Released (Caged #3)(67)
I ran both hands over her stomach.
“You aren’t right in the head,” she informed me. “You are very sweet though in your own way.”
I gave her a crooked smile and then remembered that I really wasn’t all that sweet. In fact, I had been a total fail at least once.
Well, all right—more than once. There was one time when I wasn’t so sweet. I needed to correct that right now.
“I have something for you,” I announced.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s not much,” I replied as I stood up and went over to my jacket. I pulled a little cloth pouch out of the pocket and walked back over to sit on the couch. “You know I suck at this shit, so I’m just going to give it to you, since I never gave you one before.”
I opened the pouch and shook out a small ring of white gold into Tria’s hand. There was a round center filled with diamond and sapphire chips in a random, squiggly pattern in a white gold lattice.
“It should fit,” I said with a shrug.
Tria’s eyes darted from the ring to my face and back again.
“Did…did…did you…?”
“I made it,” I confirmed. “I paid for the stones I broke my first couple of weeks there until I had enough for the setting. I’ve been working on it in the evening when you were doing school stuff.”
She slipped the ring over her finger and then twisted her wrist back and forth to make the chipped stones catch the light. My heart started to beat faster, and I realized that this was just the sort of thing to let everyone know she was mine even after the baby was born.
“Is this a…a…a wedding ring?”
“Um…yeah, actually.” I chuckled. “Will you marry me?”
Tria stared at her hand with her mouth open, but no sound came out of it.
“It’s not much,” I said. “I mean, the stones really weren’t worth much before I broke—”
She suddenly smothered me with her mouth, and for a moment, I could hardly breathe as she climbed over the top of me and pinned me to the arm of the couch. I held her by her widening hips—God, I loved how they looked now—and kept her from crushing the rounded bundle between us.
“It’s beautiful!” she cried as she wrapped her arms around my neck and nearly cut off the circulation to my head. “It’s the most beautiful ring in the whole world, I swear!”
I had to laugh.
“I kind of doubt that,” I said. I managed to get her to sit back down beside me and then wrapped an arm across her shoulders and watched her watch the ring sparkle until tears formed in her eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” Tria said quietly.
“What for?”
“I’ve been a bitch all morning.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for that,” I told her. “I understand.”
“I’m being crazy,” she whispered.
“A little.” I smiled as she sighed and leaned against me. I slipped my hand under her shirt and ran it over her bare stomach. A little knee or elbow poked out at me. I rubbed the spot, and Tria relaxed further into me.
“I love you,” I reminded her, “even with all the hormones. It’s temporary, and after the baby is born, you’ll feel better.”
“After the baby is born, there will be night feedings and diapers and all that other shit,” Tria said. “What if it gets worse, not better?”
“It will be…different,” I said. “It might not be better or worse, and it’s not like it’s bad now.”
“That’s because you aren’t carrying this thing around all the time!” Tria said. Her voice was getting louder again.
“I promise to carry her after she comes out, okay?”
“You have to carry her for the first nine months after she’s born!” Tria sniffed. “It’s only fair!”
I leaned over and kissed her on the nose.
“If you want, I can just carry both of you right now.”
I slipped my arms underneath her legs and behind her back, hoisted her up, and dragged her off to the bedroom. I lay her down on her side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed her again.
“Rest,” I said. “Just think about what you want to do in the baby’s room while you nap, and when I get back, I’ll rearrange it however you want and as many times as you want. You can also blame me for anything that doesn’t look right. In the meantime, I’ll get that shopping list and head to the store.”
Tria smiled as she reached up to caress the side of my face.
“Love you,” she said softly.
“Love you, too.”
She was half asleep before I even got out of the room. I found the list on the counter in the kitchen and shoved it into my gym bag before I headed out the door. I managed to get to the bus stop at just the right time, found a checkout lane with no line at all, and had the shopping done in record time.
After all that, I needed to throw some punches. Though my new trainer at the gym wasn’t really much of a challenge, he’d been pretty good about keeping up with me. He was fast and did a lot more dodging blows than actually hitting me, but it was okay.
“Hey, Al!” I called to him as I walked across the mat toward the ring. “You ready to go?”