Takedown Teague (Caged #1) (16 page)

She finally looked back into my eyes.

“I was too scared to sleep,” she admitted quietly.  “But with you…with you holding me, I feel safe.”

Without hesitation, my arm wrapped back around her, and my fingers took their place against her side.  The arm underneath her lifted slightly so I could pull her a little closer against my chest.  Her hand slid farther up my arm and held tight to my bicep.

“You
are
safe,” I stated simply.

I was never one to cuddle, but I wasn’t about to let go of her now.

The shit just got weird after that.

During the day, things went on just as they had been.  Tria cooked and went to school.  I ate and worked out.  The nights when I wasn’t working, Tria usually made dinner, and she would study while I pretended to watch television but really watched her.

Then we’d go to bed.

Things would start feeling really tense right before our usual bedtime.  Tria would gather up her homework or books or whatever and shove them into Chewbacca’s Carry-on so they’d be ready to go the next day.  I’d go out on the fire escape for a smoke and then sit around on the couch and act like I had something to do.  Eventually we’d look at each other, and one of us would mumble something about it being time to go to bed.

Tria would take her sweats and a T-shirt into the bathroom while I’d change in the bedroom, then we’d be all awkward and tense as we’d get into our respective sides of the bed.  She’d usually smooth the blankets evenly across the bed—as if I were ever going to touch them again.  I would turn off the light, and we’d both lay back on the pillows for a minute.

As the darkness would creep around us, we’d move to the center of the bed.

I would usually raise my arm up and over her shoulders, and she would settle against me with one hand on my chest.  My other arm would wrap around her middle, and I would pull her closer to me.  At that point, I could feel her relax into me as I eased against her.  Our eyes would close, and we’d both be asleep moments later.

As weird as it would start out, it was still the best part of the whole day.

It was even better than breakfast pancakes.

It was like a little soft cloud of utopia.  I didn’t wake up any more at night, which I guess I had been doing because I was feeling guilty about touching my “little sister” who was now my roommate.  I was getting the best sleep I could remember getting in years, and Tria seemed pretty happy about the whole arrangement, too.  As long as I could keep the morning wood away from her ass, everything was good.

If she ever noticed, she didn’t let on.

Not that everything was absolutely perfect.  There were certainly a few points of contention.  I was really bad about closing doors.  I think I just lived alone for so long, it didn’t occur to me a lot of the time.  I left the bathroom door open when I was in a hurry to pee, and I left the bedroom door open when I changed clothes.  Tria didn’t walk in on me too many times because she developed the habit of just yelling at me from another room instead, just in case.

She wasn’t completely peaches and cream, either.  I found out on several evenings that Tria did indeed have a bit of a temper, which I had suspected.  There was something about her getting all riled up about various issues that I have to admit turned me on.  Typically it had to do with some injustice she learned about in her classes or over someone being rude to her in one way or another or something just unexpected happening that didn’t fall into her plans.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, she was already bellyaching before she was even inside the door after returning from school.  I could hear her stomping in the hallway before she had her key in the lock.

“It’s supposed to be the damn Thanksgiving holiday!” She was grumbling to herself as the door opened.  “How can someone do that?  I mean, really!”

“Something wrong?” I asked, like a complete and total fool.  I knew it would get her going, and I was counting on it.  Sometimes her tirades were better than porn.

“Something wrong? 
Something wrong
?” she bellowed.  “Yes, there is something wrong, as a matter of fact.  My English professor, Dr. Kapple, is a total fucking asshole, and I hate him!”

I managed to keep my balls by
not
making meowing sounds right at that moment.  I knew this particular kitten had all her claws.

“What’d he do?” I asked.  I rubbed my hand across my face to hide any signs of amusement.

“He assigned a paper due right after the Thanksgiving holiday,” she told me.  “I’ll have to spend the entire weekend writing it!”

“Total dick,” I managed to say without laughing.

“He is!” she agreed.  She tossed Colossus’ Rucksack on the kitchen table and started digging through it.  I leaned forward from my position on the couch so I could see what she pulled out.  I still didn’t trust that thing and had even had a couple of nightmares about it.  I’d probably seen too many horror movies about serial killers who kept body parts in big trunks or bags or refrigerators and shit.  Not that I thought Tria was capable of something like that, but the bag was big enough and full of enough shit that I was quite convinced anything could be in there.

“Well, at least you don’t have to go to campus for a few days,” I reminded her.  Her shoulders slumped a little, and she pulled out a couple of books, a notepad, and some pens from the bag on the table.  She turned around, and her expression had changed.

“I was all caught up,” Tria said with a big sigh.  Her anger dissipated, and for a moment she just looked tired and sad.  She dropped down on the couch and seemed to deflate.  “I needed some time off.  Midterms just about killed me, and I still don’t know what to even cook for dinner tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother,” I said.  “I don’t eat most of what’s on the typical Thanksgiving menu anyway.  Last year I got takeout Chinese.”

“Seriously?” Tria asked with a raised eyebrow.  “That is
not
a Thanksgiving dinner.  I found some recipes; it’s just…not very cheap.”

“So we’ll make something else,” I suggested.  “I’ll even help, if that doesn’t scare you too much.”

Tria snickered.

“It does, actually.”

“Well, you could still make something easy,” I said.  “Sandwiches and chips are perfectly fine with me.”

“I can probably make apple pie at least.”

My mouth started to water at the thought of apple pie, which led me to think of another Thanksgiving dinner and how the menu pretty much fit in exactly with my level of culinary skills.

“You make apple pie,” I said, “and I’ll make all the rest.”

She eyed me for a minute.

“You’re serious?”

