Page 63 of Live for Me

“Oh, right,” I said and rubbed my eyes with my fingers. This man walked around in a state of unending hornball thoughts. “She was—blonde? I think. I don’t know. I was distracted. She didnotlike Memphis. I’ll be surprised if we hear from Salem.”

“Blonde? Youthink?” Indy asked and laughed. “That’s all you’ve got? I need to start sticking a camera on you.”

“You find anything interesting on the Tennessee kids?” I asked, very desperate to stop thinking about the level of restraint I’d shown in not pounding the life out of a woman over the sight of her tackling Memphis.

“Uh, yeah,” he said quietly and shifted to sit back in his original position. “Tennessee is in the top ten states with the most missing persons cases for the U.S. We’re talking five hundred to six hundred kids under the age of eighteen.”

“In a year?”

“Every month,” Memphis said from behind the couch. She set up camp between us on the couch with her laptop across her thighs.

“Yeah, every month,” Indy echoed quietly. “Doesn’t mean we’re talking about five hundred Tennessee babies being handed over to traffickers every month. The numbers at their base level still include runaways, misunderstandings where panicked parents overreact to kids late on their curfews, and most kidnappings in every state are actually done by relatives, and most still end up found. It’s more like twenty to twenty-five percent of that number are true kidnappings by strangers.”

“That’s still a hundred and twenty-five kids,” I sighed. “Every month. Fromonestate.”

“Again,” Indy said. “Not all for trafficking purposes, and that’s a good thing to always keep in mind if we’re going down this nightmare of a rabbit hole. We’re not going to put an end to children going missing. If we’re going to do this, we need to stay realistic about it.”

“I’ve got it narrowed down to a handful of Marshalls to look at more closely,” Memphis added. “We need to combine the sets of information between missing persons and these specific Marshalls. Find the crossover cases.”

My head already ached over this conversation and what it meant for the coming days.

And mine wasn’t even the head that was smacked off the asphalt earlier.

I got off the couch and went to the kitchen to search through the freezer. This place had been equipped for just about any kind of medical requirement imaginable. Kyle had taken it very much to heart when New Jersey told him to keep it ready for anything at a moment’s notice.

I took one of the small ice packs from the freezer and went to the bathroom to find a towel to wrap around it.

“Utah—what are you—” Memphis tried to ask when I returned to the living room. Ignoring her question, I pushed her head forward just enough to sit the wrapped ice pack between her head and the back of the couch. I put my hand on her forehead to make her lean her head back, so it’d hold the ice pack in place against the back of her skull.

I was still frustrated and annoyed with how the day had gone about six seconds ago; still mad that she’d been hurt under my watch; still mad that if she’d just listened the first time, it wouldn’t have happened that way at all.

But the way those green eyes cut right through me while she stared back up at me wiped it all out, managed to push aside the thoughts of kidnapped children, and left me really fucking excited to just take her to a bar tomorrow night.

Images of all the things I’d do to her if she’d just give me the slightest hint that she also wanted them overtook every other thought that had crowded the space in my mind for the last several hours. I found myself very suddenly wishing she’d just agreed to having this outing tonight.

“I’m going to call it a night, guys,” I said as I backed away from the couch. Otherwise, I’d be telling Indy to leave us alone for the evening, and she’d already very specifically asked for tomorrow.

“I think I have another to add,” Indy said, not-so-quietly to Memphis while I walked away. “The possession of a pair of tits serves as a barrier to prevent blows from the fists of the Utah.”

“You assholes could at least wait until I’m out of earshot,” I called back over my shoulder.

The way she giggled nearly had me turning right back around.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

memphis

Iwas doubting everything about this plan as I stood in front of the giant mirror in Jersey’s bathroom. Appearances were something I really did well, regardless of never actually going anywhere to show it off. I had way too much time to teach myself to do my makeup flawlessly over the last few years. I didn’t have giant breasts to use to my advantage, but I did possess a push-up bra that was capable of performing real life magic. I’d always been very much on the thin side, but I filled out jeans well enough that I wasn’t normally self-conscious about my body.

Even with the ability to stand in front of this mirror and acknowledge that I looked good, I was not feeling great about the choices that put me in this position. I asked Utah to take me to a bar for the night of drinking I’d never been able to experience like a normal college kid, but I’d asked for it because I felt terribly insecure after having to meet Nevada. She projected confidence like the sun sent out light. She was stunning, and she knew it. She also hadn’t made any attempt to hide the fact that she wanted Utah, and there was nothing at all that I could do about it. He and I weren’t dating. We weren’t sleeping together. We damn sure weren’texclusivebecause we hadn’t done anything at all that made two people a couple. We weren’t anything. I just admired him from a safe distance, and he seemed to silently watch every move I made. I wanted to believe that he kept an eye on me because some part of him wanted me, but I also hadn’t realized I was up against women like Nevada in terms of competing for his attention. And that was…devastating. Icouldn’tcompete with women like Nevada.

All of these were problems that were foreign to me. I hadn’t spent a single moment of my life concerned about men in the real world since I was in middle school. Jersey had been my only contact with men for several years, and I never once felt about Jersey the way that I currently felt about Utah. I’d heard Jersey talk about women and talktowomen. He was smooth when he needed to put on a show, but it was just that. A show. The real Jersey was a disaster. Utah was something very different. I hadn’t spent years watching him transform into whatever the situation called for in order to be successful. He was the same calm and collected man every time he spoke to me.

This bar outing was supposed to give me a chance to find some random guy and use him to make Utah jealous. It seemed like the only available option at the time that I’d suggested it. It sounded like the kind of thing that Trista would do. Maybe Utah would see it happening and feel as shitty about it as I did about Nevada. Maybe he’d finally react and justdosomething about it. Or, on the other hand, there was always the chance that he wouldn’t even notice. At least then I’d know that this hadn’t been anything more than lust for him and that I didn’t measure up to what he’d had before or what he could have in Nevada.

But again, even while I could stand here and admit that I looked awesome right now, I didn’t know how to just use one man to make another jealous. I didn’t know how to get drunk and flirt.

Suddenly, I wanted no part of this night, and I wondered if Utah would still let me back out.

---