Trapped (Caged #2)(13)

“See?” I said with a smile. “All good.”

“What have you been eating?” she asked.

“Whatever Tria cooks,” I told her. I grinned when she actually growled under her breath. “She’s been doing a lot of vegetables lately. No pancakes on fight night.”

“Good,” she said.

She looked up at me and eyed me closely. I gave her another big grin.

“You’ve started f*cking her,” she announced.

“Nope,” I replied.

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God,” I replied. “But I’m working on it.”

Yolanda looked at me, rolled her eyes and started to laugh. She followed me into the locker room and hung out by the door while I yanked off all my clothes and stepped into the shower for a second. I had forgotten soap, so I just went with a quick rinse.

“I don’t know if I should hug you or punch you for waiting so long.”

“If you hug me,” I yelled at her over the noise from the water, “you’re the one getting punched.”

Yolanda’s smile faltered a bit as she looked at me. I tried to ignore her stares and stepped out and rubbed the back of my neck with a towel. I fumbled around in my gym bag and sighed when I realized I didn’t have any boxers in there. I had to laugh at myself.

“You look happy,” Yolanda said.

I glanced at her and shrugged without comment.

“How much does she know?” Yolanda asked quietly.

I swallowed a couple of times as I shoved stuff into my gym bag. I pulled out a crumpled sweatshirt, saw how nasty it was, and then shoved it back into the bag. I pulled on a pair of black track pants, commando-style, and tied the string low on my hips.

“A little,” I eventually answered. “She knows who my family is, and she knows you got me off the shit.”

Yolanda nodded.

“That’s a pretty good start,” she said. “You going to tell her the rest?”

“Not planning to.”

Yolanda gathered up her stuff and followed me outside. She gave me a few nasty looks as I lit up a cigarette but still offered to drive me home once I was done with the smoke. I leaned against her old Honda Civic, blew smoke into the air, and wondered what Tria was doing and if she was ever going to let me get any further with her. It occurred to me that there was one woman I could ask about such things.

“Hey, Yolanda?”

“Yeah?” She looked up from her phone and eyed me.

“It’s not because I don’t want to,” I told her.

“Don’t want to what?” she asked.

“You know…f*ck her.”

She narrowed her eyes a little.

“It’s just that she…you know…” I paused for a second as I walked away from the car and toward the building, pacing a bit. “I’m trying to take it slow, right? Because she hasn’t before. I mean…she’s a…you know…a virgin.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Hmm,” Yolanda hummed. “I take it you’re not getting anywhere?”

“She just seems really hesitant, you know?” I said. “I want to, but I back off because she seems uncomfortable with it. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“How long has this officially been a relationship?”

“Um…almost a week.”

Yolanda laughed.

“Maybe you should give it a little more time,” she suggested. “Has she even been kissed before?”

I didn’t really want to think about it.

“She’s got this * ex,” I told her. “They did some stuff, but I don’t think she was into it.”

“Uh huh.”

“I think there’s shit about him she hasn’t told me,” I said. “It pisses me off.”

Yolanda glared at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Pot, meet kettle,” she said. “Kettle, pot.”

“Nice.” I tossed the cigarette butt toward the parked cars and leaned up against the white stucco wall outside the gym.

“What, you expect her to open up when you don’t?” Yolanda shook her head at me.

“It’s not the same,” I said.

“How do you know?”

Well, that logic was a little hard to argue with, but I tried.

“She doesn’t want to know about that shit,” I said. “Besides that, I don’t want to go over it with her. It doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe she feels the same way,” Yolanda suggested.

“So what do I do?” I asked. “I mean…sometimes it’s like I scare her away or something.”

“Are you being an ass at the time?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. I thought about the other night in the hotel. “Well…maybe. But just…you know, teasing.”

“Seriously, Liam?” Yolanda said with a half smile. “I’ve seen you sweet talk college girls and MILFs into notches on your bedpost. You really don’t know what to say?”

“That’s not the same,” I scoffed.

“Why not?”

“Because that shit was just…you know…talk. Just saying what they want to hear.”