Page 122 of Live for Me

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

utah

Iwas very much having second thoughts about this outing now that New Jersey was involved.

This bar guy was just some construction worker for the state of Indiana. He worked on a fucking road crew. He wasn’t dangerous. I didn’t need backup. I didn’t need to kill anyone. I probably didn’t even need to hurt anyone to scare him off. Showing up wherever he was would likely do the trick. Demonstrating that I could find someone with no information at all on them was usually enough to frighten people all the way to their core.

To make matters worse, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from being alone in this car with New Jersey. But whatever this was, it was even weirder than I imagined. He never shut his mouth when I was around. The fact that he had the ability to open it at all was the absolute worst thing about him. In this car, though? No sound at all came from him. The temptation to reach for the radio just to add noise to this unpleasant fucking space was a strong one, but he seemed to leave it off very intentionally.

Indy was still sending me pieces of information about our guy, and I was most grateful for that distraction.

A text from Triss interrupted the emails and messages from Indy though.

Triss

She is pissed, man. PISSED.

I couldn’t help but laugh right at my phone.

Me

At me? Or New Jersey?

Triss

All of us. Indy had to lock himself in his room to get away from her. She said she’s going to make sure that none of us ever have access to the Internet from our phones again.

Can she really do that?

Trista’s texts were interrupted by a phone call from Memphis. I held the phone up between us so Jersey could see the screen. He smirked and shook his head.

“Don’t do it, kid.”

“Don’t answer her?”

“Don’t answer her.”

“I can’t just ignore her,” I said.

“You can. Youshould.”

“She won’t just be angrier when I have to face her later anyway?”

Was I really asking this guy—this fucking guy—for Memphis advice?

I shook my own head and slid my thumb across the screen.

“Mistake,” Jersey scoffed.

“Yes, angel?” I asked, ignoring him completely.

“Don’t you fuckingyes, angelme, Utah. Come back here,” she hissed. I chewed on my own lip to try to keep from laughing. The hellfire that she was willing to let rain down when she was safe on the other end of a phone was ridiculous. Fucking. Ridiculous. This whole other person was able to shine through when she wasn’t face-to-face with conflict.

“I’m not driving, sugar. I can’tmakehim turn around.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

I shrugged my shoulders like she could see the motion. “I thought it was a little fu?—”

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