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“Well, once we get to Philadelphia, if we run into anyone who still needs reminded that you don’t do that shit to children, I’ll be right behind you to offer that reminder.”
His words stopped me right there in the doorway while he held the door open for me.
“Everything about you is confusing,” I said.
“Terrible humans getting what they deserve is confusing?” He asked and hooked his arm around my waist to push me the rest of the way through the door.
“I just don’t understand what someone like you is doing in this profession,” I said. “You don’t seem —. You’re —.”
The fuck was I trying to say to him?
He wasn’t anything like Jersey?
Because he had emotion and he cared about people?
But then what did that say about Jersey?
Or me, for that matter?
“Someone like me,” he repeated and laughed. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“No but being able to have a job like that —.”
“We don’t all kidnap girls and drive across the country with them in the trunk of a car, Trista,” he interrupted. “There’s a reason Memphis reached out to us rather than anyone else.”
“I can feel it coming that you’re about to drop into stone cold silent mode about your past and what you do within this job and all, but for the record, I very much have questions about what that means,” I said while he chuckled and walked away to do whatever he intended to do inside this gas station.
* * *
We both grew more uncomfortable the closer we got to Philly. The easy silence was replaced with palpable tension in the cab of that truck.
“I think we need to stop and sleep before we actually get started on any of this,” Utah suggested. “Long day of just driving and being upset, but the next couple of days are going to be even worse.”
“Utah?”
“Hm?”
“If you don’t really do what Jersey does,” I said. “Are you going to be able to do whatever we’re about to do? All the shitty jokes about you not being him aside. How are we going to do this if this isn’t what you do?”
He smirked while he pulled the truck into the parking lot of a hotel.
“I don’t do what Jersey does because I’m not a pompous bulldozing asshole who’s every bit as flashy as he is good,” he said. “They use me when anything needs done quietly, when there’s a need for someone who has no interest in doing this for the bragging rights about what he’s doing. New Jersey can be the company wrecking ball. I’m the finesse.”
“You’re going to sit here and tell me that you’re the guy who specializes in delicate?” I asked.
He outright laughed that time. “I’m the guy who specializes in flawless, subtle performance. Some of us are called on to get people out just as much as the others are called to bring people in. Takes two very different kinds of human to be able to do those things.”
He was out of the truck and taking both of our bags from the backseat by the time that I’d made it around to reach for mine. He just shook his head and slung it over his own shoulder to carry it toward the door.
“You want your own room?” He asked. “Or do you want to stay with me?”
My whole body physically paused, like English wasn’t the language that I spoke best, right after sarcasm and sass. Alone was how I’d spent most of my life and should’ve been where I was most comfortable, but I hadn’t actually been alone since Jersey came crashing into my world. Except the thought of being this close to Philly while alone was enough to feel like someone was slowly siphoning the air right out of my body. My head was already spinning out of control with how Memphis or Jersey might feel about me staying in the same room with this man too.
Fucking mess.
“I’m okay with being alone if you want your own room, Utah.”
There. Make it his fucking problem. My God.
