Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(81)

“Putting things away,” she said with a shrug.

“You’ve been in the apartment for a month, and you’ve kept most of your shit in your suitcase,” I told her. “But here you put everything away. You did that in the hotel, too.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes and just shrugged again, which pissed me off.

“You go on about how I won’t say anything,” I grumbled. “Maybe it’s time for you to talk.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye but didn’t stop taking things out of the Gorgon’s Gunnysack and placing them in the drawer.

“You don’t think that’s a little incongruous?”

“I think you using the word incongruous is incongruous.”

“Nice.” I reached up and scratched at the back of my head. “How about me using the word double standard?”

“That’s two words.”

“Well, at least my math sucks, huh? Does that fit better with your impression of me?”

She stopped shoving things into the drawer and seemed to slump a bit.

“I know this is temporary,” Tria said. She waved her hand in the direction of the open drawer. “I’ll put these things in here, and then in a couple of days or so, I’ll take them back out and go home. Same thing with the hotel.”

She paused and fiddled with the strap on the bag. She took a deep breath, licked her lips, and then continued.

“But at the apartment…” She paused again to consider her words. “Everything is different there. I don’t even know what to call it—your apartment, my apartment, our apartment—nothing seems right, so it’s just the apartment. You call it that, too.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Right now it just feels surreal,” she continued. “Like I’m going to wake up at some point and figure out that leaving Beals was all a dream.”

“More like a nightmare,” I retorted. “I mean, where you left was the nightmare. Whatever. That didn’t come out right.”

“It wasn’t,” she said. “I know you’ve mostly heard the bad stuff, but there are good people here. They’re all kind of like a big family. They take care of each other, and they took care of me. I miss it.”

That comment sent a chill over my skin.

“You’re making a new home,” I told her. “Isn’t that what you want?”

I hoped it was.

“Yes,” she said. “And I don’t want to come back, but I still miss parts of it. Nikki especially. She always makes me feel welcome here.”

“And I don’t,” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

I reached over and placed my hand on the side of her face. I circled the edge of her jaw with my fingers. I had no idea what the right things to say were—I just knew I didn’t want her to feel like she wasn’t welcome where we lived now.

“Unpack your things,” I whispered. “I want you to stay there.”

Her teeth worried her lip, and she continued to look off to the side. I moved my head over until I was in her line of sight.

“I want you to stay there,” I repeated.

“Even if I don’t have sex with you?” she asked.

“Why do you keep harping on that?”

“Because it’s what you want,” she replied. She moved her head away, effectively pulling out of my grasp. “You said it yourself—you don’t do relationships. You’re in it for the sex, and you aren’t getting any.”

If she had yelled it at me, I would have found it hot, but the way she said it—so quiet, and tired, and defeated—it just made my chest clench instead.

I was never one to pry into someone else’s psyche, but I needed to understand.





Chapter 22—Reveal the Past


“Why are you doing this?” I asked her. “Didn’t we talk about this before?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But when Michael said…when he just assumed I was bought and paid for…it just made me realize the people who have known you the longest probably know better than I do.”

“Fucker,” I snarled. “I should have kicked him while he was down for saying that shit to you.”

“It’s true though, isn’t it?” She turned her eyes to me, and my chest tightened up again.

“No,” I said, “it isn’t. And beyond that, Michael doesn’t know me. None of them do.”

“Well, I don’t know you either,” Tria said. The venom had crept back into her voice. “You don’t tell me anything about yourself.”

“You know everything important.” I shrugged. I reached over to try to take her hand, but she pulled away again.

“How you got to where you are,” Tria said, “is important. I want to know, Liam. I want to know what happened to you and why you are the way you are.”

“How am I, exactly?”

“Cold,” she said without hesitation.

“That’s not what you say at night,” I replied as I wiggled my eyebrows.

“You see?” Tria jumped right back into it. “It’s shit like that. I say something that you should consider insulting, and you respond with a half-assed joke instead of being pissed about it, or upset, or whatever. You’re indifferent to everything around you, and I want to know why.”