Page 68 of Live for Me

“Why isn’t anybody making you pay for anything?” I asked, because I needed to focus onsomething. Anything at all.

“You know, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if you’ve maybe never seen a mirror.” He reached around me for one of the shot glasses while I turned toward him just enough to see his face again. “To your first night in a bar, Angel.” He swallowed whatever was in that glass in one gulp and put it right back on the bar next to the other. His had been a brown color. Whatever was in the other glass had a yellow tint to it and what was either sugar or salt all the way around the rim. I looked back at Utah in time to see him smile. He took the glass from the bar and then grabbed my hand to place the drink in it.

“It won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not really worried aboutit,” I said, surprising even myself by admitting that out loud.

Utah leaned back toward me. “And I won’t let anything else in here hurt you either.”

One of those massive hands landed on my knee for just a few seconds after that. It was there and gone so quickly that the only way I was certain it had happened at all was that the sudden disappearance of his warmth left my entire leg cold once his hand was gone. I closed my eyes and gulped down whatever was in my shot glass. The light hints of lemon and sugar went nicely enough with whatever burned my throat on its entire trip down.

Utah was still smiling when I looked back at him.

“You good?”

“I need six more of those. Or of whatever you had,” I said and turned back toward the bar to wave my own hand at the bartender again.

I had no hope of surviving these tiny moments of Utah’s touch. The intense burn followed by the noticeable absence. The weird moments of eye contact and silent pleading for anything else just to be left with nothing.

Trista had a point.

Why couldn’t I just go to a bar and have a good time?

I asked the bartender for another round of whatever he’d made a moment ago.

“I won’t be drinking the rest of the night, angel,” Utah said from behind me.

“They’re for me.”

“Uh, that might not be a good?—”

The bartender poured more of what Utah’s drink had been and I swallowed that first.

Just to end up in a coughing fit while my eyes watered.

“Get her something to chase that,” Utah said impatiently to the bartender, and laughed as soon as the man turned around to retrieve it.

“Welcome to Wild Turkey,” he added, and his hand landed between my shoulder blades. “You’re going to be some kind of fucked up here in about fifteen minutes, baby. Let me know when you’re ready to leave.”

“All the alcohol options in the world and that’s what youchooseto drink?” I coughed out and tried desperately to wipe the tears from my eyes before they managed to escape into the makeup. “You’re a fucking madman.”

“I’m the one the madmen hide from, angel.”

That was disturbingly accurate.

But more frightening than that was the weird warmth that spread through the entire lower half of my body at the words.

I turned right back around for the other shot and raised it to my mouth.

“You might not want to—” he started to say but gave up on the thought because I’d already swallowed it, too.

“What are we supposed to do while we’re here?” I asked and looked around the rest of the room for the first time.

“Anything you want.”

“People come to placeslike thisto dance?” I asked when my eyes landed on what was obviously meant to be a dance floor but was entirely empty.

“You—” he started to say and had to stop to clear his throat. “You want to dance?”

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