Released

  “You think I’m ugly!” she wailed.

  “Tria! For fuck’s sake, why would you say that?”

  “You don’t want to have sex with me because I’m a giant fucking balloon with two more balloons sitting on top of the first, bigger balloon and a pair of big-ass balloons around the back!”

  For the sake of saving my own life, I bit down on my tongue hard enough for the shooting pain to keep me from laughing out loud.

  “Tria…baby, you know that’s not…” I halted as the daggers of pending motherhood stabbed into my heart from her eyes. “I mean…shit, Tria! I want to fuck you all the time!”

  “You haven’t today! You didn’t even get the stuff I wrote on the list this morning!”

  I had no fucking idea what the grocery list had to do with anything, but I wasn’t about to ask.

  “It’s ten-o-clock! I’ve been up for an hour, and you were already rearranging furniture!”

  “We didn’t have sex yesterday.”

  “I didn’t even see you yesterday! You went shopping with Chelsea early, and I got home from work late. You were already asleep.”

  “You used to wake me up for sex.”

  I sighed. I knew I wasn’t going to win this with words alone. Anything and everything I said was whirled around in a hormonal blender with the lid off, and I ended up splattered on the walls. I could tell her how she just about castrated me the last time I woke her up for a little nookie, and I could tell her how she needed to get as much sleep as she could now because once the baby was here, we were likely to be sleepless, but there was no point.

  I could only win with action, not words, so I gently gripped her arms and held her in front of me. I examined her beautiful face, wiped tears away from both cheeks, and looked into her eyes.

  “I’m ugly,” she whispered. “I’m fat and ugly.”

  “Hush.” With my hand against the side of her face, I ran my thumb over her mouth. “You are incredibly beautiful.”

  She tried to turn her head away, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “Every time I look at you,” I said, “I see not just the beautiful woman who showed up in my life and gave me a reason to live it but the manifestation of everything we are together.”

  I moved my hand slowly over her abdomen.

  “Every time I see you, I love you more. Every time I touch you, you become more important to me. There is nothing in this world that could make me feel any different, so don’t you tell me what I like and don’t like. I like you exactly how you are right now. You’re beautiful and sexy, and you’re mine.”

  Without giving her a chance to respond, I crushed my lips to hers. My hands roamed over her hips, her stomach, and up her side to one, bountiful breast. I touched it lightly on the side with the back of my fingertips. I found the edge of her neck with my mouth, and I slowly kissed up the side to her ear.

  “Do you know what goes on in my head when we go out?” I asked her. My voice was soft and deep, almost growling. I kept going before she could respond. “When we would go places, it used to be that I would see other guys look at you…”

  A little snarl escaped from my throat.

  “They would look at you, and then I’d see them size me up—looking to see if they could take me out—make you theirs.”

  I shook my head slowly, my lips never leaving the skin just below her ear.

  “But now…now when they look at you…”—I emitted another soft growl—“Now when they look, and they see…They don’t just wonder, they know. They know you’re mine. And I love looking at them and having them know you’re carrying my child. They know you’re mine—both of you. I love that they know exactly what I’ve done to you to put that child in there. I love that there is no doubt—no doubt at all. They know they don’t have a chance.”

  I held her closer to me.

  “You’re mine.” I growled low in her ear. “The way you look now—that just proves it. I’ve never seen you more beautiful than the way you are, and every guy who looks at you knows where I’ve been.”

  Tria was silent for a moment, breathing a little more heavily and holding herself perfectly still until she finally spoke.

  “You…um…I think you might have gotten an extra dose of testosterone when God was handing that shit out,” she said and then giggled slightly.

  “You may be right,” I admitted. I sat back against the couch cushions and kept myself from making any potentially lethal remarks about raging hormones. “I can’t help it. I love that other guys know I’ve fucked you—that I did this to you.”

  I ran both hands over her stomach.

  “You aren’t right in the head,” she informed me. “You are very sweet though in your own way.”

  I gave her a crooked smile and then remembered that I really wasn’t all that sweet. In fact, I had been a total fail at least once.

  Well, all right—more than once. There was one time when I wasn’t so sweet. I needed to correct that right now.

  “I have something for you,” I announced.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “It’s not much,” I replied as I stood up and went over to my jacket. I pulled a little cloth pouch out of the pocket and walked back over to sit on the couch. “You know I suck at this shit, so I’m just going to give it to you, since I never gave you one before.”

  I opened the pouch and shook out a small ring of white gold into Tria’s hand. There was a round center filled with diamond and sapphire chips in a random, squiggly pattern in a white gold lattice.

  “It should fit,” I said with a shrug.

  Tria’s eyes darted from the ring to my face and back again.

  “Did…did…did you…?”

  “I made it,” I confirmed. “I paid for the stones I broke my first couple of weeks there until I had enough for the setting. I’ve been working on it in the evening when you were doing school stuff.”

  She slipped the ring over her finger and then twisted her wrist back and forth to make the chipped stones catch the light. My heart started to beat faster, and I realized that this was just the sort of thing to let everyone know she was mine even after the baby was born.

