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“Jersey,” Memphis sighed.
“Jersey?” I repeated. “I think you mean Indy. He started it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Memphis said.
“Where’s the other one?” I asked.
“Utah?” Memphis asked and laughed. “You mean where’s Utah?”
“He’s out,” Indy added.
“How helpful of you. Can you go be wherever he is? For maybe a fucking a minute?” I asked him. I about came unglued when that boy smiled.
“What’s on your mind, Jersey Boy?” Memphis asked. “You might as well just come out with it. Indy isn’t going anywhere.”
I stared down at my own hands on the countertop for a minute, trying to decide if this was really worth involving other people.
It was.
Because Trista was.
She’d been worth devastating the track that all of our lives had been on previously. So, she was worth finding a way to make her happy.
And I just didn’t have the answer myself.
“Jersey?” Memphis tried again, noticeably softer that time.
“I don’t know how to give Triss a better life than this,” I rushed out to prevent myself from deciding against it.
Memphis looked from me to Indy, and back to me again.
“What?” Indy asked.
“She’s been in fight or flight mode since she was a child. She deserves better than that now, because she deserved better than that then,” I said, taking her mother’s words to stab my own heart with them. “How do I give that to her?”
I watched Indy lean toward Memphis to whisper to her. “Is he asking for dating advice right now?”
I ignored him completely because I couldn’t focus on anything other than the tears pooling in Memphis’ eyes. She looked away from me just as quickly to shake her head and try to blink those tears away.
“I don’t know anything about dating, Jersey,” she said. “But if I’d spent my life running and hiding, I’d want to go somewhere that I didn’t have to do either. If I didn’t have to stay here for what comes next, I’d go anywhere else. Somewhere no one would ever notice me.”
She grew more uncomfortable with every second that I spent just staring back at her. For as badly as I wanted to drill half a million questions right into her brain about how much she apparently related to Triss, everything in my own brain was telling me that doing such a thing with an audience present was not the right choice.
“We’d have to leave the country,” I said quietly. “Somewhere no one would recognize either of us. Couldn’t be on this continent, even.”
“Might be good for both of you,” Indy added. “Leave all the chaos and the trauma here.”
“How soon can you be ready to go?” I asked Memphis.
She tried to smile. “I can’t leave.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not done here.”
“Then I can’t leave either if we’re not done.”
“You can be done, Jersey Boy. You can choose to be. You’ve already killed the man who took your family from you. Give your mind a chance to recover. Give Trista the chance to rest. We can do the next part.”
