Chapter 13
blair
I’m still floating somewhere above the clouds when Sol pulls me out of her office chair.
One second I’m half-asleep in her lap, the next she’s standing up with me in her arms like I weigh nothing.
She doesn’t even let me walk. She just carries me out the side door of the athletic building, my legs wrapped around her waist, my face buried in her neck.
The campus is mostly quiet this late, but I still feel a ridiculous grin splitting my face the entire way to her car.
“You’re ridiculous,” I mumble against her skin, but I don’t let go.
“Shut up, Reyes,” she muses as she stuffs me into her car and buckles me into the passenger seat like I’m precious cargo.
The entire drive home she keeps one hand on my thigh.
Roxie is already waiting when we pull up.
She’s leaning against the doorframe in one of Sol’s old Knotlocke hoodies and nothing else, her hair loose and messy, looking like she’s been pacing.
The second we step inside, she drags Sol into a hard kiss, then drags me in for the same, her hands sliding under my shirt like she needs to check I’m still real.
Sol closes the door behind us and exhales. “We need to talk.”
Roxie raises an eyebrow. “That bad?”
“Dean called me in. Someone made a formal complaint about my ‘inappropriate relationships with players.’”
I snort and drop onto the couch, pulling my knees up against my chest. “My father would try to pull some shit like that.”
Sol heads straight for the kitchen, already rolling up her sleeves. “He did more than try. He’s been talking to the administration. They’re worried about optics. And funding.”
Roxie hops up onto the counter, and immediately starts stealing pieces of whatever Sol is chopping. “I have to ask— is it your father’s money? It doesn’t matter to us, but he has leverage if he’s butting his head into things.”
I laugh, the sound a little too loud even to my own ears.
“He wishes. Mom set up a trust fund for Camila, that’s my sister, and me before she left.
I may have invested some of it. As long as I stay above a certain number, the rest is free game.
My last name is on some buildings and programs, sure, but he’s not actually paying for any of it. Hasn’t in years.”
Sol glances over her shoulder, knife pausing mid-chop. “So you’re telling me you’re independently wealthy and still chose to be a pain in my ass on my mats every day?”
“Obviously. Rich and annoying is my brand.”
Roxie steals another piece of bell pepper and pops it into her mouth. “You’re such a little shit.”
“Love you too.”
The kitchen fills with the smell of garlic and onions as Sol starts cooking actual dinner like we’re normal people who live together.
Roxie keeps sneaking bites and Sol keeps swatting her hand away with the wooden spoon, muttering under her breath.
I just sit on the couch and watch them, chest feeling too full and too light at the same time.
For the first time since the auction, it’s quiet. There’s no sex, no need to perform, and no one trying to impress anyone. Just the three of us existing in the same space while Sol cooks and Roxie steals food and I… don’t know what to do with my hands.
Sol notices first. She sets the spoon down and turns, leaning back against the counter. “You need something, baby?”
I shrug, suddenly awkward. “I’m just… I don’t really know what to do with my hands. It’s always just been sex before. That’s what I’m good at. That’s what people want.”
Roxie stops mid-reach for another stolen bite. She hops off the counter, crosses the room, and drops onto the couch beside me. Before I can say anything she pulls me straight into her lap, her arms wrapping around my waist, her chin resting on my shoulder.
“For just once,” she says softly, “you get to sit and do nothing.”
I open my mouth to fight back with some smart-ass comment already on my tongue but she cuts me off.
“I want you to do nothing else than just hang with your Alphas.”
I grin despite myself. “I like that. My Alphas. Yeah…”
Sol plates the food, some kind of stir-fry that smells like heaven, and brings it over.
She sets the plates on the coffee table, then sits on my other side, close enough that our thighs press together.
For a while we just eat in comfortable silence, Roxie feeding me bites from her fork when I get distracted, Sol’s hand resting on my knee.
Eventually Sol speaks again. “We’ll have to work around your heat coming up.”
I freeze with a piece of chicken halfway to my mouth. “I’ve been on suppressants since I was seventeen,” I say. “I haven’t had a heat in over three years. I take them religiously.”
Sol sets her plate down. “Why so young?”
I shrug, staring at the fork in my hand. “Heats made me feel out of control. I didn’t trust anyone enough to be vulnerable through one. So I shut it down. Easier that way.”
Roxie nods like she gets it. Sol doesn’t push. She just reaches over, takes the fork from my hand, and slowly starts feeding me the rest of my dinner herself, like she has all the time in the world.
I feel loved in a way I don’t have words for.
“You need something more, you tell us,” Sol says quietly, her eyes on mine.
“This doesn’t work without communication, and I’m sure it’s only going to get more complicated now that people are whispering.
We’re in this. All of us. But we need you to talk to us, Blair.
Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. ”
I swallow the bite she gives me and lean my head against her shoulder.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I can do that.”