  “Is this a…a…a wedding ring?”

  “Um…yeah, actually.” I chuckled. “Will you marry me?”

  Tria stared at her hand with her mouth open, but no sound came out of it.

  “It’s not much,” I said. “I mean, the stones really weren’t worth much before I broke—”

  She suddenly smothered me with her mouth, and for a moment, I could hardly breathe as she climbed over the top of me and pinned me to the arm of the couch. I held her by her widening hips—God, I loved how they looked now—and kept her from crushing the rounded bundle between us.

  “It’s beautiful!” she cried as she wrapped her arms around my neck and nearly cut off the circulation to my head. “It’s the most beautiful ring in the whole world, I swear!”

  I had to laugh.

  “I kind of doubt that,” I said. I managed to get her to sit back down beside me and then wrapped an arm across her shoulders and watched her watch the ring sparkle until tears formed in her eyes again.

  “I’m sorry,” Tria said quietly.

  “What for?”

  “I’ve been a bitch all morning.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry for that,” I told her. “I understand.”

  “I’m being crazy,” she whispered.

  “A little.” I smiled as she sighed and leaned against me. I slipped my hand under her shirt and ran it over her bare stomach. A little knee or elbow poked out at me. I rubbed the spot, and Tria relaxed further into me.

  “I love you,” I reminded her, “even with all the hormones. It’s temporary, and after the baby is born, you’ll feel better.”

  “After the baby is born, there will be night feedings and diapers and all that other shit,” Tria said. “What if it gets worse, not better?”

  “It will be…different,” I said. “It might not be better
or worse, and it’s not like it’s bad now.”

  “That’s because you aren’t carrying this thing around all the time!” Tria said. Her voice was getting louder again.

  “I promise to carry her after she comes out, okay?”

  “You have to carry her for the first nine months after she’s born!” Tria sniffed. “It’s only fair!”

  I leaned over and kissed her on the nose.

  “If you want, I can just carry both of you right now.”

  I slipped my arms underneath her legs and behind her back, hoisted her up, and dragged her off to the bedroom. I lay her down on her side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed her again.

  “Rest,” I said. “Just think about what you want to do in the baby’s room while you nap, and when I get back, I’ll rearrange it however you want and as many times as you want. You can also blame me for anything that doesn’t look right. In the meantime, I’ll get that shopping list and head to the store.”

  Tria smiled as she reached up to caress the side of my face.

  “Love you,” she said softly.

  “Love you, too.”

  She was half asleep before I even got out of the room. I found the list on the counter in the kitchen and shoved it into my gym bag before I headed out the door. I managed to get to the bus stop at just the right time, found a checkout lane with no line at all, and had the shopping done in record time.

  After all that, I needed to throw some punches. Though my new trainer at the gym wasn’t really much of a challenge, he’d been pretty good about keeping up with me. He was fast and did a lot more dodging blows than actually hitting me, but it was okay.

  “Hey, Al!” I called to him as I walked across the mat toward the ring. “You ready to go?”

  “Liam!” Al called back. “Perfect timing! I want you to meet someone!”

  I circled the ring to find a guy sitting in one of the referee’s chairs on the far side.

  “Liam, this is Graham,” Al said. The dude stood up and shook my hand. “Graham does a lot of MMA stuff. I thought the two of you would get along well, and maybe I wouldn’t go home with so many bruises.”

  He gave me a wry smile, and I shrugged an apology.

  “Hey, Liam,” Graham said. He was a decent sized guy—right around two hundred pounds and maybe an inch or two shorter than me, so he looked a bit stockier. Dark, cropped hair and bright eyes gave him that rugged look readers find in sportsman’s magazines. “What’s your preference?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Girls,” I said, and Graham laughed.

  “I told you he was an asshole,” Al said as he walked away.

  “How about a fighting preference?”

  “No gloves is what I’m used to,” I said. “I do a mix of Muay Thai and Aikido, mostly.”

  “Awesome! Let’s shake it up!”

  Al helped me get my hands taped, and I climbed through the ropes to meet Graham in the middle of the ring. I bounced up and down on my toes and squeezed my hands into fists a few times to get the feel back. It had been a long time since I did this—no gloves, unknown opponent.

  We circled slowly, both of us watching the other intently and not feeling too rushed to get into the battle. I figured he was going to wait for me to make the first move anyway, so I went for him.

  He was quick.

  He dodged, grabbed both my shoulders, and kneed me in the side.

  With a grunt, I turned back, got my balance, and punched out twice. He backed up, his eyes widening in surprise. Bare-handed fighters rarely punched outright—you were as likely to hurt your hands as someone else’s face, but I was used to it. I’d cracked my fingers so often, it was a wonder they didn’t just fall right off my hands.

  I followed after him with a jump, and came down with my knee to his chest. He grabbed my leg, flipped me over, and we both went down on the mat. I could hear people yelling—we must have gathered a little bit of a crowd—but I didn’t pay much attention to it.

