Released

  “You don’t run the jewelry side of things,” I said.

  “Uh…no, I don’t,” Michael admitted.

  “You can’t give me this job.” I sat back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest. My skin was tingling as the implications of what he was trying to set up became clear. “I’d be working for my father.”

  “Very, very loosely,” Michael explained. “It’s not like you would be in the building where he works. You would likely never see him.”

  “But it’s still working for him,” I repeated.

  “Yes, technically, it would be.”

  “Fuck, Michael!” I stood up and glared down at him.

  “Twenty-five dollars an hour, Liam!” Michael stood up beside me. “It’s that or the janitor’s position, and this one is nearly twice the pay. What’s better for Tria?”

  He was getting a little frustrated with me. I could tell. Not that it wasn’t warranted. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to perform any of the jobs we’d talked about. Even cleaning out toilets was hardly my forte. This one though—I knew how to do this. I’d be rusty and out of practice, but I remembered the basics. If I were to be completely honest, I had once even enjoyed the task.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered, but all the fight was gone from me.

  “Does that mean…?” Michael looked at me pointedly, trying to read between the lines of my obnoxious phrasing.

  “I’ll apply for it,” I sighed.

  “Good! Now let’s put something together that at least resembles a resume, shall we?”

  Chimes rang from Michael’s pocket, and he sighed as he reached down and looked at the display before shoving the phone back into his pocket.

  He pulled the laptop over and started fumbling around with a couple of different resume templates. We got all my information in, including his address as my own. We even used some of my messing around in the bar as experience and put Dordy down as a reference.

  Michael’s phone rang again, but he glanced down and then ignored it. When it continued to buzz in his pocket, he finally gave up.

  “Dammit,” he growled. “I don’t know who this is, but let me grab it so they’ll stop interrupting.”

  “It’s all right,” I mumbled. While he answered the call, I walked over to the window and looked out over the hill where a thin sliver of the river was visible. I wondered if I had time to sneak outside for a smoke without Chelsea noticing what I was doing.

  The woman speaking to Michael must have been pretty ticked off or upset about something—I could hear the sound of her voice across the room though the words were too muffled to be understood. Michael couldn’t seem to get a word in edgewise, and the look on his face was comically tense. Finally, he raised his voice.

  “Tria, please just calm down!” he yelled. “Liam’s fine...”

  He looked at me, and I felt my guts drop to my shoes.

  “He’s right here with me now.”

  “Let me talk to her,” I said as I moved quickly across the room. I wanted it to sound like a demand, but it was nothing more than a plea. I could still hear the voice that was now painfully familiar as I approached my uncle.

  “Maybe it would be better for him to explain,” Michael was saying. “He’d like to speak with you.”

  I grabbed the phone from his hand.

  “Tria?”

  “Liam! Liam!” The sweetest damn voice in the world was right there in my ear, and the inability to actually see her face or touch her skin made my insides want to explode.

  “I’m here,” I whispered.

  “Oh God,” she sobbed and continued to speak, but her words were all garbled by crying and I couldn’t understand anything she said.

  “Slow down!” I cried into the phone. “Jesus! Are you all right? God, please—Tria—tell me you’re all right!”

  The seven seconds it took for her to catch her breath enough to make sense were the longest moments of my life.

  “I’m fine,” she sniffed.

  I breathed out a slight sigh, but it wasn’t enough.

  “And…and are you…I mean, are you still…” I choked on my own words. “Is everything okay with you? With…um…the…”

  “I’m still pregnant, yes.”

  My body relaxed and I let out a much more audible sigh.

  “I was so worried,” she said. “When they gave me the subpoena, the officer asked if I knew where to find you. They had looked everywhere.”

  “Subpoena?”

  “We have to go to court to testify against Keith,” she told me. “It’s for the sentencing since he pled guilty to aggravated assault or something like that. The police said they had tried to serve you at home and work but couldn’t locate you.”

  “Yeah, things have been a little…crazy.” I flinched at my admission.

  “I went to the apartment, but no one answered when I knocked. I was worried, so I tried to open the door with my key, but it didn’t work. Then this lady came up the stairs and started yelling at me to get away from her apartment.”

  Tria started to cry again.

  “Tria—where are you?”

  “I’m at Feet First,” she said. “I just punched Yolanda.”

  “You what?” I yelled into the phone.

  “I need to see you, Liam.”

  I looked up at Michael.

  “Can I borrow Damon and a car?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tria, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told her. “Just stand out front with Wade, okay?”

  “Okay.” She sniffed again.

  As much as I hated to do it, I hung up the phone and handed it back to Michael. A minute later, I was in the back of the Rolls, and Damon was heading down the drive.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked Damon.

  “Of course, Mr. Teague,” Damon replied. “I’ve taken your uncle to that particular venue many times.”

  I tried to remember how many times Michael had come to Feet First and realized it had to have been a lot more often than once a year. I’d catch glimpses of him every now and again but usually chose to ignore him. Sometimes he’d approach me, but usually he gave up and left without saying anything.

