Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(19)

Tria looked at me expectantly.

“Okay, when I first started fighting here, Yolanda told me I needed a catchy nickname of some sort. We toyed around with a few and figured “takedown” fit well with my name and sounded pretty tough.” I stopped and looked around, wondering if this was something I really ought to be advertising to the world, but most of the world had already departed—either in mind or body. “There’s a lot of theatrics about it, ya know? People remember catchy names.”

It all sounded kind of dumb when I explained it.

Tria blinked a couple of times.

“So, I started going by Liam ‘Takedown’ Teague.”

“You were right,” Tria said.

“About what?” I asked, confused.

“That isn’t much of a story.”

We both laughed.

Most of the crowd was pretty much gone, so I said goodbye to Dordy, grabbed my gym bag, verified the cash inside was right, and then we headed off down the backstreets and toward home. Tria seemed quiet and thoughtful, which kind of drove me crazy because I had no idea what she was thinking.

“So, what’s your impression of Feet First?” I asked.

“It’s…interesting,” she said noncommittally.

“That’s it? Just interesting?” I pressed for a better answer. “What kinds of places do you usually hang out at?”

“I haven’t spent a lot of time in bars, really,” Tria admitted. “I don’t have much to compare it to.”

“I thought every small town had at least one bar,” I said. “Did yours skip that little facet of entertainment? Had to be a really small town.”

Tria laughed quietly.

“I grew up in a trailer park outside of town,” she told me.

“So, like those little rows of houses all shoved up next to each other?”

“Not exactly,” she said quietly. “Everyone lives in those mobile homes, and it’s really more like a campground.”

“Bet you had a great view of the neighbors.” I grinned when she scowled at me. When she didn’t answer, I tried another tactic. “What did your parents think of you moving all the way from Maine to here?”

“Well…um…my parents split up when I was a baby,” she said. “I’ve only seen my mom a couple of times since then. Dad died when I was six.”

“Oh, shit…sorry.” I suddenly felt like an absolute ass.

“It’s okay,” she replied quietly. “It was a long time ago. Mom’s kind of a basket case, so I was raised by my dad’s friends.”

It seemed like she was going to say something else, but she didn’t. I considered pressing, but her mood had darkened a little. I decided to lighten it up.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“My favorite color?” she repeated. “What kind of question is that?”

“A normal one,” I said. “Well?”

“Yellow, I suppose,” she said. Her cheeks tinged with pink, and I wondered what about the color yellow would make her blush.

“Why yellow?” I urged her to answer.

“It’s bright, like the sun in the summer,” she said quickly. “Yellow is warm and inviting. The sun makes the trees grow tall. It’s so hazy here all the time, and there aren’t any trees. I haven’t seen a single tree in this neighborhood though there are a few planted on campus.”

“There’s one,” I said. “It’s a few blocks away.”

“A tree?”

“Yep.”

“Where?”

“It’s about a mile and a half down, actually,” I told her. “It’s in an area that used to have a park in it when all the factories were still in business. I think it was set up for people to go eat their lunch or something. I go past it every day.”

“Every day?” she repeated.

“Yes, every day,” I mocked. She glared at me. Her expression made me grin—she was such a tiny thing but definitely had a temper to her as well. Even though I was still aware of the shitty closed-up storefronts, broken glass, and vulgar smells around us, everything else seemed to fade into the background as I talked with her. “I run in the mornings.”

“Do you work out every day, too?”

“Uh-uh,” I said as I shook my head from side to side and tapped my chest with my thumb. “I’m performing the interrogation here.”

I eyed her as I pulled a cigarette out of the pack in my pocket and lit it.

“You got a boyfriend back home?”

“No,” she said bluntly.

“Oh.” I didn’t really know what to say about that. She didn’t offer anything else, and again I got the idea I should find another subject. “Favorite flower?”

“Seriously?”

“Just tell me!” I snapped.

“I don’t know…um…orchids, I guess.” She reached up and pulled the band out of her hair, which then fell around her shoulders. “They’re so complicated. You can look at them for an hour and keep seeing new parts of them.”

“You could look at a flower for an hour?” I snickered. “You need cable TV.”

“I can barely make the bills as it is,” Tria replied. “No way could I add another forty bucks a month on top of it.”