  I was focused.

  My vision sharpened.

  I was in my element.

  Spinning around, I flung my elbow into his chin, which slammed the back of his head into the mat. He rolled enough to get away, and kicked out with both feet as I came at him again. I felt the ropes dig into my back as I flew backwards, bounced off of them, and then went back to my opponent.

  Back and forth.

  He’d kick; I’d punch.

  Hitting him with a quick succession of jabs from my foot into his stomach, I finally got the upper hand when his diaphragm had a spasm, and he couldn’t catch his breath. A moment later I was behind him with my arm around his throat, pressing against the side of his neck.

  His hand slammed the mat three times, and I released him.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered. “You have a hell of a hit.”

  Al laughed from the side of the ring as he tossed us both bottles of water. I popped the lid off one of them before helping Graham back to his feet.

  “All good?” I asked.

  “Very,” he replied. “I’m gonna be sore tomorrow, though!”

  Laughing, I climbed through the ropes and dropped to the floor, and Graham followed.

  “You really are good,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s been a while—I think I’m a little out of shape.”

  Graham turned back to Al and the two started talking as I gathered up my stuff.

  “Good to see you haven’t lost your touch.”

  The voice startled me, not because I didn’t realize there was someone behind me—I had heard the footsteps as I was talking to Graham—but because I recognized the voice.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I snapped.

  “Checking up on you,” Yolanda replied.

  “Bullshit,” I growled back. “You’re done with me, remember? Besides, my parents aren’t paying you anymore.”

  Yolanda took a half step back. She actually had the decency to look embarrassed, but it didn’t really matter.

  “That wasn’t…” She paused, took a long breath, and then looked me in the eye. “That wasn’t the reason, you know.”

  “Oh, really?” I replied with a full head of sarcasm. “I don’t know—you took a cut of my pay, and you were getting paid off to keep tabs on me. What exactly was the reason then?”

  Yolanda walked over to the bench and dropped down heavily. She rested her forehead in her hands as she bent over her knees.

  “I did,” she admitted. “But that’s not the reason I took you in. You were already living with me when your father came up and offered the money to me.”

  My instinctive reaction was to tell her to fuck off and walk away. I wanted to more than just about anything, but a lot of shit Erin said about making my life easier by actually listening to people kept floating around in my head. So, instead of calling bullshit again, I folded my arms across my chest and just watched and waited.

  Yolanda eyed me warily for a moment and then went on.

  “Everything he was asking me to do—watch out for you, keep you off the drugs, give you a reason to be sober—I was going to do it all anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…because…fuck, what does it matter?”

  “It probably doesn’t,” I shrugged, “but if you want to tell me, this might be the only time I’m willing to hear it.”

  She leaned back against the concrete wall and looked up to the ceiling as she let out a long breath through pursed lips. She closed her eyes for a moment, and her throat bobbed before she spoke again.

  “My brother…my little brother…” She paused again. “He was a wrestler in high school, just like you were. He was good, too. Better than you. He had all this potential to do whatever he wanted, but instead he met this girl.”

  My chest tightened a little, but I tried not to let it show.

  “She was a hell-child, that one. Into all kinds of shit. He started with smoking pot, then tried a few other things—opiu
m, LSD—I don’t know what all else. I just know that at one point, he decided to try blow. What none of us knew was that he had a heart condition—one that might never have caused him any problems at all, but one that ended up not mixing well with cocaine.”

  Her hands were shaking a little, but she gripped her thighs and went on.

  “His heart started beating too fast from the coke, and it just gave out. He died the first time he tried it.”

  She looked back at me.

  “You remind me of him,” she said. “You always did. I felt like if I helped you, maybe it would make up a little for not being able to help him.”

  She sniffed, glanced at me, and then glanced away to wipe at her eye. There was something totally…off about the gesture, and I remembered why.

  I had still been somewhat strung out—not actually high, but coming down after a relapse. She had been pissed—really, really pissed at me. She’d coldcocked me when I arrived at her door.

  I had been on the couch, just staring at the television and only half watching a commercial for some product that was going to change the lives of housewives everywhere. Yolanda was on the phone, and I only paid attention because it wasn’t me she was yelling at.

  “Fuck you, Mother!” Yolanda was yelling. “There is no way I’m helping you out again. You obviously should have had more than one child so you had someone else to call and bitch out. I’m just not interested anymore!”

  Yolanda had slammed the phone down with a bang loud enough to make me jump and fall off the couch.

  “You are totally full of shit, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “What?” she responded, but she wasn’t really surprised. The little jump in her voice was way too late.

  “You,” I said distinctly. “You are full of shit.”

  “Liam, I only wanted—”

  “Hey, Yolanda!” Al walked over and gave her a hug. “I haven’t seen you in years! How are you?”

  “I’m…I’m good, Al. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain,” he said with a big smile. “Especially not with Teague hanging out at the gym. If I did, he’d probably take me out!”

  I smiled, but I didn’t feel it.