Takedown Teague (Caged #1) (25 page)

“If you don’t like this shit, why do you stay?” I asked.

“A lot of reasons,” Brandon replied.  “My family has been here for generations, just like almost everyone else around here.  We’ve been brought up to listen to the council leader and do as he says.”

“Who’s that?”

“Leo Harrison,” Brandon said.  “He’s Keith’s father.  Keith will take over for him when he retires.”

“Oh, that will make thing so much better!” I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.

“If you think Keith is fucked up, wait until you meet his father.”

“Will I want to hit him?”

“Maybe.”  Brandon laughed.  “He’s only got one leg though, so it wouldn’t go over well.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“Fishing accident,” Brandon said with a shrug.  He didn’t give me any more details.  “He pretty much runs this community with an iron crutch.”

He finished the last of the cigarette, stubbed it out on the bottom of his shoe, and tossed it into a metal bucket at the edge of the porch.  There were a couple of cigar nubs in there, too.  I did the same with mine and then followed him back inside the house.

Tria looked at us as soon as we walked in together.  She took one glance at me and then quickly appraised Brandon’s condition, likely looking for bruises or busted lips.  I gave her a look, and she blushed as she looked away.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was ready to call it a day.  Nikki excused herself to go collect blankets, and Brandon poked around in the kitchen, claiming he had something to do.  As far as I could tell, he was rearranging the silverware drawer.

I might have felt bad for them both if it wasn’t for…

Nah—I did feel bad for them.

Nikki brought over some blankets and pillows and then danced back and forth on her feet before speaking.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I wasn’t expecting two.  Even if I was, I’m not sure where I’d put you.”

“I’m fine on the floor.”  Before Tria could protest, I placed a couple fingers over her lips.  “Don’t argue; just take the couch.”

She nodded. I removed my fingers, and Nikki placed worn sheets, blankets, and pillows on the couch for Tria.  She gave me a thick blanket for more padding, and I arranged it on the floor next to the couch.   Nikki and Tria said their goodnights, and the couple headed to the second RV and what I assumed to be their bedroom.

There was a nosy little part of me that wondered if they were going to have sex tonight.  Maybe that “one last hurrah” before she gets passed around.

I shuddered.

“So, you didn’t talk her out of it?” I asked.

“No,” Tria said.  “She doesn’t want to be talked out of it.  She wants a baby.  This is the way she plans to get it, and I have to respect that.”

“Respect the unrespectable?”

Tria dropped down onto the floor near the edge of the couch and crossed her legs.

“It’s no different than if she were doing the opposite.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“I mean,” Tria continued, “if she wanted to
not
have a baby instead of wanting to
have
one.  I don’t approve of abortion, but if my friend decided she needed one…well, I would help however I could.  It wouldn’t be something I would choose for myself, but it’s her decision.  I have to honor what she chooses to do.  That’s what friends are for.”

“Fucked up,” I muttered for the hundredth time.

I moved the plastic chair, newspapers, and various other crap on the floor and sat down next to Tria with my back leaning against the edge of the couch.  My ass hit the floor with a bit of a twinge, and I was reminded again of how uncomfortable I had been on the motorcycle.  I stretched my legs out and flexed my ankles until my backside loosened up a little.

“Did you and Brandon have a nice talk?” Tria asked.  There was a little table next to the couch that must have been intended as a nightstand because there were two good-sized drawers in it.   Tria was taking stuff out of the bag and putting it in the drawers.  “You were out there a long time with him.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, ignoring her question.  I pointed my finger back and forth between the bag and the nightstand drawer.

“Putting things away,” she said with a shrug.

“You’ve been in the apartment for a month, and you’ve kept most of your shit in your suitcase,” I told her.  “But here you put everything away.  You did that in the hotel, too.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes and just shrugged again, which pissed me off.

“You go on about how I won’t say anything,” I grumbled.  “Maybe it’s time for you to talk.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye but didn’t stop taking things out of the Gorgon’s Gunnysack and placing them in the drawer.

“You don’t think that’s a little incongruous?”

“I think you using the word
incongruous
is incongruous.”

“Nice.”  I reached up and scratched at the back of my head.  “How about me using the word
double standard
?”

“That’s two words.”

“Well, at least my math sucks, huh?  Does that fit better with your impression of me?”

