Page 26 of Live for Me

“Shit,” I mumbled to myself.

“Don’t you do it,” Indy demanded quickly while I reached for the radio in my ear. “I know what thatshitmeans. Don’t you turn me off, U?—”

I interrupted him by doing exactly what he was telling me not to do and I put the little radio in my pocket.

I put myself directly between her legs and wrapped both arms around Memphis to pull her the rest of the way into me. Except she was one of those people who actually cried harder the very second that someone hugged them.

I learned that early in life. Some people felt better being held and some people justfeltwhile they were held. Felt everything. They suddenly found a safe place to feel the rest of whatever they were holding in, and then it just fucking poured out of them.

My phone went off several times while I held her that way.

Then Indy switched back to calling her phone.

“One of us probably needs to answer him,” she choked out.

“He can wait.”

She pushed off me just enough to be able to look up at me, and the streaked makeup punched me in the heart all over again. My hands went right to her face for my thumbs to try to wipe it away, but I was very much making it worse. She started to laugh, though.

“You’re just making me look like a clown, aren’t you?” she asked and giggled again.

“Whatever I’m doing, it definitely isn’t helping.”

She put her hands over both of mine to hold them still against her cheeks while she continued to stare up at me.

“What are you going to do about the detective now?” Memphis asked.

“Anything you tell me to do.”

“I don’t think I’m the right person to make that choice.”

“They had you guys picking people up,” I said quietly. “You didn’t know about it before? The trafficking?”

Her whole body started shaking again like it was causing her physical pain to fight back the tears this time. But she shook her head.

“We never knew what happened to anybody after we dropped them off. Sometimes we were told little things about what had been done. Gambling debts, theft, business rivalries, a weird situation with a fucking horse one time. But they were almost all grown men hunting down other grown men for one reason or another.”

She was rambling, spiraling through her own thoughts.

“Memphis, did you know that he was in the trafficking business?” I asked again.

“I had a hunch the last few months, but I didn’tknow. I had no way to prove anything. No way to connect the pieces.”

“What pieces?”

“I want to blow it all apart, Utah.”

“What?”

“Whatever his part is in the sex trade, I want to end it. Forget the rest of what I thought we should do.Thisis what weneedto do, Utah. Will you help me?”

The way that she just stared at me.

Staredintome.

Holding my hands against her face.

Begging me with every piece of her vulnerability.

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