  How many times? How many times had he been there, trying to help me, and I’d just been a complete ass to him? How many times had Ryan done the same thing? How many times had Chelsea called just to have me hang up on her?

  God, I was a dick.

  Michael had come to make sure I was all right in Portland, and I had punched him for making what was probably a pretty reasonable assumption about the kind of company I kept. Even after I did that, he stayed and tried to get to know Tria. He had even left us cash for the trip.

  He knew I wouldn’t ask for it, and he knew we must have needed it, or we wouldn’t have gone to his hotel in the first place. He’d done all of that for us…well, for me. He hadn’t known Tria. He didn’t want anything in return. He was just there. He was there for me.

  Fuck.

  I rubbed the palms of my hands on my jeans and closed my eyes for a minute. My stomach was cramping up on me again, but there were so many fucked up thoughts going on in my head, I didn’t know which one to blame.

  Glancing out the window, I recognized the area and knew we were close. There were a bunch of people standing around Feet First—smoking and just hanging out. I couldn’t see Tria at first, and I felt panic welling up inside me.

  She said she needed to see me, but what if she changed her mind? What if she realized what a total dick I was and decided to just head in any direction away from me—cut the ties, cut her losses—and just go?

  Damon pulled up to the curb just outside of the bar. Tria must have recognized the car, though it stood out in this neighborhood anyway, and immediately appeared through the middle of the crowd. She ran over to the car’s back door, yanked it open, and jumped inside before Damon had the chance to walk around to open it for her. The door slammed closed behind her, and she threw herself at me.
>
  For the first time since she told me about being pregnant, everything felt right again.

  Her scent was no longer just imagined but surrounding me—filling the back of the car and my head with everything that was good and right in the world. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest. She scrambled into my lap as Damon maneuvered the car back into the street and toward the highway. I held on as tight as I could, as if my whole being depended on her closeness.

  Maybe it did.

  As her tears hit my skin, I couldn’t help but cry with her. She cried into my shoulder and neck, and her body shook so hard, I kept feeling like I could lose my grip on her.

  Except I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “I’m sorry!” Tria sobbed. “I’m so sorry! I never should have left you…”

  “You should have…I deserved it. God, Tria, I’m sorry…I’ll never let you down again…I swear.”

  “I was just so scared, and I didn’t know about it all…”

  “I never told you anything…”

  “I was afraid for the baby…”

  “I was such a fucking asshole to you…to everyone…”

  “You said you were using again…”

  “You were just gone, and I freaked…”

  “I didn’t know what to do…”

  “I’ll never fail you again, Tria—I promise.”

  It was overwhelming, cathartic, painful, elating, and exhausting. By the time we had both spewed out everything we wanted to say, we were sobbing into each other’s shoulders and hanging on to each other as tightly as we could. I moved my hand up and down her back, feeling the warmth of her body under my fingers. I tucked my head in the space between her neck and shoulder and inhaled.

  There was nothing better than the scent of her skin. Not pizza or sex or H—nothing compared to her scent.

  I pulled back and used my hands to skim her cheeks, still wondering if this was real or not. I brushed aside the tears on her cheeks and kept my eyes on hers as I moved closer. Though I had intended the kiss to be soft and gentle, Tria grabbed the back of my head and pulled me roughly against her mouth.

  Moaning into her, I reciprocated—moving my lips, mouth, and tongue together to make her mine again. At the same time, she claimed me, and I wanted nothing more than to give myself to her in any and every way possible. I was hers—completely and fully.

  When we finally parted, I just held her and stared into her face for the longest time. Tria turned slightly to sit across my lap with her arms around my neck, and my hand graced over her side. Looking down, I moved my hand from her side to the center of her belly. Over the fabric of her shirt, I massaged the area softly.

  “Everything is okay, right?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” she said. “I mean, as far as I know…I guess?”

  “You didn’t see a doctor yet?”

  “No,” she responded with a shake of her head. “I asked the clinic how much it would be at, but I didn’t have the money. Yolanda’s going to loan it to me. Well, she was.”

  “What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “The police came to serve me with the subpoena,” Tria said. “They asked if I knew where to find you, and I gave them the address, and they said you weren’t living there anymore. I didn’t think they were right, so I went to look, like I told you, and there was that other woman living there.”

  “I didn’t have enough money for rent,” I admitted. “The asshole wouldn’t give me a chance to come up with the rest, and…”

  I trailed off, deciding I didn’t really want her to think about the rest of that shit. Stress wasn’t good for a pregnant woman, was it?

  “I thought you would be working tonight,” Tria continued, “but when I got there, Wade told me you stopped fighting there. Then I saw Yolanda…”

  Tria’s eyes hardened.

  “She didn’t tell me! She got another fighter, and she never told me that you weren’t working!”

  “What did you do?”

  “I asked her what the hell she thought you were going to do for money if you weren’t fighting, and she said you weren’t her problem anymore, and that I needed to let go and move on.”

  “And?” I prompted when she paused.

  “And I punched her.” Tria snarled and her eyes blazed. “She fucking deserved it for doing that to you. How were you going to get to the doctor or therapy or anything if you didn’t have a job?”