She stopped shoving things into the drawer and seemed to slump a bit.

“I know this is temporary,” Tria said.  She waved her hand in the direction of the open drawer.  “I’ll put these things in here, and then in a couple of days or so, I’ll take them back out and go home.  Same thing with the hotel.”

She paused and fiddled with the strap on the bag.  She took a deep breath, licked her lips, and then continued.

“But at the apartment…”  She paused again to consider her words.  “Everything is different there.  I don’t even know what to call it—
your
apartment,
my
apartment,
our
apartment—nothing seems right, so it’s just
the
apartment.  You call it that, too.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Right now it just feels surreal,” she continued.  “Like I’m going to wake up at some point and figure out that leaving Beals was all a dream.”

“More like a nightmare,” I retorted.  “I mean, where you left was the nightmare.  Whatever.  That didn’t come out right.”

“It wasn’t,” she said.  “I know you’ve mostly heard the bad stuff, but there are good people here.  They’re all kind of like a big family.  They take care of each other, and they took care of me.  I miss it.”

That comment sent a chill over my skin.

“You’re making a new home,” I told her.  “Isn’t that what you want?”

I hoped it was.

“Yes,” she said.  “And I don’t want to come back, but I still miss parts of it.  Nikki especially.  She always makes me feel welcome here.”

“And I don’t,” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

I reached over and placed my hand on the side of her face.  I circled the edge of her jaw with my fingers.  I had no idea what the right things to say were—I just knew I didn’t want her to feel like she wasn’t welcome where we lived now.

“Unpack your things,” I whispered.  “I want you to stay there.”

Her teeth worried her lip, and she continued to look off to the side.  I moved my head over until I was in her line of sight.

“I want you to stay there,” I repeated.

“Even if I don’t have sex with you?” she asked.

“Why do you keep harping on that?”

“Because it’s what you want,” she replied.  She moved her head away, effectively pulling out of my grasp.  “You said it yourself—you don’t do relationships.  You’re in it for the sex, and you aren’t getting any.”

If she had yelled it at me, I would have found it hot, but the way she said it—so quiet, and tired, and defeated—it just made my chest clench instead.

I was never one to pry into someone else’s psyche, but I needed to understand.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked her.  “Didn’t we talk about this before?”

“Yes,” she admitted.  “But when Michael said…when he just assumed I was bought and paid for…it just made me realize the people who have known you the longest probably know better than I do.”

“Fucker,” I snarled.  “I should have kicked him while he was down for saying that shit to you.”

“It’s true though, isn’t it?”  She turned her eyes to me, and my chest tightened up again.

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.  And beyond that, Michael
doesn’t
know me.  None of them do.”

“Well, I don’t know you either,” Tria said.  The venom had crept back into her voice.  “You don’t tell me anything about yourself.”

“You know everything important.” I shrugged.  I reached over to try to take her hand, but she pulled away again.

“How you got to where you are,” Tria said, “is important.  I want to know, Liam.  I want to know what happened to you and why you are the way you are.”

“How am I, exactly?”

“Cold,” she said without hesitation.

“That’s not what you say at night,” I replied as I wiggled my eyebrows.

“You see?” Tria jumped right back into it.  “It’s shit like that.  I say something that you should consider insulting, and you respond with a half-assed joke instead of being pissed about it, or upset, or whatever.  You’re indifferent to everything around you, and I want to know why.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does it matter?”

Tria’s chest rose and fell with her breaths as she tilted her head to look at me.

“I need to know how I can fit into this,” she said.  “I can’t figure that out if you don’t tell me anything.  If I can’t figure it out, well…”

She let her voice trail off as she shrugged and looked away from me.

“Well, what?” I tried to keep my voice down so the couple in the other room wouldn’t hear us.  “Well, then you’ll just say
fuck it
and move on?  Is that what you mean?  Are you
threatening
me?”

“No,” she said quickly.  “I’m not.  I don’t mean to be, anyway.  It’s just…I have to have more, Liam.”

“More?”

“I want to know more about you.  More about your past.”

“You don’t want to know,” I told her, hoping it was true, or that I could at least convince her it was.  I shifted uneasily on the floor.

“You have a habit of telling me what I want,” Tria replied.  “Maybe you could let me decide that once in a while.”

I ignored her sarcasm.

“Can’t we just make out instead?”

