Chapter Seven — Trinity
CHAPTER SEVEN
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TRINITY
Low voices brought me back to the surface. I wasn’t as floaty anymore, but the way I was cuddled up and warm was so fucking perfect I had no desire to move. If Logan wasn’t rolling me off his lap and telling me the night was over, I wasn’t going to cut it short.
I couldn’t remember the last time I—and my Omega—felt so safe.
Which was a bit ironic, considering they’d literally punished me.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw Cade standing in the gap in the curtains, speaking to one of them. “I’ll bring my car to the entrance and meet you there. We’ll grab her things from the locker room.”
“Are we leaving?”
Cade glanced over at me and smiled. “If you’re ready?”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I was also in no shape to find another way home simply because I wanted to cuddle more. “Okay.”
He looked at the Alphas around me. “Give me ten minutes.”
Beneath me, Logan moved, sitting me more upright. “Here.” A water bottle appeared in my hands. “Drink some, please.”
I obeyed. The water helped clear the delicious fog from my head, but not the languid relaxation that had taken over my body. It was comfy. Not the sluggishness that came from a blood sugar low. That was rare for me, but it happened.
Still, this feeling had everything to do with the Breaker Pack and nothing to do with the traitorous bitch that was my body.
“Thank you,” I said, still leaning my head on his shoulder. “I like this feeling, though I’m not sure why it wiped me out so much.”
“Because your body experienced something new, and it’s not quite sure how to handle it,” Theo said from where he sat nearby. “If you continue to play, it will be less tiring.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean the floaty shit goes away, because that’s the best.”
A brilliant smile crossed his face, and he dropped his head to laugh softly before looking back at me. “No, that usually stays.”
“Good.”
Logan’s fingers found my chin and turned my face towards his. “How do you feel physically?”
My ass was still a bit warm, and I got the feeling I might be very aware of sitting down tomorrow, but nothing hurt. “I feel good.”
He reached a hand out of my view and came back with a small piece of paper. “This is my phone number. I’d put it in your phone, but Cade is getting that. If you feel anything strange, please let me know. I don’t want you to drop alone.”
“Drop?”
“Mm.” He let me settle against him, lips brushing my temple. “When you use up so many of the good brain chemicals, you can run out. And in the time it takes for your body to build them back up, it can feel shitty. Not always, but it can. When it does, we call it drop.”
I couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything bad because of what we’d done, but I nodded.
Logan tucked the small piece of paper into my hand, and the curtain moved, revealing Cade. “Ready.”
“Can you stand?” Logan asked.
“I think so.” A deeper part of me wanted to ask him to carry me to the car simply to prolong the amount of time I felt like this. But I’d already taken up half their night. No reason to be clingy over what was essentially a one-night stand, Trinity.
He helped me up and made sure I was steady on my feet. And because I was still wrapped up in everything, I must have imagined that his hands lingered before he let me go. “Thank you,” I said to them. “For… everything.”
“Believe me, it was our pleasure, Trinity.”
Cade spared me the awkwardness of figuring out how to say goodbye to the four hot Alphas I really didn’t want to walk away from.
He gestured ahead of him through the curtain and back into the main club, and I went.
It was so much louder out here, and I missed the rich, dim quiet we’d been ensconced in. The car would be better.
It sat outside Element with one of the staff monitoring it. Isolde was in the back seat, and Cade opened the door for me to slide in next to her.
She grinned at me. She looked a bit wrecked too, but didn’t seem nearly as tired as I was. Pulling off my mask, I sank down onto the seat and leaned my head on her shoulder. “Fuck.”
Laughing, she nudged me. “Seatbelt. And I’m dying to know what happened.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
The driver’s door opened and Cade slid into his seat, now maskless. “The beginning is usually a decent place to start.”
I stuck my tongue out at him in the rearview mirror, making them both laugh. “Well… it started with me fucking up. I—” Closing my eyes, I fought the inherent embarrassment in the words. “I didn’t listen, and I didn’t read the rules closely enough.”
Quickly, I ran them through what had happened on the roof, though I skipped over what Amber had said about me being triggered. They didn’t need to hear about that. It was my issue to deal with. No one else’s.
“I know James,” Cade said, headlights briefly lighting up his face in the mirror. “He won’t hold a grudge. It’s frustrating when something like that happens, but it does. I’m sure they had an excellent scene after.”
“I hope so.”
The rest of it came out of me in a rush. How they came up and asked, the negotiations, and what happened in that room, though I brushed over the second part, with a glance at Isolde, telling her without words that I’d fill her in on that bit later.
I didn’t know how to handle the end of the evening, having them ask questions about the Alphas and if we were going to see each other again, and everything else I knew my friend would ask. Because I had no idea. Instead, I turned the questions back on her like the journalist I was.
“How was your evening?”
Isolde blushed all the way to the roots of her hair. Being a redhead would do that to you. “It was good,” she murmured.
Cade laughed in the front seat. “I should have rented a limo or something so I could roll up the partition and let you guys talk about everything the way you want to.”
“That’ll come later,” I said. “At brunch. With mimosas and cake.”
Isolde was nodding. “Definitely. Ocean will want to come too.” Our friend wasn’t into the same kinky things we were, but she didn’t care. She had three Alphas who worshipped the ground she walked on.
I glanced at the floor in front of me, but I didn’t see my bag. “Where’s my—”
Cade handed it back from the passenger seat. “Right here.”
“Thank you.”
My story had taken a good portion of the drive home. We were getting close to Clarity Coast. I lived on the outskirts, and I knew I would forget to check my sugar when I got home and beelined straight for a snack.
The process was so automatic, I barely had to think now. Testing strip out of the bottle and into the meter. New needle into the lancet. A drop of blood, a beep, and five seconds later…
I was fine. The low side of my normal range, and whatever I ended up eating would take care of that.
The test strip and needle stayed in the case. I’d throw those away at home.
“You good?” Isolde asked.
“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure.”
She placed her hand on my arm. “I’m glad you had fun. You think you got enough for your article?”
In all honesty, I’d forgotten the reason I went to Element until she said it. “Maybe. I had planned on poking around after playing, but it took it out of me. I’ll have some questions for Amber, and if I don’t have enough, I guess I’ll just have to go back.”
We both collapsed into laughter as Cade pulled into the lot of my apartment building. “Text me tomorrow,” Isolde said. “We’ll plan brunch.”
“You got it. Thank you, Cade.”
He waved. “See you soon.”
They waited until they saw me enter the building like they always did, and I found myself smiling as I forced my way through the apartment door that always stuck, ditched my shoes, and grabbed one of the sweet, barely-counted-as-a-granola-bar things I kept for moments like these.
Not even me dropping my keys twice while I tried to hang them up brought me down.
I still couldn’t quite believe I’d done that. And I had zero regrets.
It wasn’t until I was about to fall asleep that I realized I had no idea where that scrap of paper with Logan’s phone number had gone.