Page 33 of Live for Me

“Did your whole face just turn bright fucking red from a text message?” Indy asked as he laughed. “You’re adorable.”

I laid my phone back on the countertop face down and started picking at my nail polish, rather than even attempting to think about responding to that right now.

“I guess that means you don’t plan to share what he said?” Indy asked and laughed again. “Been a minute since you’ve liked someone? Forget how to do it?”

“A minute,” I repeated and laughed. “That’s being nice about it.”

“If you figure out how to talk to me about it, I can help you. I know the guy pretty well. I’ve controlled his schedule for the last three years.”

“We need to be focused onthis,” I said and nodded toward my computer.

“Right, Tennessee,” Indy said. I waited until he was sitting beside me, so I didn’t have to look at him for my next question.

“Is he seeing anybody?”

I hated myself again for my stupidity when he laughed.

“Seeing anybody,” Indy repeated. “I guess you’re probably not asking about Tennessee now,” he teased. “You and I both know how impossibleseeing someoneis in this line of work.”

“Is that a no, then?”

“Are you asking about actual relationships, or are you asking if he’s out there hooking up with random people on the road? Those aren’t really the same thing.”

Just thinking of it that way made my entire fucking brain hurt. And maybe my heart? Because I suddenly felt like I might throw up.

“I’m fucking with you, Memphis,” he said and pushed my shoulder. “God, you sucked the fun right out of that. I was kind of hoping for you to get hysterical and try calling him or yelling at me or anything exciting. The hurt face was not at all what I wanted.”

“You’re a bitch.”

“Guilty,” he laughed again. “No, you poor, innocent child. He’s notseeing anybody.”

“You’re going to tell him about this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, he would love the shit out of this. So, no. He doesn’t need to know that you’re sitting here pining every second that he’s gone.”

“I’m not pining.”

“Then what would you prefer we call it? Because we just halted all actual work to discuss Utah’s sex life.”

“Research.”

“Clever.”

We spent the rest of that afternoon and evening picking out Utah’s next teams, in the order that we thought would make the most sense. I wasn’t overly interested in what Montana might bring to this side of things, but I did want to know how Tennessee felt about our organization. He had us all beat with almost fifteen years in this business. I wanted to know if that would make him harder to convince to join us, or easier than the rest. He might know things that none of us could even imagine.

After that, I was very much interested in the team of nurses that we’d found. They had way too much of my attention. Mostly because I found their partnership fascinating from the outside perspective. Nevada moved from contract to contract in the form of a traveling nurse, a job that reached peak levels of demand when the COVID pandemic started. The demand was so high, and the focus shifted so hard to the safety protocols around the virus, that the rest of the regulations seemed to be forced into the backseat. She was able to float from job to job and handle her contracts with almost no risk of ever being caught, despite holding down what appeared to be a regular job in the public eye.

I sat next to Indy on the couch while he flipped through channels on the TV, and I pulled my phone out again to finally revisit Utah’s text.

But I just ended up staring at it.

“Ask him for a dick pic,” Indy said.

“I will do no such thing.”

“If you sigh at your phone one more time, I’ll ask him for one on your behalf.”

That was a dangerous game to play with someone like Indy. Calling his bluff usually wasn’t an option, because they weren’t normally bluffs.

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