Page 111 of Live for Me

“You’ve been able to look into the lives of all these other people within our organization to see connections that they couldn’t see themselves because it hurt them too much to spend any time looking too closely.” He paused to sigh, and I realized he was struggling with what he wanted to say next. “What if your parents didn’t sell you, sugar? What if that flyer really was part of an attempt to get you both back? And it just went to a set of Marshalls who were already in on it? Did you ever try to find your parents once you were free?”

I shook my head. “No. I never tried to find anyone. They had cops there almost every day, just to show us that there was no one inside or outside that house who would help us. Why would I run back to the people who’d sold us into it in the first place?”

“That’s probably the easiest way to convince a bunch of kids that trying to escape was useless. That trying to be anything other than a submissive slave wouldn’t achieve much. Kids tend to believe the things adults tell them. Especially when those adults are authority figures who are supposed to be trustworthy. Cops, Marshalls. And even more so when those kids are already scared and don’t understand what’s happening. Any explanation is better than just not knowing, so you take what they give you.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said, and Utah squeezed me a little tighter.

“You counted the days?” he asked in a voice that sounded like he was being strangled.

“I counted the nights. They left us alone at night. Said we needed the sleep to perform better the next day, to heal and recover, to put on the best show the next time around. Earn the best money. Utah, I can’t —. I don’t think I can make it make sense. I understand what you’re saying. And I know it’s sound. I know there’s logic behind what you’re saying. It should make sense. But I don’t believe it?”

“You were groomed, Memphis. Manipulated. Brainwashed. Take your pick of the word. They’ve been in that business long enough to know what they’re doing.”

“I’m smarter than that.”

“You are,” he agreed. “But trauma does things to people. It’ll put you in survival mode so your brain can accept that you have to do whatever it takes to just keep going. Even if that means believing something when you should really know better, or doing things that you know you never should. Two hundred and seventy-one nights. Nine months, angel. You spentnine monthsin the worst scenario imaginable, and you were only a child. It’s okay if you don’t know how to make sense out of it.”

“I never tried to help those kids with their anxiety,” I squeaked out. “I just learned to sleep through their cries. I don’t think I’m a very good person to be in love with Utah.”

He jumped down from the tailgate so quickly that it startled me. He placed himself right between my legs and grabbed my face.

“You’re not going to convince me that you don’t deserve the way that I’m going to love every fucked up piece of you, sugar. Give up on that endeavor now. It can’t be done. I wouldn’t try to implode every wall you’ve ever built around yourself if I wasn’t strong enough to love what was on the other side. I wouldn’t leave you defenseless, but you don’t need the walls anymore. Not with me here.”

“Colt , I?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Growing up in group homes and with foster families was not the same thing as being forced into sex slavery, Memphis. Just because I lived in a house with other sad kids too doesn’t mean I’m better than you. It doesn’t make our experiences the same. My body was always mine. My mind was always mine. No one tried to take those things from me. I was in a position to consider other people. You weren’t. And you don’t have to feel guilty about that, angel.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

utah

Iwas a child when my father murdered my mother in front of me.

I was a child when I decided to kill my father because of that.

Those things put me on a rollercoaster from hell for a good chunk of my younger years.

But nothing in the fucking world even came close to the kind of burning pain I felt for Memphis in this moment.

Indy was right. I didn’t normally react emotionally without thinking it through first.

To anything.

I could keep myself together in the most fucked up situations, but I was not in control here. The urge to remove everyone from this planet who’d been involved in wronging her this way was intense and hard to push aside. I had to remind myself every twelve fucking seconds that the woman crying in front of me was where my attention was most needed for the time being. Even if I left here this very moment and drove my angry ass straight to Philadelphia to our President’s front door to remove his spine, it wouldn’t even come close to absolving the depth of emotional wreckage that Memphis carried with her.

“What do you need from me, angel?” I asked, trying to remind myself out loud that she was more important than my rage. Her hands latched onto my wrists, and she leaned forward until her head was against my chest.

“Help me.”

I let go of her face to squeeze the rest of her into me.

“But help me without feeling sorry for me,” she said even quieter that time. “Don’t stop touching me because I’m disgusting and ruined. Don’t start looking at me like I’m broken and fragile and can’t handle this shit. I’m not a different person just because you know what happened now.”

Ouch.

Again, with the depth of that emotional wreckage.

Her incessant need to overthink everything made so much sense. The constant desire to remain three steps ahead of the rest of the world and to understand every possible outcome to a situation before it ever happened was a desperate attempt to never find herself in a place where someone else decided everything for her again. The way she reacted to being touched, what sex meant to her, fucking New Jersey being her only “safe” relationship with a man.

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