Page 10 of Live for Me

I probably answered thatwaytoo 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 menoif 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 sizedidfucking 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.

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