Released (Caged #3)(30)

“I thought you would be working tonight,” Tria continued, “but when I got there, Wade told me you stopped fighting there. Then I saw Yolanda…”

Tria’s eyes hardened.

“She didn’t tell me! She got another fighter, and she never told me that you weren’t working!”

“What did you do?”

“I asked her what the hell she thought you were going to do for money if you weren’t fighting, and she said you weren’t her problem anymore, and that I needed to let go and move on.”

“And?” I prompted when she paused.

“And I punched her.” Tria snarled and her eyes blazed. “She f*cking deserved it for doing that to you. How were you going to get to the doctor or therapy or anything if you didn’t have a job?”

“It was…difficult,” I replied. I didn’t want to tell her I hadn’t even managed to do any of that shit yet. I tensed until her face turned to mine, and her eyes softened as they focused on me.

“I didn’t know where you might be,” she said. “No one had seen you, so I called Michael. I thought maybe he would be able to help me find you. I never expected you to be there with him.”

“Long story,” I said with a shrug.

Another tear dripped down the side of her face, and her lip disappeared behind her teeth.

“Did you…I mean… were you…?”

“I didn’t do it,” I told her. “I wanted it, but I didn’t use again. I’m still clean.”

She let out a sigh of relief as she placed her head back on my shoulder.

“What do we do now?” she asked quietly.

My muscles tightened, and that horrible prickly feeling crawled over my flesh. I didn’t know if Tria was going to leave me again or not, but the thought of hauling her off to a deserted island where it was just the two of us was very tempting.

“I want us to be together,” I said softly. I ran my hand over her stomach again. “I know I ran off when I said I wouldn’t, but I always intended to come back. I know I went off the deep end, but it won’t happen again. Please…please don’t leave me. I can’t stand not being near you—not when you’re…like this. Not when you’re going to…to have a baby. My baby.”

Tria’s eyes filled with tears again, and I wondered if we could manage to flood the back of the Rolls.

“But you said…you said you didn’t want the baby,” Tria said, and her voice started to crack again. “You didn’t want to have a baby, not at all! No one ever wanted me, and I wasn’t about to have a baby who wasn’t wanted by his father!”

No one ever wanted me.

Her words echoed in my mind, and I realized how f*cking stupid I had been not to think of it before. Unlike my keeping secrets from her, Tria had revealed her demons of the past to me when we were first together. Her fear of being unwanted and unlovable had threatened to drive a wedge between us. The rejection by her mother when Tria was a young child and then the influence of the Harrisons and their poisonous words telling her no one else would ever want her had taken their toll on her.

She thought I would feel the same way about the baby as her mother had felt about her.

“No, Tria,” I told her. “It’s not like that—it’s not!”

“You don’t want to be a father.” She sniffed as I looked into her eyes and my hand cupped her cheek.

“I do,” I whispered. “Ever since…since that time. I’ve always wanted to be a father.”

“You wanted me to get—”

“I know what I said,” I interrupted. “But it’s not because I don’t want to be a father. It’s because of what I pictured when you told me about…when you told me you were pregnant…”

I paused and took a couple breaths before going on.

“I just kept seeing you…like Aimee.” I had to stop again to fight with the images looming in my head. Tria’s arms tightened around me, and I hugged her back. “If something happens to you, Tria—it’ll kill me. It’s not that I don’t want the baby. I just need you, too.”

For a while, we just held each other. Sometimes we’d look into each other’s eyes, but mostly we just held onto one another with tears streaming down our faces. A few times, our lips met gently, but for the most part, I stared at her face and held on to her, afraid she was going to vanish from my arms.

Tria ran her fingers over my cheek and across my jaw. She scratched lightly at several days’ worth of growth on my face and then traced the little scar over my eyebrow with her fingers.

“You aren’t going to find another fighting job?” she asked quietly.

“No,” I said as I shook my head a little. “Um, I think I’m going to work for, um…well, for my family’s company. It’ll be enough to support us…”

I let my voice fade out, not really sure if there was an us to support.

Tria lifted her hand to the back of my head and brushed my hair backwards.

“You need a haircut.” She sniffed while tugging at a few strands.

My lips twitched into a half smile.

“You should have seen me yesterday,” I said. “I look a lot better now.”