Page 74 of Live for Me

“Memphis.”

“I just wanted to see if you’d feel the same way that I felt when Nevada was around you.”

“This was aboutNevada?”

“This was aboutyou,” she said quickly.

“Are you sure?” I asked and laughed.

She glared at me. “She wanted your attentionsobadly.”

“Why are you worried about what she did?”

“I’m not stupid, Utah. And you’re not blind. Iknowyou could see the way that she looked at you. The way that she touched you…” She stopped to shake her head and look down at her lap again. I shifted my entire hand up her thigh ever so fucking slightly, and I could actuallyhearher trying to breathe.

She was so fucking adorable that she didn’t even seem real.

She was jealous.

And she’d never been jealous before, so she didn’t know what to do about it.

She was upset because she didn’t know if she had any claim to me. She didn’t know if she was allowed to just tell me that it upset her to see another woman eye-fuck me.

“You didn’t answer my question, sugar. Why are you worried about whatshe’sdoing? You shouldn’t care about anything other than the way thatIact when she’s around. If you’re jealous of some other girl, it’s becauseI’mdoing something wrong. Because I’ve put you in a position where you feel like you can’t trustme.”

She sat quietly for a minute with those words before something in the neighborhood of rage burst out of her. “I amnotjealous. I’m territorial. There’s a difference.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

utah

That half-hour drive between the bar and the house didn’t offer any help in sobering her up. I imagined her body used that thirty-minute span to digest the rest of the alcohol, because she actually seemed a little more drunk by the time I was pulling into the driveway at New Jersey’s. Memphis nearly fell straight to the ground when she tried tojumpdown from the truck. Why she thought it was necessary to jump in the first place, I wasn’t sure. She tripped on the single step at the door. She managed to walk right into the wall in the kitchen because, while she seemed to believe she was moving in a straight line toward the hallway, she was actually very much gliding at an angle. When she ran into that wall, she giggled at herself, turned her back to it and slid down it right to the floor. So, I stood there and laughed for a second, like an asshole.

I watched her eyes shift from the ceiling to the floor and then back to the ceiling. She put her hands on the floor on either side of her like she was trying to brace herself in case she fell…off the floor.

“Need some help?” I asked.

“I don’t think wild turkeys like me very much,” she said and started to lean forward like she wanted to stand again.

“Wild Turkeydoesn’t play fair,” I agreed.

“It doesn’t look like you got your ass kicked by any,” she said.

“Any what?”

“Wild turkeys.”

The laugh that came out of me at that.

“No, angel. I did not get my ass kicked by anywild turkeys. I also probably quadruple your body weight and have had the experience of drinking it before,” I said while crossing the room to offer her my hand. The girlmissedwhen she reached for my hand the first time and that sent her into an absolute fit of drunken giggles. I was laughing right along with her a second later.

Because how could I not?

Even drunk out of her perfect little fucking mind after a night where she’d set out with the intention of turning me into a jealous maniac, I’d never seen anything cuter.

“Come on, sugar,” I said and knelt beside her to just put an arm around her waist to lift her back to her feet. Then I scooped my other arm under her knees and picked her the rest of the way up to carry her down the hall.

“You can’t keep calling me all these names,” she whispered, squirming around until she could squish the side of her face into my chest.

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