She immediately moved away from me and looked at me pointedly.  There was just no winning with her and her stubbornness.  My best bet was to just get her to sleep, so I went with that angle.  After all, it had worked pretty well the night before.

“You need to sleep,” I said.

“So tell me a bedtime story.”

“That shit isn’t going to help you sleep.”

She ran her hand down the side of my face and rested it lightly on my shoulder.  Her eyes were drooping, and I was hoping she would just crawl onto the couch and drop off into slumber.

“Tell me the real reason Yolanda was mad about what you were eating.”

No such luck.

I turned my head to stare at the curtains covering the window, hoping she would get the hint and let it go but also knowing she wasn’t going to.

“Liam.” Tria sighed and reached up with her finger to run it over my jaw as she turned my head to face her more.  Like a total idiot, I looked into her eyes again.  Even in the subdued light, they were bright and shining.  “I want to know.  Please tell me.”

All my resolve crumbled.

“What do you want to know?” I asked with an exaggerated groan.

“Tell me about Yolanda,” Tria said.  “Tell me how you met.”

The very idea made my skin crawl.  There was definitely a significant part of me that couldn’t believe I was considering doing the one and only thing I always swore to myself I wouldn’t do—think about any of my history.  How was I supposed to talk about it without thinking about it?  Images I didn’t want to see were already flashing through my head.

Glancing at her, I met her eyes again.  I didn’t know what her look meant—if she needed to know more about the man she was with before making any real decisions, if she wanted to get under my skin, or if she was just curious.  Whatever it was, I wanted to give it to her, and the thought scared me.

“Fine,” I said, “but I’m smoking while we talk.”

“Deal!” she said with a genuine smile that loosened the tightness still hovering in the center of my chest.

We stepped quietly through the front door, and Tria made herself comfortable on the top of the wooden steps while I lit up.  She just sat there without saying a word until I got the idea and started talking.

“Yolanda...found me,” I told her.  I took a big breath and leaned my head against a four-by-four that held up part of the porch roof.  I looked down, no longer meeting her eyes.  “I was…not doing well.  I needed money…and she found me.  She recognized me and took me back to her place.  She got me to straighten up, got me back in shape, and has kind of been some combination of trainer and mother ever since then.”

“She recognized you?” Tria asked.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, secretly glad she chose that portion to focus on.  “Yolanda was a trainer then, too, but she had a side job.  She used to go around to high school competitions, scouting talent for some agent on the side.  She was at a wrestling competition I won the year before.”

I laughed humorlessly.

“She only barely recognized me.  I’d lost about forty pounds since leaving.”

“Leaving where?”

I glanced at her for a moment.

“My parents threw me out,” I said.  She knew this, but I was stalling.  “I, um…I had some money in the beginning, but it doesn’t last as long as you think it will, ya know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I was kicked out of where I had been living,” I told her.  “Well…sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t just…get kicked out of the place,” I finally said.  I glanced at Tria and saw her sitting there, patient as ever.

“Why won’t you just tell me?” she asked quietly.

“Because what I have now isn’t worth shit.  If you knew how bad I was…fuck, you’d probably never want to even look at me.”  I stared at the ground, refusing to look up at her as I chewed at the pad of my thumb.

“Do you really think I would turn away from you because you went through a rough patch?” Tria asked.  “You think I don’t know something bad happened to you?  Do you think I can’t see that?  Do you think I’m that blind?”

I looked into her eyes and forced myself to stay focused on her even though it hurt.

“I wasn’t kicked out because I couldn’t pay rent,” I told her.  “I was squatting there.”

“Squatting?” Tria asked through narrowed eyes.

“Yeah.  You know, just hanging out there.  I didn’t have a lease or anything; I just broke in and stayed there.  It was me and a couple other guys and one chick.  We were all just living there.”

“And you got caught,” Tria said, surmising correctly.

“Yeah, I’d been homeless for a while before then, but that’s the point when I was really living on the streets.  Before I had a car I was sleeping in.”

“How old were you?” she asked.

“Eighteen,” I told her.  “What’s funny is I had quite a bit of money then.”

“If you had money, why didn’t you just rent the place?”

This was it.  This was going to be the point of no return.  This was very likely the thing that was going to make her turn and run for the hills.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only confession in a long list of sins.

