Released (Caged #3)(13)

“Can I…can I talk to you?” I asked. I tried for the puppy-dog eyes that usually worked when I had a cold and wanted her to cook for me.

Baynor looked from me to Tria, then gave me half a grin, tapped his pen on the clipboard, and walked out the door. Tria didn’t move but stayed down at the end of the bed not looking at me.

“Tria?” I whispered, and she finally looked up.

“Here we are again,” she said. She made a little gesture that took in the room.

“Yeah,” I said. “Um…maybe if we worked out a deal, we could just move in…save on the rent or something.”

Her tight lipped smile didn’t express any humor.

“Yeah…probably not. The décor here sucks.”

Nothing.

“Tria?”

She looked up at me again.

“Are you…I mean…will you…you know…come back home?”

For the longest time, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. When her head finally tilted up, she didn’t have to answer.

“Please,” I heard myself whisper. “Please, just…don’t. Don’t do this.”

“Do you have any idea what the last couple of weeks have been like for me?” she asked quietly. “Any at all?”

I couldn’t look at her anymore because her point was far, far too valid. Other than wondering where she was and being paranoid about her going back to Maine, I hadn’t really thought about what was happening with her.

“I spent that whole afternoon trying to figure out how I was going to tell you,” she said. Her voice cracked a little, and as I looked back at her, tears began to stream down her cheeks. “I know babies are pricey, and I figured I could spend some time at the library, researching ways to figure out ways to make it less expensive. I’d breast feed, use cloth diapers. Whatever I could do to make it not cost as much because I figured that’s what you would be worried about.”

She ran the back of her hand over her face before looking back to me.

“But when you…you said you didn’t want…that you wanted me to…to get rid of it…”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she sniffed before continuing.

“And then you started screaming at me, and when I looked in your eyes, I wasn’t even sure who you were. Everything Keith had said about you being violent came to my mind, and then you picked up the table and—”

She gasped and covered her mouth.

“I thought you were going to throw it at me.”

“Oh f*ck, no,” I whispered. “I’d never, never do that, Tria. Fuck.”

“Normally, I would agree,” she said, “but you weren’t you then, and I didn’t know who you were. And then you just walked out.”

She stopped, and she bit down on her lip hard enough to make it look painful. She covered her mouth with her hand again and looked toward the window even though the curtains were drawn.

“You said you wouldn’t do that again,” she reminded me. “Even so, I thought maybe you’d come back in an hour or two. I thought you just needed some time to cool off.”

She straightened her shoulders a little and then looked back to me.

“Then you didn’t,” she said simply. “And I started to wonder if you were going to come back at all. Then…well, I just started thinking about everything. There’s something more important in my life now—more important than me or you. I had to do what was right for my baby. Yolanda was the most likely person to help me. She was close by, so I could still go to school, and she knows…well, she knows you. Better than I do, really.”

“I did just need…what you said,” I told her. “Cool off time. But I got arrested on the subway.”

Tria’s mouth dropped open as she stared at me, dumbfounded.

“Do I even want to ask?”

“Some drunk just…pissed me off. He pulled a knife on me—no charges were pressed.” I tried to shrug it off.

“That really doesn’t make me feel any better,” Tria informed me.

“I know.” I swallowed hard, knowing the last thing I should do now was to keep anything from her. “When I got back to the apartment, and you weren’t there…um…I lost it.”

Tria looked quickly at me, but I looked away.

“What did you do?”

“I…I went out and, um…” I had no f*cking clue how to say it without making it sound just as bad as it was. There just wasn’t enough perfume to cover the stink on this shit. “I bought heroin, and I used it.”

Before now, I hadn’t been sure if Baynor or Yolanda had told her or not. The way her body stiffened when she realized what I had said made it clear she had no idea.

“You started using again.” I could barely hear her strained voice.

I looked away, not wanting to admit this but knowing there really wasn’t any point in denying it. I had to come clean, so to speak.

“When I figured out you were gone,” I admitted, “I…I couldn’t deal with it, so I went back to H.”

“While I spent the week wondering how I was going to raise a child on my own,” Tria said, and her words made me want to crawl under the bed.

I couldn’t deny them. I couldn’t defend myself. I could only try to explain as best I could and then hope she’d let me spend the rest of my life making it up to her.