Trapped (Caged #2)(28)

He had intentionally played on her worst fears of rejection, and for what? Did it make him feel better to blame her because she wasn’t turned on? Did he get off on it? Did he do it just to make her stay there? Did he really not know what he was doing, or was he just an ass?

Maybe another option: all of the above.

Despite my profession, I wasn’t normally a violent person. Something about people mistreating Tria brought it all out in me. Most of my vicious thoughts were nothing more than empty threats in my head, but when it came to Keith Harrison, I was becoming more and more convinced that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hurting him if I ever saw him again.

“They never let you forget it, did they?” I asked her when she calmed down again.

“Who?”

Tria had finally stopped shaking. I wasn’t even sure what time it was anymore, only that it was late, even for us. She was lying across my chest at this point, apparently deep in thought or memories or something. All I could see in my head was the image of a little girl with tears in her eyes while her own mother walked away from her.

If I ever met Dana Lynn, I was probably going to hurt her, too. At the very least, I was going to dress her up as a light heavyweight and toss her in the cage. Of course, as much as I wanted to have a quick and easy target to blame all this shit on, I knew there were other culprits as well.

“Those f*ckers you lived with,” I said, “the Harrisons. They just reminded you of that shit all the time, didn’t they?”

“They’re the ones who were willing to—”

“Bullshit!” I yelled. She jumped a little in my arms, and I held her closer. “That shit Keith was spewing at you wasn’t anything you should feel grateful for!”

“No one else would,” she whispered. “How else am I supposed to feel?”

“Like those f*ckers did you wrong,” I replied instantly. “They could have told you none of that shit was your fault like they should have done in the first place. But no—they let it all fester to make sure you stuck around. Fuckers.”

“Your parents threw you out, too,” she said. “From what little you have told me, anyway. At least Leo let me stay.”

“Totally different,” I said.

“You going to tell me how so?”

She was treading on seriously thin ice. The way my family treated me was nothing like the way those *s had treated Tria. The way Keith had talked to her was nothing short of abusive. My family had never been like that. Of course, as far as I knew, Tria’s adoptive family hadn’t contributed to anyone’s death.

I was never one to compare parenting styles, but I was pretty sure she had it worse as a child than I did.





Chapter 8—Remember the Good


I hesitated. I didn’t want to go into any of this shit with her. I didn’t want her to know about it, think about it, or ask me about it. If she did, I’d have to remember everything, too.

“You aren’t, are you?” she said as she sat up a little to look at me. “You don’t ever plan on telling me anything about yourself, do you?”

“I’ve told you some shit.”

“You told me about a very short time period.”

“You don’t want to hear it,” I muttered. “None of it matters now anyway.”

“There you go,” she said as she rolled off my chest and sat up a little against the pillows to look at me. “Telling me what’s best for me. You realize that’s the main reason I left Beals, right?”

I glared at her—not because she was wrong, but because she was right, and I didn’t want to admit it. There were things I hadn’t told her that I probably could, and it would ease her curiosity without actually saying too much. I took a long breath through my nose, opened my mouth to say something, but then hesitated again.

“What was it?” Tria asked again, prompting me. “The perils of being filthy rich?”

“It’s probably not what you think,” I said quietly. I considered the house where I grew up. “Filthy rich is about right, though.”

“What was it like?” She sniffed loudly, rubbed at her nose, and adjusted her position across from me.

At the very least, she deserved to hear something to take her mind off the shit she had been reliving, so I told her what I could.

“The house where I grew up would probably be better described as an estate or maybe a palace.” I snorted at the memory. “I don’t know how many acres of land—a couple hundred, I guess. The house has twelve bedrooms in the family wing—not sure about the other side, but probably similar.”

“Twelve?” Tria repeated with incredulity. “Did I hear you right?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “There is a theatre in the house to watch movies, an indoor Olympic-sized pool on the ground level, and another pool outside. You can actually swim from one to the other. There are probably a hundred people employed just to take care of the house and grounds. Outside there is one of those big mazes made out of hedges. You have to go through the maze to get to the stables.”

“Stables?”

“My parents have a bunch of horses, yeah.”

“You know how to ride horses?”

“English and western style, yes.” I eyed her for a minute as she took this information in. At the same time, memories came back to me in quick flashes, followed by floods of events that were once common but were now long forgotten: the pony I rode when I was just learning, getting lost in the maze and crying until Mom found me, and the way the vapor would form at the surface of the outdoor, heated pool when it was cold outside.