.

Something that was difficult to explain made me want to know more about him, but I didn’t know how to go about extracting that information. I couldn’t send Jersey in after him to tie him to something upside down and hurt him until he told me about the scars on his back or how in the absolute fucking hell he could be so calm about everything every second of every day.

And every time he asked me anything about myself, I responded with the chatter of a jaded fucking crazy person. Before this trip, there was something in him that seemed to want to know more about me, too. We were only part of the first day into this excursion, and he probably already couldn’t stand me.

Without forcing me to suffer through answering any other questions about myself, Utah pulled the truck to a stop in the parking lot of a very crowded mall just across the Jersey state line as the sun started to set.

“Are we shopping?” I asked while he took his seatbelt off and got out of the truck.

“Nope. Get out, angel.”

“ Get out, angel, ” I mocked the very second he slammed his door. He appeared right beside mine to hold my hand while I jumped down.

“What are we doing?” I asked as I followed him down the length of the truck until he was rolling back the cover of the bed and opening the tailgate.

“Dancing.”

“I’m sorry?”

He dug through one of his bags and pulled out a wireless speaker. His phone came out of his pocket next to connect the two, and he looked back at me as soon as another country song was blaring from that little speaker. I very quickly took a step backward.

Utah smirked. “Dance with me.”

“I think maybe you misunderstood my concerns about slow dancing with a man,” I said, and then promptly hated myself for the nervous giggle that escaped me.

“I heard your concerns, angel. Now; I’m going to erase them.”

When he held his hand out toward me, I just stared at it.

Because, like I’d attempted to explain, it was awkward. I was awkward.

“In a parking lot?” I laughed nervously. “You want me to dance with you in a parking lot? A busy one, at that?”

He looked all the way around us. “You don’t know any of these people. They don’t know you.”

He stayed right where he was with that hand extended toward me.

“Why?” I asked.

Utah laughed that time. “Don’t overthink it, Memphis. Tell me no if you don’t want to or give me your hand. It’s that easy. Let me give you the missing experience. You can stare at my chest and hope I don’t have bad breath, and we’ll cross this one off the list.”

I put my hand in his and he closed his fingers around it as fast as he could move, like he was worried I was about to change my mind. He used that hand to pull me all the way against the front of his body, until I couldn’t breathe. He didn’t give me a chance to ask what was supposed to happen next. He placed my palm on his chest and kept his hand over mine to hold it there, while his other arm slipped all the way around my lower back. I really was just trapped staring right into his shirt once he started to move us.

He was nearly a foot taller than me, and size did fucking matter.

But where else was I supposed to look? If I looked up at him, I’d have to say something. Or he’d start talking.

Or worse, he wouldn’t say anything and he’d just smirk at me while I died slowly.

My whole fucking body tensed when he leaned just his head down.

“Don’t forget to breathe, Memphis.”

The son of a bitch made it worse when he chuckled.

“Well, you don’t have bad breath,” I said. Why it came out as a whisper, I wasn’t sure.

“I’m not going anywhere, angel,” he whispered right back.

“What?”

I looked up at him that time, and he nodded down to where my other hand was digging into his bicep so hard that my knuckles looked like they were trying to break through the skin. I had to very consciously think about releasing each one of my fingers to get them to move. And even then, I abandoned the death grip on his muscle and just moved my whole hand down a little further to make sure it was still on his arm.

“Sorry. I tried to tell you everything about this would be uncomfortable. When you add my kind of awkwardness to an already uncomfortable situation, you’re just asking for it to be rough.”

“You can’t say things like that while I’m holding you this way.”

“What?”

“ Asking for it to be rough ,” he repeated and laughed. “How can you set me up with a line like that and expect me not to tell you how much you’d love my version of rough?”

My entire motherfucking body tried to seize up when my brain registered that he was talking about sex. I immediately dropped my eyes right back to his chest to escape whatever way he might’ve looked at me after that.

“Oh, no,” he said quickly and tightened the arm around my back. “Don’t you dare even think about standing still or backing out of this. Imagine how fucking awkward that’d be to have to get back into a quiet truck with me right now.”

At least then I’d have the option of not looking at him.

And not touching him.

When had everything in my mouth dried up?

And when had my underwear gotten wet?