65. Utah

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

utah

I wondered if she was ready to get married. I wondered if she wanted children. I wondered how difficult it might be to convince her to abandon every aspect of the life we’d been leading to just run away and settle down into something new.

Because I was about to search for a fucking vine and twist it into a ring to wrap right around her finger.

Instead of scaring her half to death with that move, I breathed in as deeply as I could and kissed the side of her head.

“I love you too, sugar.”

I pulled Memphis off the ground and led her back to the tree that I’d used to eat the soul right out of her just a little earlier. I sat back against it and pulled her down into my lap. I helped her out of my flannel and the little shirt I’d cut in half. I used that shirt to clean the mess I’d made between her legs first. She only tried to stop me once before I smacked her hand back. Then I used my own shirt to clean the dirt and mud from her body and face.

She waited until I was wiping the last bit of mud from her cheek before she giggled. “Are you really spit shining me right now?”

“Do you want me to spit on you, sugar?”

It was dark, and I could still see her cheeks turn red.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Next time then, Memphis.”

Her hand went to my wrist to hold it still. “You can still call me Syn.”

I wrapped that hand all the way around the back of her head to pull her close enough to kiss her until she was smiling against my mouth.

I helped her back into the flannel and buttoned it for her. I got dressed while she looked for the rest of her clothes. Then I took her by the hand to lead her back toward the cornfield.

“Are we supposed to call Jersey? Or Triss?” she asked.

“God, no. Do you want to be the person who interrupts that?”

“I just meant should we maybe tell them that we’re leaving?” she asked and laughed.

“They’re adults. And I can absolutely guarantee that he would not, in any world, come out here looking for either of us because he’d never want to see that. They know where we all live, sugar. We’ll see them back at the house.”

As I said the fucking words, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

“That’s unsettling,” I mumbled to myself while I slid my thumb across the screen to answer New Jersey’s call.

“Back to the house, slick. It’s on fire,” he said through the phone before I’d even opened my mouth.

“I don’t actually understand any of the words you just used with that tone,” I said instantly. “What’s on fire?”

“On fire?” Memphis asked beside me.

“Get home,” Jersey said with a little more bass in his voice. “It. Is. On. Fire.”

I tightened my hold on Memphis’ hand and started to run.

“This isn’t the time to be a prick, old man. What’s happening?”

“Your Judge called. Sounds like Nevada showed up. And apparently not alone.”

That gut drop feeling that comes from missing an entire step in a staircase about doubled me over right on the spot.

“Indy?” I managed to ask.

“Kyle’s there.”

“Is that Marine talk for Indy’s safe ?” I asked a little more forcefully.

“He’s alive, at the least.”

If I could’ve punched a man through a phone, I would have.

“Meet me behind the main barn when you get there. Most of my firepower is in the house. And it sounds like we need to get in to get the other two back out,” Jersey said. And then he just fucking hung up.

“Utah?” Memphis asked.

Fuck. What was I supposed to do with her?

I kept running, kept pulling her along.

“Somebody found the house. Set it on fire. Indy and Kyle are still inside.”

She was fumbling for her own phone while trying to keep up with me.

The strangled noise that came out of her cemented my feet to the ground for a second.

“Three missed calls,” she choked out. “Indy.”

I couldn’t even make myself check my own phone again. I tightened that hold on her hand another time and didn’t stop running until we made it to the truck.

Memphis had her computer out in her lap within seconds of closing herself in the truck.

The gasp that came out of her made me want to vomit all over again.

“There’s an APB out on Jersey,” she said and pulled her phone out another time. “Well, both of you, but the description is for his car. How?”

I didn’t listen to any of the words she said into the phone when she called who I assumed was New Jersey. My mind was sprinting through the kinds of things we’d need to do to get into that house if it was being watched from the outside by an unknown number of people. And burning .

It was definitely burning.

The glow was visible in the night sky before the house was ever in sight.

“Utah,” Memphis whispered when she noticed it too. Whatever she intended to say originally disappeared when she looked back down at her phone. “Jersey said the field behind the main barn. They’re watching the barn.”

I killed the lights and turned the truck straight into the field to my left.

How in the actual fuck I was supposed to just find a parked car out here in another cornfield without driving straight into it, or straight over the other two people out here who I needed to find, was beyond my level of comprehension.

“To the left a little,” Memphis said, without ever looking up from her phone.

“What? Is this you being a witch again?”

“I track his phone, smartass. Do as I say.”

“Memphis, I swear —.”

“Slow down,” she interrupted. She reached over to grab my arm and squeezed the shit out of it. “Stop. Here.”

I put the truck in park and just looked at her, because I still didn’t see that car anywhere. She looked at me just in time to see me jump when someone knocked on my window.