  “It was…difficult,” I replied. I didn’t want to tell her I hadn’t even managed to do any of that shit yet. I tensed until her face turned to mine, and her eyes softened as they focused on me.

  “I didn’t know where you might be,” she said. “No one had seen you, so I called Michael. I thought maybe he would be able to help me find you. I never expected you to be there with him.”

  “Long story,” I said with a shrug.

  Another tear dripped down the side of her face, and her lip disappeared behind her teeth.

  “Did you…I mean… were you…?”

  “I didn’t do it,” I told her. “I wanted it, but I didn’t use again. I’m still clean.”

  She let out a sigh of relief as she placed her head back on my shoulder.

  “What do we do now?” she asked quietly.

  My muscles tightened, and that horrible prickly feeling crawled over my flesh. I didn’t know if Tria was going to leave me again or not, but the thought of hauling her off to a deserted island where it was just the two of us was very tempting.

  “I want us to be together,” I said softly. I ran my hand over her stomach again. “I know I ran off when I said I wouldn’t, but I always intended to come back. I know I went off the deep end, but it won’t happen again. Please…please don’t leave me. I can’t stand not being near you—not when you’re…like this. Not when you’re going to…to have a baby. My baby.”

  Tria’s eyes filled with tears again, and I wondered if we could manage to flood the back of the Rolls.

  “But you said…you said you didn’t want the baby,” Tria said, and her voice started to crack again. “You didn’t want to have a baby, not at all! No one ever wanted me, and I wasn’t about to have a baby who wasn’t wanted by his father!”

  No one ever wanted me.

  Her words echoed in my mind, and I realized how fucking stupid I had been not to think of it before. Unlike my keeping secrets from her, Tria had revealed her demons of the past to me when we were first together. Her fear of being unwanted and unlovable had threatened to drive a wedge between us. The rejection by her mother when Tria was a young child and then the influence of the Harrisons and their poisonous words telling her no one else would ever want her had taken their toll on her.

  She thought I would feel the same way about the baby as her mother had felt about her.

  “No, Tria,” I told her. “It’s not like that—it’s not!”

  “You don’t want to be a father.” She sniffed as I looked into her eyes and my hand cupped her cheek.

  “I do,” I whispered. “Ever since…since that time. I’ve always wanted to be a father.”

  “You wanted me to get—”

  “I know what I said,” I interrupted. “But it’s not because I don’t want to be a father. It’s because of what I pictured when you told me about…when you told me you were pregnant…”

  I paused and took a couple breaths before going on.

  “I just kept seeing you…like Aimee.” I had to stop again to fight with the images looming in my head. Tria’s arms tightened around me, and I hugged her back. “If something happens to you, Tria—it’ll kill me. It’s not that I don’t want the baby. I just need you, too.”

  For a while, we just held each other. Sometimes we’d look into each other’s eyes, but mostly we just held onto one another with tears streaming down our faces. A few times, our lips met gently, but for the most part, I stared at her face and held on to her, afraid she was going to vanish from my arms.

  Tria ran her fingers
over my cheek and across my jaw. She scratched lightly at several days’ worth of growth on my face and then traced the little scar over my eyebrow with her fingers.

  “You aren’t going to find another fighting job?” she asked quietly.

  “No,” I said as I shook my head a little. “Um, I think I’m going to work for, um…well, for my family’s company. It’ll be enough to support us…”

  I let my voice fade out, not really sure if there was an us to support.

  Tria lifted her hand to the back of my head and brushed my hair backwards.

  “You need a haircut.” She sniffed while tugging at a few strands.

  My lips twitched into a half smile.

  “You should have seen me yesterday,” I said. “I look a lot better now.”

  Her brow furrowed, and I was sorry I had mentioned it.

  “What do we do now?” I could barely hear Tria’s words, but the message spoke volumes.

  “I want to be with you,” I said. I didn’t dare look away from her—not for a second. “I want you close to me so I can protect you and keep you safe.”

  I touched her stomach again. Even though there wasn’t yet any sign of pregnancy, I still felt drawn to the spot and the possibilities that were hidden beneath her skin.

  A boy, a girl...new potential for a new beginning…for all of us.

  “Please let me be our baby’s father,” I said as my eyes met hers. “Please let me try to be what you need me to be.”

  As I waited desperately for her to respond, the doubt, concern, and tears in her eyes tried to rip me into pieces, but I held myself still. She studied my face for a moment and then looked down at my hand on her stomach.

  “Okay,” Tria said quietly. “Let’s try.”

  I was never one to beg, but when there’s nothing left to lose, everything’s left to gain.

  Chapter 8—Make the Apology

  “So, you really hit her?”

  Tria’s shy smile and the tinge of red in her cheeks confirmed it.

  The guest bedroom had been a home away from home when I was a kid and felt even better with Tria lying next to me in the queen-size bed. I kept one arm around her back so I could hold her close to me, and the other just kept touching parts of her like I was trying to make sure she was real. I touched her cheek, her hair, her shoulder, her hand and fingers, and then her stomach.