Page 79 of Live for Me

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To find you a hangover cure, baby.”

“You know those aren’t real, right?”

“We’ll find you the greasiest food that Indiana has to offer, and then you can tell me if you don’t feel any better.”’

I couldn’t imagine how it was supposed to help. All food sounded awful again by the time I was sitting across a table from Utah and staring at a menu.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I said, more to myself than to him.

“Somewhere else you need to be right now?”

“No. I just mean we shouldn’t be out here this often. Where people can see us.”

“Hiding in that house twenty-four hours a day is no way to live.”

“I’m not hiding. We just need—” I cut myself off before I could even bother. Fuck if I knew what we needed. I was winging it all day every day at this rate and that was the constant source of all my stress.

“You can dismantle an entire criminal organizationandstill enjoy life, angel.”

“Not if we get killed out here just because you decided I needed greasy food.”

“You’ll be thanking me in an hour, so you might want to tone down that attitude.”

I laid the menu back down on the table and rubbed my face with both hands.

Something about being told to tone down my attitude made me want to ramp that shit up until I could look for Jesus in the clouds.

He was so perfectly fucking calm abouteverythingall the time.

It was somehow both the absolute worst thing about him and my very favorite thing about him.

When did I start having favorite things about Utah?

He laughed and it drew my attention back to his face, rather than just the Utah of my thoughts.

“What was that last thought, sugar?”

I stared at him from between my fingers, and realized I’d actually stopped rubbing my face with my hands and sat frozen with my fingers separated just enough for me to see out of them.

“What?” I asked, hoping I looked like I had no idea what he was talking about.

The way that he smiled suggested he knew otherwise, anyway.

“You’re adorable.”

Something about that word made me frown.

Adorable.

Like a child.

Then I fucking laughed at myself because I wouldn’t have reacted any better if the man sat there and outright saidyou’re sexy.

He couldn’t win. I couldn’t win. There was no winning here. Not with me involved.

The alarm on my phone went off to remind me to text Jersey, and I could’ve burst into tears right then.

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