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The way that she laughed loosened that knot just enough for me to keep breathing.
“I wish I could’ve seen the dada version of you,” she said and squeezed my hand another time. “Even if that meant not getting the chance to know you the way that I do now. Sounds like he was probably good at it.”
“It was what I did best. Right behind killing people for money like that was all that mattered in the world,” I snapped and ripped my hand away from her.
I couldn’t recall a single thing about the drive back to the house. I only heard the passenger door of Seph slam closed once we were in the driveway, and I was on my way back out to the road before Trista ever made it through the door of the house.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
trista
I sent Utah a text message the moment that I was in the kitchen, demanding that he bring alcohol of any kind back with him. None of us had been comfortable bringing it into this house before, given Jersey’s history; but drinking until I couldn’t feel anything other than the buzz sounded like the best idea I’d had in a long time. I wouldn’t leave anything left in the house to have to worry about Jersey getting his hands on it anyway. The sound of his car’s exhaust rumbling back out of the driveway was enough to make tears sting the back of my eyes, but I blinked that shit away before I looked up to see that Memphis and Indy hadn’t even moved from their places at the kitchen island. They were both staring at me uncomfortably, but my phone vibrated in my hand to take my attention away from them.
Utah
That was fast. Prince Charming’s charm wear off already?
“Guess that means there wasn’t any kissing or making up, huh?” Indy asked.
“Where’s he going?” Memphis asked.
“Why don’t you just ask him,” I snapped. “Or track him. Or fucking punch him.”
I stomped my way by them like a pissed off teenager who was mad at her parents for giving her a curfew.
“I think maybe I’ll call Daddy Utah,” I heard Indy whisper before I slammed the door of Jersey’s bedroom. The fucking bedroom where he had yet to return since coming home, regardless of all his shit being inside it with me. Trapping me in his memories, his smell, his style, his fucking everything. The outrageous urge to start ripping shit off the walls and smashing everything in the room was overrun by the terrible guilt that came with the sight of his wife and his daughter staring back at me from their place on the nightstand. All the years that he must’ve spent being mad at her for the worst moments of his life, just to find out that it wasn’t her fault in any sense of the word. I should’ve just waited for Memphis to be around to break that to him.
* * *
I had no idea how long I sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, with the picture of his wife and daughter in my lap, but I jumped when someone knocked on the door.
“What?” I hissed at the door.
Utah opened the door with a chuckle. “Normal people say things like who is it or come in.”
He held up an entire fifth of Jack from where he stood in the doorway.
“Please, kind sir, do come in and bring your friend,” I said in the nicest voice I possessed. “I’ll try not to call you out on the fact that you brought Tennessee whiskey back here for me.”
“And I’ll try not to call you a smartass every time you open your mouth.”
He walked in and dropped down to the floor right beside me before he sat the bottle between us.
“Thank you,” I said and swiped that bottle from the floor as quickly as I could move to get started on it. Utah took the picture frame from my lap and looked at it for a second before he placed it face down on the bed behind us. The first pull from that bottle brought the tears right back to my eyes and lit a fire all the way down my throat until I started coughing.
“That’s not anywhere near as smooth as I remember it being,” I choked out.
“Probably because it’s not even noon,” Utah said and laughed.
“If you could take the judgement in your tone down just a hint the next time, that’d be swell.”
“Didn’t go very well?” He asked.
“He told me that my stepbrother killed my mom. I told him that the same stepbrother killed his entire family,” I said and laughed like an absolute psychopath. “Nothing about that was ever going to go very well.”
“That’s a lot of devastation before noon,” he said. “Bottoms up, girl.” He stuck his finger under the bottle in my hand to lift it back toward my mouth.
“Are we too broken for each other?” I asked. “Does a relationship have any chance at all if both people have this much baggage?”