“Serious.”  I leaned back against the couch and put my arms up over the top of the cushions.  My arm wasn’t quite around her, but it was kind of close.  “I’ll take care of dinner.  You do dessert and get that paper done so you can relax the rest of the weekend.”

She still seemed pretty skeptical, which was probably warranted, but she agreed to the plan.

*****

The smell of apple pie permeated the whole apartment by midmorning.  In the kitchen, the scent was even stronger, and trying to gather up all the stuff I had bought at the grocery for our special Thanksgiving dinner while being tempted by the pie was not easy.

I wanted to shove my whole face in it.

“Hey, Tria?” I called out.

“Can I come back in there yet?” she asked.

“No!” I replied.  “No entrance until I’m ready!  I was just wondering if you could get the blanket from the bed.  We’re going to need it.”

“The blanket?” she repeated.  “Did I hear you right?”

“Yes, the blanket!”

“Why?”

“No questions!” I dropped my voice low.  “Just do as I demand!”

I could hear her chuckling as she went into the bedroom, and I put the last of the stuff into a paper sack before rolling the top edge up a bit.  I didn’t want Tria to see what was in there before we got to where I wanted to take her.

“Got the blanket?” I yelled into the other room.

“I have one,” she replied.

“Cool!” I said.  “Grab the pie and let’s go!”

“Go?” Tria asked.  She came around the corner with the blanket from the bed rolled up under her arm.  “Where are we going?”

“To have Thanksgiving dinner!” I told her.  I gave her a big, goofy smile.  “Duh!”

“Am I supposed to follow you blindly,” she asked, “or do I get to know where we are going first?”

“I was thinking I would show you where that tree is,” I said.

“What tree?” she asked.

“You know…you said once that you missed trees and shit,” I replied with a shrug.  “I told you there was one in the neighborhood.”

“
Trees and shit
?” Tria giggled.

“You know—green shit.”  I shrugged again.

Tria pressed her lips together, but the edges still curled up.

“So, there really is a tree?” Tria asked with a laugh.  “I thought you just made it up!”

“There really is one,” I assured her.  “It’s not that far.”

“How far?”  She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously.

“Well…um…close enough to take our Thanksgiving picnic there.”

“Thanksgiving picnic?” Tria looked down to the sack in my hands and then moved her eyes back up to mine before smiling broadly.  “I think that sounds pretty nice.”

We gathered everything up and started the walk to the tree along my running path.  It took a while to get there, but when we did arrive, I knew it was worth it.

The tree wasn’t very green anymore and had about half of its golden-yellow leaves still on its branches while the other half lay all around the little patch of dirt and weeds surrounding the trunk.  I had no idea what kind of tree it was, only that it was thin and usually not something you would consider pretty at all.  But with the yellow leaves all around it, the scene didn’t look too bad.

The main thing was, I could see Tria smiling.

“It ain’t much,” I admitted.

“It’s perfect,” she told me.  She spread out the blanket, and we both sat down on it.  I pulled over the paper sack and held it close to me so she couldn’t see inside.  First I took out two heavy paper plates, which I swiped from Feet First, and a couple of napkins.  I handed them to Tria, and she laid them out in front of us.  Then I started bringing out the actual food.

Buttered toast.  Pretzels.  Jelly beans.  Popcorn.

Tria busted out laughing.

“Oh my God, Liam!” she said through snickers.  “Did you make a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Yep,” I replied.  I was grinning like a nut and glad my idea had worked.  It’s not like I could have really cooked anything, but it still counted as tradition in a warped and cartoonish kind of way, and she didn’t have to worry about going to any trouble.

“The tree is the perfect match for this,” Tria said.  “When we first walked up here, I thought it kind of looked like the tree from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
!”

“Maybe in a couple weeks, we can come up here and decorate it,” I suggested.

We laughed, ate our feast, and talked about all of our favorite
Peanuts
characters until it got dark.  With the exception of Tria’s pie plate and the blanket, the rest of the stuff was trash and went into the nearby dumpster at the abandoned warehouse.

“This dumpster is pretty handy,” I remarked offhandedly.  “Got me wood for your bookcase, and now I don’t have to carry all this shit back to the apartment.”

“Wood for the bookcase?” Tria tilted her head to one side to look at me.  “What do you mean?”

“Oh…um…”  I hadn’t really paid any attention to what I was saying.  I never said where the bookcase came from because I didn’t know what she would think of her bookcase being made from a bunch of trash.  She seemed to like it, and I hoped this wouldn’t taint her view.  “Yeah, I um…I found the wood here.  There was this old dude cleaning out one of the factories, and he was just throwing the wood and shit away, ya know?  He said I could have it.”

“You…you made the bookcase?” Tria said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said with a shrug.  “Stacy at Feet First gave me the paint.”

“Stacy?”

“She cooks there,” I said.  “She likes to think she’s everyone’s mom.  She’s been working there since the day Dordy bought the place.”

I stopped rambling and glanced over to see her wipe her eye with the back of her hand.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  Fuck, she didn’t like shit that was made from trash.  I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.

“I had no idea,” she said as she quietly interrupted my thoughts.  “I didn’t know you
made
it; I thought you just found it.”

She stopped in her tracks, and I did the same.  Once again, I felt her arms around my neck and her lips pressed against my cheek.

“Thank you, Liam,” she whispered close to my ear.  “I had no idea…none.”

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes again.

“You are so incredibly sweet,” she told me, and I had to snicker a little.

“Tell that to the guys I work with, will ya?”

“No, they scare me.”

“Scare you?” I questioned.  “Why would those guys scare you?  I wouldn’t let them touch you.”

“I’m not scared for
me
.”  She corrected herself and continued.  “I’m scared they are going to hurt
you
.”

I pondered that thought the rest of the way home.