Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(59)

“You aren’t,” I told her again. “You do all kinds of shit around here to earn your keep.”

I snickered a little.

“I cost you money,” she stated.

“Not much.” I shrugged. “And you do a lot for me.”

“It’s not money, though.”

“I don’t need it,” I lied. “It’s all good.”

“I can’t be in your way forever!” She was insistent.

“You aren’t in the way,” I insisted right back at her.

“I have to be able to support myself,” she said.

“Says who?” I asked. “I bet if you checked some stats on it, you would find most college students are not living on their own.”

“Most college students have Mom and Dad paying for the dorm.”

“Yeah, okay,” I agreed, “but those who aren’t on campus are living with roommates, and even those in the dorms are usually sharing a room.”

My logic appeared to be working.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” she said softly.

“You aren’t,” I told her.

“You said you had always lived on your own though,” she reminded me. “I have to be…cramping your style.”

I laughed.

“Using that phrase is so unstylish, it can’t cramp anything.”

“That made no sense at all!” Tria laughed. “Maybe you need to do a little studying with me. At least read some of my English books.”

“Nah,” I said. “I rarely have to rely on loquaciousness in the cage.”

Tria lifted her head to look me in the eye with raised brows.

“You dropped out of high school?” she asked for clarification.

“Being a dropout doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” I said.

“Obviously.”

She put her head back down on my chest, and I pulled her in a little closer before speaking again.

“Get the job if you want,” I said, “but you don’t have to move out. It will be easier for both of us if you stay, with or without a job. Besides, I…”

My voice trailed off. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say that wasn’t going to equate to wanting to get between her legs, even though that wasn’t the real reason. Well, not all of it anyway.

“You what?” she asked quietly when I didn’t continue.

“I’m used to you being here now,” I admitted. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to and someone to watch movies with me. I don’t want you to leave.”

Well, that remark put it all out there.

“Okay,” she finally whispered. “If that’s what you really want, I’ll stay.”

I hoped my relief wasn’t too obvious.

“I also don’t want to go back to subsisting on cheese sandwiches and breakfast cereal.”

Tria laughed and playfully smacked my chest.

“Ow!” I cried as I grabbed her hand and held it flat against my skin. I could feel my heart pounding through both of our hands. “No beating the pillow.”

“You make a good pillow,” she said.

I had no idea how to respond to that, and Tria didn’t seem to be inclined to say anything else, so we dropped into silence. Mostly I was just glad she didn’t seem to be planning on leaving quite so soon anymore. Maybe now she would actually unpack something.

I was never one for sharing my life with anyone else, but thinking about Tria leaving hurt my chest.





Chapter 16—Fear the Worst


A damn good left hook sent me to the floor on my back.

A second later, there was a big black guy with a long, dreaded goatee on top of me, slamming punch after punch into my face. I kneed him, kidney punched him, and tried to get a leg wrapped around him so I could flip us over, but most of my efforts were concentrated on protecting my head.

The guy was an animal.

Screaming from the crowd filled my ears, and with a final shove I managed to flip us over. Where my arm had been defensively protecting my face, it was now in the perfect position to move over his throat and cut off his airway. He kept punching feebly until he passed out, and I got up off the floor.

Yolanda’s hand was wrapped around my wrist and holding my arm up high as she announced my victory and pulled me back to the locker room.

“You need stitches.” She made the decision as soon as the door was closed. “It’s more than I can do here. I need to take you to the ER.”

“Fuck that,” I muttered, but then I realized the gauze she had given me only seconds before was already soaked through, and there was a decent trickle of blood running from my temple down the side of my face and down to my shoulder.

“You are bleeding a lot,” she said. “You are going to the hospital.”

It didn’t happen often, but I knew once those words were out of her mouth, I wasn’t going to have much of a choice. She helped me get my clothes on and dragged me out the back door to her car.

“I don’t have the money,” I informed her.

“I got it,” she said. “This one’s on me.”

Friday night, and the hospital was a f*cking zoo. We waited for about two hours before anyone was available to look at me, and then they decided I wasn’t bad off, and I could wait longer. I borrowed some change from Yolanda and tried to call Tria a couple of times, but oddly enough, the phone rang busy. Neither of us had cell phones, and the landline was unreliable.