Trapped (Caged #2)(27)

Underneath my palm, I felt her hands begin to shake.

“No one else wanted me,” she whispered. “No one. I thought Leo’s family wanted me—really wanted me. But as I got older, I realized it was more about the community than me, and what I wanted or needed wasn’t important. They didn’t really want me, either, but at least they were willing to put up with me.”

“I knew that douchebag was a f*cking idiot,” I mumbled.

“No one ever really wanted me,” she repeated as her voice cracked and tears began to cascade down her face. She turned to me again, and I wasn’t sure if it was her expression or my own thoughts about what she had told me, but she suddenly looked very young.

“Why not?” she whispered. “What’s wrong me with?”

I moved quickly, gathering her up in my arms as wailing sobs shook her body.

I started to panic as she started practically screaming with each cry. Her whole body quaked as she collapsed against me, her cries making it sound like someone just chopped off a major limb. I attempted to calm myself as much as possible as I pulled her against me.

I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t much better prepared than when she had thrown herself at me—sobbing at that time, too—when Keith had first shown up at her apartment last summer. With nothing else popping into my brain as a magic answer, I just held her and spoke the only words in my mind.

“I want you,” I said into her ear. “Since the first day I met you, I wanted you.”

She clung to me, her crying echoing throughout the room as I just keep repeating that I wanted her. I wrapped my arms around her tightly as I held her body against mine and tried to make sense of it all.

My parents had thrown me out but not without reason. I had gone against their wishes, fully understanding the consequences of my own actions. What had happened to Tria was completely different. How could a parent do that to their own flesh and blood? How could anyone willingly give up a little kid, deciding they just didn’t feel like taking care of them, regardless of obligation? Didn’t they know there were some people who got denied parenthood altogether?

The pangs of regret that curled into my stomach were ones I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“I want you,” I said again into her hair, fighting back the sting in my own eyes as she continued to quiver and quake in my grasp.

“Why?” she cried. “I don’t understand…it doesn’t make sense.”

I lifted her up and turned her in my lap so she was facing me. I grabbed both sides of her face in my hands and forced her to look at me.

“I want you,” I told her again as I stared into her eyes. “I want you here because you’re smart, and you always think of other people before yourself. I want you because you are the kind of person who feels obligated to pay me back for shit you don’t really owe me. I want you because you are willing to take a psycho grocery shopping to make sure she has good food to eat. I want you because you don’t mind laundry, and you’re an awesome cook, and you put up with me being a slob.”

I brushed my thumbs over her cheeks and wiped away the tears there.

“I want you because you are beautiful,” I told her, “inside and out. You’re putting yourself through school and trying to do something with your life. Everything about you is admirable, and I don’t even deserve to be in your company.”

She tried to shake her head, but I held her still.

“I’ve spent a long time not feeling anything because all I felt was…bad. I was only happy when I was fighting, but you…”

I tightened my grip on her a little and brought my forehead to touch hers.

“You changed all of that,” I told her. “For the first time in a decade, I have a reason to be outside the cage.”

Tria went quiet, and for a long time, I just held her in my arms. Eventually, she calmed and grabbed some tissues out of the Swirling Vortex of Doom.

“You haven’t told me how all of this relates to sex, you know.”

Tria dropped her head to my shoulder and sniffed again. She clung to the cheap box of tissues, and bits of white fluff practically covered the room.

“Well, I told you about that before,” she mumbled.

I could have guessed the rest, but I kept prodding her.

“When it…didn’t really work out…” Tria trailed off, and then sighed deeply. “Keith started yelling at me. He said it was no wonder…no wonder no one…”

I shouldn’t have pushed. I ended up holding her on my lap as she cried again, barely able to speak between sobs.

“He just…kept saying…it was because there was…something wrong with me!” she sobbed. “He said I was going to be a…a terrible…a terrible wife…and no one…would ever…want me…”

She took a long, shuddering breath.

“And I knew he was right!” she exclaimed. “My own mother didn’t want me, so why would anyone else?”

I wanted to go back to that f*cker’s house and beat the shit out of him so badly, I couldn’t even see straight. He didn’t even qualify as a douchebag anymore. I didn’t know what the f*ck he was, but as I held Tria and continued to tell her that I wanted her, I definitely considered a couple dozen ways to make him fit into a douchebag.