Trapped (Caged 2)

Chapter 7—Share the Stories

I was half a second away from completely exploding in rage. Anyone talking about Tria like that made me want to torture unicorns even if the words came from the woman herself. It was probably just the shock of the words that kept me from screaming back at her—I was just too flabbergasted by the accusation.

“I’m not pretending anything!” I finally said. “I’ve told you before that I want you here.”

“Why?” she asked, her abrupt anger diminishing quickly. “Because if it really is just for the sex, I would at least understand. I mean, that’s very…male of you.”

“Goddammit!” I yelled, the anger overtaking me and no longer allowing me to hold back. “If I just wanted someone to fuck, there are dozens of women within a half mile who would make it a hell of a lot easier!”

I shoved myself off the bed as the tension in my arms caused my hands to start to shake. I grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the makeshift nightstand and fully intended to light up, not fucking caring if I was inside or not. It actually made me feel a little better not to open the window.

Of course, since I was already so pissed off, I completely smashed the entire soft pack when I grabbed them. There were only four cigarettes left in there anyway, and I managed to crush the lot of them. The next time I was at the store, I was going to smack the guy who gave me a soft pack instead of a hard pack.

A long string of curses exited my mouth in a fire extinguisher sort of explosion—spraying profanities in every direction. I further smashed the smokes, but it really wasn’t very fulfilling. I was starting to shake with the rage and tension, and ended up pulling back and slamming my fist into the wall, leaving a giant hole above the bed. Tria jumped and squealed.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

I ran my hand through my hair and tried to calm myself down. Tria wiped at her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hand, and I got pissed off at myself because I was too ticked off to be able to comfort her yet. I turned and yanked open the window without a word, crawled out to the fire escape, and snatched the pack sitting next to Krazy Katie. If she noticed at all, she didn’t seem to care.

After a couple of minutes of slowly inhaling smoke and nicotine, I crawled back inside.

Tria was still sitting in the middle of the bed, and her eyes were wide and staring as she watched me come back in. She clenched her fingers around the top of the blanket resting on her stomach. As soon as I looked at her, she looked away.

“Tell me,” I said, my voice insistent. I sat down on the edge of the bed and angled myself toward her. “Tell me why you think like this.”

“Nothing…really…”

“Tria!” I snapped, the anger quickly returning. It was so easy to tell she was hiding something the way she wouldn’t look me in the eye and kept trying to practically hide under the blanket. I reached out and grazed the top of her arm.

“Fine!” she said suddenly. She sat up and pushed my arm away before turning toward the outside of the bed. She dangled one foot over the edge as she started to talk. “I know I can be a…a burden.”

“A burden?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “My mom used that word a lot. She didn’t really want a child, and she made it abundantly clear that I didn’t live up to her expectations.”

“I thought you lived with your dad,” I said.

“That was later.”

“Later? Weren’t you six when he died?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “But I only lived with him for about a year before he was killed.”

None of this shit was making sense to me, so I figured I ought to just let her say what she wanted to say, get it all out, and then ask questions later.

“Dana wasn’t into parenting,” Tria said.

“Dana is your mom’s name?”

“Yeah,” Tria said with a nod. “She was a lot more interested in going out with her friends, and I was just in the way because she was supposed to be taking care of me. I was kind of…left on my own a lot. Sometimes I’d wake up, and she wouldn’t have come home from the night before.”

“Who watched you when she was gone?” I asked, totally forgetting my plan to ask questions later.

“No one,” she shrugged.

“What do you mean no one

?” I growled. “How old were you?”