Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(57)

I probably would have fallen asleep if it hadn’t been for the pounding at the door.

“Uggghhh…” I groaned as I hauled myself off the couch to see who was there. I opened the door to Yolanda’s sour face, which immediately soured my mood. “What do you want?”

“Checking in on you,” she replied as she walked past me. “You did say if I didn’t think you were eating right, I should just come by and check.”

Fuck! I did kind of remember saying that. Now she had totally called my bluff.

“You could have called first,” I grumbled before I sat down. Once I was back on the couch, I couldn’t stop the additional groan from slipping out of my mouth.

“What the hell did you eat?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “It was f*cking awesome, though.”

“Dammit, Liam!”

“Come on, Yolanda,” I moaned. “I don’t fight for two more days. Nothing but f*cking whey and iceberg between now and then.”

At the moment, the thought of a salad sounded pretty awful. Even a glass of water wasn’t appealing.

“Tria!” Yolanda shouted as she headed toward the kitchen. If I could have moved, I would have gone after her. “You have to stop feeding him all this crap!”

“Leave her alone,” I muttered, but if someone were to ask, I would have to admit it was halfhearted. For starters, I was too stuffed to move or do anything else about the inevitable confrontation. There was also the demented guy part of me that kind of wanted to see what would happen between the two of them if left on their own to duke it out, so to speak. Not that I thought Yolanda would hit Tria—I knew she wouldn’t—but a verbal battle could be just as entertaining.

Tria seemed a little taken aback at first and just looked at Yolanda with wide eyes.

“Don’t you know how to make a f*cking salad?” Yolanda asked her.

I hated salads, and Yolanda knew it. She was always trying to force me to eat that shit anyway. I was a vegetarian, not a f*cking rabbit.

I watched Tria’s eyes narrow, and I was glad I wasn’t wearing something confining like my tight jeans. If I was going to be honest, I hadn’t worn those jeans recently because they were a little tighter these days than they used to be. Anyway, Tria’s hands balled into little fists as she stuck them on her hips and took a step forward. Watching her do that made my cock strain to get out of my sweats, and I could feel my mouth turn up into a smile as I watched her move up to the woman who had just invaded her kitchen and practically insulted her cooking.

This was going to be interesting.

“Excuse me?” Tria’s voice was succinct and breezy, like it was traveling on a puff of air. I was pretty sure that in a minute the puff of air was going to feel like it just escaped from a furnace.

“I said, ‘Stop feeding him all this shit!’” Yolanda roared as she waved her hands around in the general direction of the kitchen table.

Tria’s eyes narrowed further, and I held my breath as she took another step closer to my trainer, a woman who easily had twenty pounds of muscle over her. Tria had to tilt her head up to look Yolanda in the eye, but the difference in size wasn’t stopping her.

“I’m sorry. I know you are Liam’s friend,” Tria said, “but frankly, you can just go ahead and yell at him if you want to, not me! I just cook it; he’s the one who eats it!”

“Oh, yes!” Yolanda snorted. “We’ll just leave it up to ‘Mister Self Control’ over here, shall we?”

“Fuck you,” I growled.

“Does the term enabling mean anything to you?” Yolanda asked as she narrowed her eyes into slits.

“I don’t even know what the hell you are talking about!” Tria yelled.

“I don’t want him making himself sick again, or f*cking worse, for the sake of his goddamned weight class!” Yolanda screeched. She pointed a finger at Tria’s chest. “You are doing that to him!”

“I most certainly am not! And if you want to point fingers, there’s someone over there on the couch who happens to be a grown man!”

“Grown man, my ass.”

“Yolanda, for f*ck’s sake!” I finally shoved myself off the couch and moved over to where the two of them were toe to toe.

“You have any idea what he does to lose weight fast?” Yolanda was saying.

“No, I do not,” Tria said. As Yolanda’s words registered, all the ire was suddenly directed at me. “What does she mean, ‘sick again’?”

“Ah, f*ck!” I turned around and headed back to the couch.

“Want to know?” Yolanda asked, sneering at Tria.

“Shut the f*ck up!” I yelled at her. I’d had enough, not only of her assumptions but also having her bring up ancient history nobody needed to know anything about. “And while you’re at it, get the f*ck out!”

“Do you want to go back to that again?” Yolanda asked with her arms crossed over her chest. The pose emphasized her biceps. “Because if you do, I’m not dragging you back. I’ll tell Dordy to fire your ass.”

I glanced at Tria, saw the confusion in her eyes, and knew there was nothing good in the slightest coming of this. What was an amusing little catfight had turned into something that I found extraordinarily uncomfortable.