“Because…because…”  I took a long, deep breath, closed my eyes, and blurted out the rest.  “Because I was a junkie.  I didn’t want to use the money for rent because then there wouldn’t be enough for heroin.  I had a nice car when I left my parents’ house, and I sold it so I could buy more smack and needles and shit to get high.  I was a strung-out junkie when Yolanda found me near the gym where she worked.”

I kept my eyes closed, half waiting for her to run off into the rain.  My hands were shaking, and even holding them in fists against my thighs wasn’t working to still them.  After a minute or two, when I knew she was still there beside me, I looked at her again.

“How long?” she asked.  “How long have you been off it?  I mean—you
are
off it, right?  I would have noticed if you were doing something like that—”

“Years,” I said, wanting to get the words out fast enough to stop her train of thought.  My voice managed to contain a hint of desperation.  “Ever since the last time—the time Yolanda was going on about when I gained too much and got the shit kicked out of me.  That was the only relapse I ever had.  I swear—I’m totally clean now.  Over four years—I swear!”

“I believe you,” Tria said simply.  She stood up, stood beside me, and laid her hand on my cheek.

“You do?” I asked quietly.

“Of course,” she replied.  “Why wouldn’t I?”

“There’s more,” I said.  I had to swallow hard, but I kept talking.  “I did shit—a lot of shit I’m absolutely not going to talk about—but it was bad.  I would have done anything for the drugs.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

I felt a lump lodged in my throat.

“No,” I whispered, wishing I could believe I wasn’t responsible for it myself.  “But I’ve seen a lot of death.”

“Do you still struggle with it?” Tria asked quietly.  “I mean, with wanting to…to do that?”

“Wanting to do heroin?  Yeah.  All the time.  Not every day anymore, but yeah, I struggle.”

She traced over the edge of my jaw with her fingers, scratching at the scruff that had formed during our trip.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“For what?”

“Giving me some of you,” she replied.  She stood up on her toes and pressed her lips to mine.

“Will you unpack when we get home?” I asked.  “In
our
apartment?”

She chuckled.

“If you really want me to.”

“I really do.”

She rose up on her toes again and ran the fingers of both hands on either side of my jaw and up into my hair.  Her head came forward slowly, and she brought our lips together again.

“I hope you mean that,” she said quietly.

“I do mean it,” I told her.  I pressed my lips back to hers as I wrapped one arm around her back to bring her a little closer to me.  We kissed softly for a minute, and then Tria pulled away reluctantly.

“We need some sleep,” she said.  “Tomorrow is going to be insane.”

“Well, I can’t argue with the second part of that,” I said.

We went back inside, and I settled myself on the floor.  Tria climbed over me and onto the couch, and I lay down on my back below her.  I knew right away that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep where I was.  Despite the extra padding, the floor was pretty damn uncomfortable.  That didn’t bother me so much—I’d slept in much worse places—but listening to Tria breathe and not being able to touch her was driving me batty.

I closed my eyes and just lay there for a while.  After the first few minutes, I felt something against my arm and moved the opposite hand to grasp Tria’s fingers.  She sighed but didn’t say anything.  The physical touch helped, but it wasn’t quite enough to let me doze off.

Several minutes later, I heard her soft voice.

“Liam?” she whispered.  “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.  I opened my eyes but couldn’t really see much other than dark blobby shapes that were either slightly darker or slightly lighter than the other dark blobby shapes around them.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Me either,” I said.

“I think I’m used to soft beds,” she said with a quiet giggle.

The slight laughter ended quickly, and I felt her fingers tighten around mine.  I took in a deep breath and then sat up straight.

“Scoot up,” I said.

“Scoot up?”

“Yeah—move so you’re at the edge of the couch.”

“Liam, we are not both going to fit on here.”

“Just do it.”

Tria shifted, and I climbed over the top of her and wedged myself in between the back of the couch and the back of Tria.  I wrapped one arm securely around her waist and slid the other in the crack of the cushion so I could reach around her head and bring it to my shoulder.

“Is this your way of getting to touch my boobs?”

“No,” I told her.  “When I do that, I want to have time to enjoy them.  Maybe we’ll stay at one of my uncle’s hotels on the way back.”

“Hmm…that might be nice.”

“You’d like that?”

“Yeah, I would,” she said.  “I’d never been to a hotel like that before.”