Page 9 of Live for Me

She smiled, though. And I watched that tongue stud slide between her lips, from one corner of her mouth to the other.

Had to shake my head to make myself go back to focusing on the road before I killed us both just by thinking about her mouth.

“He deserved it,” Memphis said.

“You couldn’t just let karma take care of him?” I asked and laughed. “Had to ruin his chances of ever getting laid again in that town?”

“Let karma take care of him,” she scoffed. “Like what you’re doing by hunting down these detectives? I don’t think it works that way anymore, Utah. I used to. If you put good things out into the world, you’d eventually get good things back. And vice versa with the bad.”

“And now?” I asked. “If that’s what you used to think, what do you think now?”

“I’m tired of waiting for karma to level the playing field for me. She’s got too much to do in a world like this and not enough time to make sure it all happens. Sometimes karma just needs a violent shove in the right direction. But sometimes, I imagine karma needs a vigilante-for-hire.”

That was somehow the saddest thing I’d ever heard.

And the hottest.

I knew there was a broken person beneath the makeup she wore. I had no idea why or when it might’ve started, but I had a pretty good case built for the belief that anyone who’d accepted employment from our previous organization hadn’t done it because they were the straight and narrow kind of person.

Even with those assumptions, I hadn’t really believedthatlevel of quiet rage burned beneath the surface of this woman.

CHAPTER FIVE

memphis

He was quiet for a long time after my little karma revelation.

Regular people probably didn’t expect to hear a hobbit-sized woman who didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet talk about being a vigilante because karma wasn’t working quickly enough.

“What else did you miss out on doing?” Utah asked after a long stint of just country music and him humming along to it filling the silence.

“What?”

“No one taught you to drive. You didn’t get to graduate high school. What else did you miss?”

“I—I don’t know,” I said hesitantly. “I missed it. How would I know whatitis?”

“Are you being a smartass just to avoid the topic?” he asked with a laugh.

This man paid way too much attention.

“Most things, I guess,” I finally admitted. “I didn’t get to do the prom thing. Not that I would’ve wanted to. I kind of swore off dances after the millimeter peter fiasco, but I didn’t have the option to decide whether or not I was really going. Slow dancing with a man sounds absurd, anyway. I’ve never been drunk. Never been in a bar. Haven’t been camping or stargazing. I haven’t been on a rollercoaster. Take your pick of all the things you did while you were young and dumb, and I probably didn’t do it.”

“I don’t suppose you have these things organized neatly in a spreadsheet somewhere?” he joked.

“I don’t. I usually prefer not to think about them at all.”

“Why does slow dancing with a man sound absurd?”

“Isn’t it awkward? What if one person doesn’t know how to do it? Where to put their feet and when? What if you accidentally move in opposite directions? What are you supposed to talk about while you’re just spinning in circles? Or do you just awkwardly stare at each other and hope the other doesn’t talk? What if somebody has bad breath? Does size difference play a role? Like I’d just be stuck staring at your chest the entire time or I’d have to break my neck to stare straight up at you. Too many complications.”

“So. Youreallyoverthink everything, huh?”

“Ipreparefor everything.”

“Yes, then. That’s a yes. You overthink everything. Have you ever exchanged logic for passion? Just given up trying to understand everything for the chance toonlyfeel?”

“No.”

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