60. Memphis

CHAPTER SIXTY

memphis

“ I don’t think I’ve been scared like that since they took me in Tennessee,” I said into Utah’s chest. I definitely hadn’t felt alive like this in—well, in my lifetime.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have made you do this. Not this one. We can turn back and go home, Memphis.”

He was very much misunderstanding what was happening here.

Which was probably the sign that he was a totally sane person, while I was a fucking lunatic.

I hadn’t been afraid like this since that night when our own organization broke into my home and kidnapped me. Before then, it’d been the moment that I was dragged away from where I thought my parents were. But this time—this time was something else.

I was absolutely afraid, but it brought a different response out of me. I was afraid, but the danger wasn’t real. It felt real enough to make my heart pound, to make my whole body come to life, to make me sweat—but still safe enough that I could just stand there and watch Utah prepare to kill some man in a clown costume just for scaring me.

“I don’t want to leave,” I said, looking up at him again so he could see that I meant it.

“I know that look,” Trista laughed. “She liked it.”

“What?” Jersey asked.

“Being scared,” Trista said. “Works for her, too.”

I wasn’t sure how the fuck I was supposed to respond to that with everyone standing here looking at me, but she wasn’t wrong. I probably looked like I’d peed myself, but the wetness between my legs was definitely from something else.

But I stood there and stared right back up at Utah, entirely sure of myself for the first time in a long time. He was seeing something else in my face this time, too. I’d seen his face when he wanted me. I knew what that looked like now. It was just amplified this time and way more intense than my body felt like it could withstand.

“Who says we have to finish the maze?” Jersey asked.

“What?” Triss asked. “She said she’s fine.”

I forced my eyes away from Utah’s burning stare to look at Jersey myself. He pushed Trista toward us. She glared back at him immediately.

“If the girls make it back to the car, we’ll do whatever they want tonight. Finish the maze, eat the shitty food, anything,” Jersey said.

“J,” Trista said in the shakiest voice I’d ever heard come out of her.

I looked back up to Utah to find him already smirking.

“And if they don’t make it back to the car, New Jersey?” Utah asked without ever taking his eyes from me. Like he already knew he was playing a role in whatever Jersey had in mind.

“Every man for himself, pipsqueak. I don’t think anybody here wants to know what’s going to happen when I catch mine.”

Utah’s hand came up to my cheek while he stared at me. He was trying desperately to see inside my thoughts, to see if this was a game that I was interested in playing. I really couldn’t come up with any words for whatever the fuck this was. This didn’t even feel like it could’ve been real life. I couldn’t even believe it myself when I just barely nodded at Utah, but his whole face came to life when he smiled that time. He kissed my forehead quickly, and I calmed down just enough to keep breathing. That tiny reminder that whatever this was, it was a game, and I was still okay.

Utah looked at Jersey, who’d already started to back away from the three of us. And in what might’ve been the new most frightening moment of my life, these two men fucking nodded at each other. A second later, Utah was backing away from us, moving toward the rows of corn on the other side of the path from where Jersey was disappearing.

“Is this seriously like a sex game?” I whispered to Trista while I watched Jersey disappear into the corn.

“If you want it to be, angel,” Utah whispered on his way behind me.

“Oh, fuck. He’s good at this,” Trista said and laughed. “You’re in trouble, my friend.”

“Better get moving, Fancy Face,” Jersey called from somewhere very much in a different direction than where he’d disappeared. “It’ll be dark soon. And I’ll be right behind you.”

I could hear Trista try to breathe in all the air available in this state. I looked back to where I thought Utah might’ve been, but he was already gone too.

“Are we supposed to stay together?” I asked, suddenly a little concerned at the prospect of being alone out here.

“Were you paying attention to the route we took to get back here?” she asked, ignoring my question entirely.

“I didn’t even have my eyes open for most of it!”

“We shouldn’t stay on the trail,” she said.

“We’ll get lost, Triss.”

“If we just pick a direction and keep moving, we’ll eventually end up out of the field, right? Then we could just walk around the edge of it until we make it back to the parking lot.”

“That’s not really the best logic to—” I tried to say but she’d already made up her mind. She picked a direction, and she was moving.

“Go your own way if you want. Jersey won’t give me much of a head start,” Trista called back and laughed while she bolted into the fucking corn.

I took off after her a second later.

“Is he seriously going to fuck you out here in the dirt if he catches you?” I asked once I caught up to her. “I have so many questions about whatever this is.”

I could hear her giggle. “Are you having fun, Memphis?”

I considered that question for a second because I felt like a crazy person for the answer.

But I was having fun. I was running through a cornfield with my only friend, being chased by her boyfriend, and my…Utah…just for fucking fun. Just because it gave every single one of us a crazy high to be playing this game where the idea was fake danger. We spent so much time dealing in real danger that the knowledge that this was the safest I’d been in a long time was like being able to breathe deeply for the first time in years.

“Yeah,” I finally answered. “I am.”

“Then shut up, and run,” Triss said with another laugh. “They’ll catch us that much faster if they can hear us.”

But didn’t we both actually want to get caught?

It took a lot of restraint not to ask that question.

I still had so many questions about the logistics of this game and how little sense it made if I thought too hard about what we were doing out here. I knew this was primal play. The concept wasn’t new to me. I read Pen Pal . But actually being a part of this in real life did not feel anything like I’d imagined it would based off my books. No amount of ghosts chasing each other could’ve prepared me for the way it made my heart beat in my throat to prevent me from breathing just because I knew Utah was out here in the near darkness, intending to catch me and fuck me regardless of how I reacted to it.