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“Please,” she all but whispered. He breathed in all the air in the cab of that truck before he nodded at her in the rear view mirror.
“What is this? Why are you touching him?” I asked, trying to set him ablaze with my eyeballs.
“Your car is at home. Your groundskeeper called someone to come work on the body. Fix the bullet holes and all that,” she said and put her hand on my thigh.
“Memphis is there?”
“She is. Hasn’t left since we first made it there.”
I laid my head back against the seat to close my eyes and breathe now that there was beautiful silence in the cab of this stupid truck.
“She’ll be excited to see you.”
Everything in my heart screeched to a standstill at that unpleasant crossover between a previous life and this one. The memories of the time spent in that concrete box assaulted my mind all at once; of what it had taken to escape it. Every dull ache across my body flared to searing pain at the thought of Trista’s mother.
“Triss.”
I stopped myself the moment that my eyes were open again though. I didn’t know anything about this punk in the front seat. Just because he’d helped didn’t mean he could be trusted. Just because he was still here didn’t mean he should be allowed to see her emotions. By the time I’d looked at Trista again, she’d already slid across the middle seat to be right next to me; staring at me with the same giant brown eyes that her mother had.
“Get this thing out of my arm,” I said instead, looking down at the needle still sticking out of my right forearm. My entire left hand was wrapped in bandages, and I couldn’t move any of those fingers to pull the needle out myself with the way that they had been wrapped.
“Leave it in until the bag is empty,” Utah said.
A crazy chuckle came out of me before I even realized I did it. “Remind me to kick this kid’s ass when I have full use of my hands again, baby.”
“I’ll even let you restrain one of mine when you want to remind him of our date, Triss,” he said from the front.
“Don’t fucking call her that.”
“Boys,” Trista said and put her hand on my leg another time.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
trista
Thankfully, we were already almost back to Jersey’s house in Indiana by the time he woke up, so I didn’t have to play referee for that long. I removed the IV needle from his arm the moment that the bag was empty, and as soon as I reached to unhook the bag from where Utah had rigged it to hang from the handle just above the door, Jersey grabbed my wrist. He pulled me across him until I was nearly sitting in his lap before he let go of my arm to move that hand to the side of my face. His thumb brushed over the break in my skin on my head before his hand went back to my cheek.
“You’re a dumbass, you know that?” He whispered. “You never should’ve come after me. You weren’t supposed to come after me.”
“You look disgusting, by the way. It’s probably a good thing that we met before your face took this turn.”
I wasn’t even fucking standing and my knees still felt weak when he smiled. His hand shifted behind my neck, and he pulled me all the way into his chest. He moved his arm around my shoulders and held me squished against him. I couldn’t recall a time in my life when I’d ever been so happy just to listen to someone’s heartbeat. He held me there until Utah pulled the truck into his driveway, then he kissed the top of my head and released me. I watched his face come to life beautifully when he spotted Memphis already standing in the open doorway, just waiting.
She nearly tackled him right back into the truck the second that his feet touched the ground. I could hear her sobbing while I went around the back of the truck to see if I could help Utah with the bags. Then I felt like an asshole for a second for laughing at the way that Utah was frozen mid-movement while he stared at the sight of Jersey engulfing Memphis’ tiny, shaking body. I smacked Utah in the ribs to get him moving again.
“Probably should’ve warned you about that,” I whispered. “I didn’t like it at first either, but trust me, that is not at all a problem for you and I. Outrageous brother-sister or daddy-daughter trauma bond thing. But not an issue for us. If anything, delivering him back here probably helped your case.”
“Helped?”
We both stood quietly for a minute to watch Jersey let go of Memphis. He used the hand that was still available to wipe the tears from her cheeks. They were both smiling, talking quietly enough that we couldn’t hear them. My heart seized up at the sight of him kissing her forehead before he turned to nod toward us and then he said something else to her. I watched Memphis look only at Utah after whatever Jersey said.
“Yeah,” I laughed. “It definitely helped.”
I went back to Jersey to slide underneath his arm to help him walk inside while Utah carried everything around all of us to get to the door to hold it open. Memphis flew around both of us to beat us to Utah. She had to jump to get her arms around his neck. Utah stood perfectly still like a dumbass for a few seconds with bags in both hands while she dangled from his body before his brain kicked in. He dropped everything and put his arms around her waist while she just continued to cry. She thanked him somewhere in the middle of all the sobbing and buried her face in his neck.
“Told you,” I whispered to Utah while Jersey and I walked by them to get into the house. He chuckled but I definitely watched his arms tighten around her.
“Come on, Angel. Back inside,” Utah said quietly against the side of her head.
