Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(15)

“Yeah,” I said with a quick nod. “I can do that.”

I was never the outdoorsy type, but I started walking her home every night after that.





Chapter 4 - Find the Step


I walked slowly back and forth in front of Fin’s Bar and Grill and watched people smelling like grease walk out of the place. Just the smell of greasy food made me feel a little sick—there was no way I’d ever actually eat in such a place. I couldn’t even bring myself to walk through the front door.

Tria bustled out just as I finished my cigarette. She was trying to walk and find something in Godzilla’s Clutch Purse at the same time, which made her trip on the step as she was coming out the door. I tried to keep from laughing out loud.

“One of these days,” I told her, “you are going to stick your hand in there, and it will get lost in all that shit. You’ll never find it again.”

Tria sighed and tilted her head at me. She pulled her hand out and held up a little tube of lipstick or ChapStick or gloss or something—maybe all three—like it was some kind of trophy. She put it on with exaggerated flair before dropping it back into the bag.

“You just don’t understand,” she said.

“I hope I never do,” I admitted.

“Wow...who would have thought?” she said under her breath. Her eyes darted over me.

“Thought what?” I asked, looking down to see if I had pizza sauce or something on me.

Tria's cheeks tinged with red.

“That you owned a shirt,” she said with a small smile as she looked me over again. “Well, most of one, anyway. I've never seen you in one before.”

“Heh...I guess not.” I reached up and fiddled with the collar of my plain, black T-shirt with the sleeves sliced out of it, leaving it mostly open down the sides. I never thought much about what I was wearing. Most of my clothing came from secondhand stores.

We fell in step together, moving without a lot of rush down the sidewalk and across the street. It was Wednesday, and I wasn’t working, but Tria had gotten off late again. She was supposed to get off before the place closed, which was one in the morning, but she always seemed to get stuck doing something else until closing time. It was only a twenty-minute walk, but she’d be so late, we usually wouldn’t get back to the apartments until two thirty in the morning. This night wouldn’t be any earlier.

I had given her a bunch shit about hanging out for so long behind Feet First the week before. It wasn’t much safer than the street. Apparently, she thought she would be “close enough” to me that it would be okay, which set me off pretty bad. I took her around front and introduced her to Wade and made her promise to come inside when I was working on Friday.

“So who made ‘patron of the evening’ tonight?” I asked.

“This guy with a big green Mohawk,” she said immediately. “He’s a vegetarian and wanted me to get the chef to make something special for him since there wasn’t anything vegetarian on the menu outside of fries and onion rings. It’s a bar, dammit—not a four star restaurant! We don’t serve pasta primavera! We don’t even have spaghetti!”

“I’m a vegetarian,” I said with a sideways glance at her.

“You are not,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

“I most certainly am.”

Tria looked over at me, trying to determine if I was making this up or not.

“Really?”

“Really,” I replied. “Since I was about seventeen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-six.”

Her lip disappeared behind her teeth for a minute.

“So why did you become a vegetarian?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said. “You grilled me about cage fighting last time. It’s my turn to annoy you with questions.”

“Ugh!” Tria groaned, and I laughed.

“Why did you decide to move here?” I asked. I shoved the tips of my fingers into the front pockets of my jeans and kicked a chunk of cement into the center of the road with the toe of my tennis shoe.

“I told you—I’m going to school.”

“Yeah, but why here?” I asked.

“Hoffman College gave me the best deal,” she said with a shrug. “Aside from the financial aid and scholarship, they have a service that will come and pick me up to get to classes.”

“You’re going to Hoffman?” I tried not to sound too shocked.

“Yes,” she affirmed. “Why?”

“You just hadn’t mentioned it before,” I replied nonchalantly as images of the tall brick buildings filled my head. I remembered the ladies in the alumni center who would always give me candy when I accompanied my mom on one of her visits. “It’s a pretty small school.”

“That’s one of the things I liked about it,” Tria said. “It’s actually family-owned and gives more money in scholarships than other programs. The econ department is really well known as well.”

There would be no argument there—Hoffman College was quite well known for a few of their programs. I hadn’t really heard about the economics department before, but I also didn’t pay much attention to that shit when I was a kid.

We continued along the sidewalk past the back side of Feet First and around the corner toward our street. When I looked up, there were two guys heading toward us, and I heard Tria let out a long breath. Glancing over at her, I could see the muscles in her arm tense as her fingers gripped the strap of her bag, and she moved a half step closer to me.