58. Utah
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
utah
S o.
She was a little scary, this new Memphis.
Well. She’d always been a little scary in the holy fuck, my heart doesn’t seem to remember how to beat when she smiles kind of way. It was different now though. This was taking the most powerful mind I’d ever encountered and chainsawing my way right through the tether that had always restricted it. This was setting its bottled-up anger loose on any target that it deemed worthy.
And she was on the verge of telling me exactly what she expected of me in helping her achieve those goals.
Didn’t really matter what she asked of me.
Whatever she wanted, she’d have it.
I was more than prepared to be the thing to make it happen every single time.
Everything about that was both shocking and terrifying. I’d done my fair share of shady shit. I’d done a lot of people’s share of shady shit. That didn’t even come close to scratching the surface of what I’d be willing to do for Memphis.
I’d never been afraid of another person in this sense, and here I stood with my dick buried in her as deep as I could force it anyway.
Her hand on the side of my face brought me out of those thoughts and put my focus back on the green eyes that were suddenly beautifully clear. There was no hurricane waiting to burst out of them at any moment. No raging storm just beneath the surface.
The deafening crash of the house collapsing behind me reminded me that the raging storm actually existed in the crime we’d committed just a couple hundred feet away and that we needed to get the hell away from it.
I forced my hips against hers as hard as I could one more time before I tried to back away, just for her to grab the front of my shirt and pull me down to kiss me another time.
“Thank you, Colt,” she whispered against my lips. “You’ve gone so far out of your way to pick up the pieces of someone you never broke.”
“You were never broken, sugar. The pieces that you try to hide because they hurt are usually the ones that make you exactly who you are. Sometimes people just need to be shown that the painful parts of themselves need to be loved that much harder before they figure out how to do it themselves.”
She closed her eyes when they filled with tears. “How are you this good in this world?”
I had to laugh at that question while I removed my dick from her body and stepped back to look at the literal house fire behind me.
“ Good is relative, Memphis,” I said with another chuckle. “ Good for you. Good to you. Absolute heathen menace to the rest of society.”
I helped her back out of the truck so she could get herself together again while I made my way around the truck and the edge of the burning building to be sure we hadn’t left anything behind that might send someone after either of us.
Then I laughed at myself.
Because a whole secret society was already after us.
I spent the entire drive back to Indiana listening to Memphis, Indy, and New Jersey argue over whether or not it was really a smart choice to allow Nevada and Salem to join us in the house.
It was a bad idea all the way to its core. We absolutely did not need either of them badly enough to give away the location of the only place where any of us felt even remotely safe. But my opinion hadn’t been requested on this topic, and I was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I was on Jersey’s side in this particular discussion.
Their discussion was not a pleasant one for any of them. My involvement wouldn’t help the situation in either direction at this point. They were arguing in circles and there were big feelings on all sides. Memphis sat somewhere in the middle ground; despising Nevada but able to recognize that her assistance could be valuable in what we were attempting to achieve. Indy wanted them on board but was having a hard time blindly trusting these women that he’d never met or worked with before. New Jersey didn’t want anyone new involved, period. While I wasn’t necessarily against adding new worker bees, I was not in favor of giving away our location.
Indy got word in the middle of it all that Tennessee and Akron had been retired, which left me assuming that they’d both be coming after us that much harder. We were absolutely to blame for Tennessee being picked up by the police when we visited him in that diner. No one knew how that played out with the cops, but how it played out with our President’s organization was clear. To further that issue, Akron had also reached out to the chatroom that Memphis and Indy created because she wanted to know more about what we were doing now that she was “forcefully unaffiliated” with the organization.
Things were about to get very difficult very quickly at this rate.
Memphis closed her computer and hung up the phone as we got closer to the house. I watched her close her eyes and lay her head back against the seat. I immediately started thinking about our next activity to get away from the pressure of this nightmare.
“I don’t know why I thought we could just do all of this,” she said quietly. “This was never going to go smoothly.”
“You were under the impression that ripping apart a criminal organization that has ties all across the country, and probably on an international scale, was going to be easy?” I asked and laughed. She opened her eyes just long enough to glare at me. I reached across the middle seat to put my hand on her thigh.
“If any of us can do impossibly difficult things, sugar, it’s you.”
“Me?” she screeched.
“Well, it sure as shit isn’t the rest of us, angel. You’re making the calls, and the rest of us are just trying to keep up to keep each other alive. You’ll be the one in charge of whatever new organization comes of this by the end of it all.”
“I think I’m going to be sick, Utah.”
“Knowing you, yeah,” I laughed.
New Jersey was already on his way out the door to meet us as we pulled in the driveway, with Triss and Indy right on his heels.
“You’d better talk some fucking sense into your Judge before I beat it into him, Romeo,” were the very first words out of his mouth when I had my truck door open.
“We both know I won’t let that happen, old timer,” I warned.
“Guys,” Trista chimed in instantly. “You can disagree about something without the threats. We’re supposed to all be on the same side of this one.”