8. Utah

CHAPTER EIGHT

utah

I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own heartbeat hammering away at full force, like I’d just sprinted ten miles at the highest possible pace for the entire duration.

What in the fucking hell was I supposed to do with her in my hotel room while she was half-fucking-naked?

How in the fucking hell was I supposed to avoid touching her?

She hadn’t even put any extra effort into this kind of torture, and it was still the absolute worst fucking torture I’d ever experienced. She was wearing the same tiny shorts and the same tank top she slept in back in Indiana most nights. Giving me the same constant curiosity about what was underneath that tank top because she never wore a fucking bra, and I was prepared to bet my soul that her nipples were pierced.

I dragged my hand along the back of my neck to try to ease the tension that never seemed to fade from that area.

Then that tension increased tenfold when I felt fingertips on my shoulder blade.

Shit, it increased nine-million-fold.

Her fingers moved along the full length of one of the worst scars on my back.

My dad had used my body to break a whole ass dining room chair down into kindling that time.

“There are so many,” she whispered.

This was not at all the time for my dick to be trying to spring to life, but I couldn’t focus on anything outside of the way her fingers felt against me.

She was fixated on some seriously fucked up sadness.

I was fixated on her.

Memphis sucked in a breath and her fingers were gone a second later.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, like she hadn’t meant to touch me at all. “I really just came to apologize for being weird earlier. Not to just keep making it worse.”

She was backing away from me by the time I’d turned around again.

“You don’t need to apologize for earlier . You’re weird all the time,” I said and smiled. “And that all happened over a decade ago, angel. It doesn’t do either of us any good to be upset about it now.”

“What a ridiculously Utah way to look at something. Indy will want that in the Bible ,” she said and smiled while she looked around the room. “You travel with a heating pad?” she asked when she spotted the one that I’d been lying on in the bed closest to the door. “No judgment. I mean, I’ve done it before too. Just I would imagine for a different reason. Girl problems and all.”

“I will demand more information about this Bible one of these days. So, just know that’s coming. And yes. My old man body gets tired doing the kind of work that I do.”

“It’s for the neck thing?” she asked.

“Neck thing?”

“I thought it was just a stress tell. The way you rub the back of your neck.”

The hammering that my heart was already doing managed to gain the power of electricity and turned it up a notch to jackhammering when she climbed onto the foot of the bed on her knees.

“Come here,” she said and nodded to the place in front of her.

I looked around the room like a crazy person.

Like maybe she was talking to a ghost who might’ve been chilling in here with us.

I got myself moving toward her before she changed her mind about whatever this was, though. She pointed to the edge of the bed, and I sat my happy ass right in front of her without so much as a second thought. I willed myself not to think too hard about how easily she just had me following her very quiet commands.

Both of her hands gripped my traps a second later, and I was certain I was at the beginning of a sex dream.

“You carry an awful lot of tension in your shoulders.”

“Yeah. The goal is usually to keep it from coming out through my fists.”

Her hands froze for a moment, like she was trying to decide if she was allowed to laugh at that or if I was being serious and it was scary.

I needed anything else to focus on while she touched me. The way she was digging her fingers into every muscle across my shoulders was not supposed to be sensual. She didn’t come in here to fuck me. She didn’t come in here for me to fuck her.

Where the hell was all that control I was supposed to have over myself?

“Is it my turn to ask you something?” I tried.

“No.”

“I’m doing it anyway.”

She paused just to flip me in the back of the head before she went back to trying to separate my muscle from where it was attached to the bone.

“That little rant you went on earlier. Karma not being fast enough and the vigilante.”

“What about it?” she asked quietly.

“Just seems like some mighty big talk for the smallest woman I’ve ever known in real life, who also refuses to use a gun on someone,” I laughed. “How do you plan on going about this revenge scheme if you’re not going to use a weapon?”

“I don’t have any desire to kill our President.”

“Then what is it that you do want?”

“I want him to experience what he’s done to all of us. He’s put his entire life into building this vast expanse of interconnected shady businesses. He was willing to do anything to anyone to get to this point. To be sitting pretty at the top of his empire with his money and his power and what he probably believes is the equivalent of security because of it. And I want to rip it all out from under him, one by one, until I get to watch him topple all the way to the bottom.”

“That’s…dark.”

“Every single one of us could’ve had a normal life. Or at least a chance at a normal life. Jersey would still have his daughter, his wife, his parents. I might’ve finished high school. I could’ve gone to college, become anything I wanted. Maybe I would’ve eventually found a boyfriend who was into the weird goth girl with the black hair. Maybe I would’ve at least had a choice, a say in any of it. But it didn’t go that way because the life that I knew was taken from me. So, I want to take his peace of mind. I want to take everything that’s ever made him feel happy or successful. I want his power and his sense of safety. And I want to fucking destroy it in front of him, so he’s left with nothing but his memories of how great things were, and the thoughts of how great things could’ve been if it hadn’t all been ripped away.”

I stood up to escape her hands so I could turn to face her again after that shit. She immediately sat back on her heels and looked down into her own lap to avoid my eyes, like she was suddenly embarrassed she’d said any of it out loud. I stepped all the way against the edge of the bed so I could take her face in both my hands, and I pulled her back up onto her knees to bring her closer to me again.

Close enough that I was nearly fucking certain that her nipples really were pierced, because I could feel the metal through this hilariously thin tank top, and they were currently pressed right into my stomach.

Focus, you fucking horn dog.

“Anger like that is a dangerous thing to carry around if you don’t know what to do with it, sugar.”

She swallowed so hard that I could feel and hear it.

I needed her to find a way to cut and run if she expected me not to kiss her while I held her face this close to mine and did my damndest to look right into her soul.

I nearly imploded while I watched that tongue stud come out between her lips to try to wet them so she could figure out how to speak through them again.

“Maybe you can show me what to do with it,” she whispered.

“You could ask me to show you the snow in hell and I’d sell my soul right to Satan for a fucking snowflake, Memphis.”

“I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m not really the weird one between the two of us.”

Her hands found their way to my hips, and I let myself think for a brief, dangerous moment that she might’ve been waiting for me to kiss her.

She smiled and leaned her forehead against my chest.

“I don’t know what this is, Utah. And I don’t know if I can do more than whatever this is right now, but it’s nice.”

I breathed in as much oxygen as my lungs could handle to try to force the ogre half of my brain to chill the fuck out.

She wasn’t ready for this.

She wasn’t ready for me.

I knew that. I really did. My normal brain could see that from miles away.

But I absolutely needed to hear those words from her to stop me, because she was about seven seconds from being crushed into this mattress under me until she was screaming.

I put my arms around her instead and squeezed the rest of her against me for a few seconds. When her fingers dug into my hips at just that tiny amount of extra contact, I forced myself to let go of her. But I absolutely grabbed her face another time to kiss her forehead before I’d allow her to run for it.

Except I was instantly willing to bet everything I owned on the fact that she was experiencing—for the first time in her life—what a forehead kiss from a man might mean, by the way that it seemed to plaster her right in place on that bed while I tried to back away from her just a little.

I turned right back around and planted my ass directly in front of her on the bed again. The way she laughed set my heart on fire.

“I’m willing to pause a massage for a forehead kiss, not abandon it entirely. Get back to it, angel. Save those lives by relieving the tension.”

I put all that effort into calming my dick down just for her to send a fresh rush of blood right back to it when she crashed into me from behind to wrap her arms as far as she could get them around me.

She was significantly more comfortable and bolder about interacting with me when she wasn’t able to see my face. And everything about that was fucking adorable.

Memphis didn’t initiate physical contact with me very often, but those moments when she did…those moments felt like I needed to find a way to bottle them up and save them to be able to relive that feeling any time I wanted. I grabbed the hand that was pressed against the right side of my chest to kiss the skeleton hand tattooed to the back of it. She’d already repainted her fingernails after she spent most of the drive here chewing on them. Black. Always black. Black clothes, black hair, black nail polish, black makeup.

She shifted back up to her knees behind me and dug those fingers right back into my shoulders. Her bony little hands weren’t anywhere near strong enough to make a real difference in the stiffness there, but I’d sit here for however long she planned to keep touching me.

Until my phone vibrating next to me on the bed interrupted that fun. I glanced down at Indy’s name and chuckled.

“You might want to stay quiet if you don’t want to have to answer his questions,” I said and reached for the phone.

She laughed and slid her own finger across the screen to answer it before I ever made it there. She pushed the button to put it on speaker while I just stared at it in shock.

“I’ve got another one for you, Indy,” Memphis said and paused. “Live in thy current moment. Or suffer dire ends.”

I raised my hand in the most confused fucking gesture while I tried to turn my head to look at her, but she promptly put her hand against my cheek and turned my whole face away from her again.

“The fuck?” I mumbled.

“Did you—? Which one of you did I call?” Indy asked. “Did you just answer Utah’s phone? Isn’t it like one in the morning?”

“I tried to tell you,” I said to her quietly and stood up to face her. “What do you?—”

I couldn’t even remember what I’d started out trying to say when Memphis shifted on that bed to get comfortable and ended up with her feet right next to my phone. Before my brain could intervene, my hand grabbed her by an ankle and dragged her entire body back down the bed so I could stare at her foot like a motherfucking maniac. She giggled and tried to squirm back instantly, but there was absolutely no chance of that happening.

All black everything for this girl.

Except some bright ass orange nail polish on her toes.