Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
I wait for it. The slow burn of regret, the one that will arrive right on schedule. My body’s one reliable subscription service.
It’s a flaw, really. To hold the ability to so thoroughly enjoy myself and then to… well and truly believe I didn’t deserve it.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always steered clear of moments like this. Not that I’ve had many encounters where I did anything like this in public.
The back of a car, sure. A bathroom that locked, once, that I don’t talk about. But somewhere anyone could walk in? Never. I have standards. Had. Past tense, apparently.
My head falls back against the wall. Except walls don’t breathe. Walls don’t get warmer when I lean on them. Cool. Great. Love that for me.
I keep my eyes tightly shut. Squeezing them so hard I see white spots.
I don’t dare open them. Not when my mystery lover drops my legs. Not when he flips my dress back over my hips. And not when I can feel his gaze on me.
Because mind you, my eyes are still well and truly squeezed shut. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Object permanence, solved. I’m basically a toddler, and the toddler is winning.
Sure. Tell that to the mess on my two-thousand-dollar dress.
The dress I saved a year for. The one that was supposed to walk me through tonight.
The speech, the Ellenburgs, Angela’s room upstairs.
The one that was supposed to make me look like someone who belonged in that room.
Like Angela’s successor. Like a woman who had her whole life figured out.
Ruined now.
Funny how fast that goes.
“Open your eyes, Hadley,” his voice is quiet almost pleading.
Maybe that’s why I open them.
He’s on his knees on the locker room floor. His pants still open. The button gone. His shirt still on, still stained with gods know what. And he hasn’t a care in the world.
He’s looking at me like I matter. Like I mean something.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Tears well in my eyes as I try to get my feet steady under me. I blink them away before a single drop can fall.
“Like what?” The question comes from behind me. Confirming what I already knew.
Enzo is holding me tight to his chest. A forearm barred across me, his wrist resting on my sternum, his fingers spread across my neck.
He holds me like I might bolt. Smart man. The urge is right there. My legs have already drafted the exit, they’re just waiting on management to sign off.
It’s moments like this I forget how to be a person. Like someone handed me the script for Human Woman, Post-Coital, Dignified and I skipped the rehearsal. How do I even begin to face what just happened?
“Leif?” I question, my throat scratchy and dry.
“Here.” The third member of their trio steps into the dim locker room light, to my left.
“Oh, great. The whole set.” I draw the words out and throw an elbow back into Enzo. A real one. For half a second, I’m loose, and step toward the door under my own power before his arms close again. But he had to catch me. That’s new.
“I…” want to close my eyes and pray the floor opens up under me, because if I have to talk about my feelings I’m going to get violent. “I need to check on Callie. So if the three of you could uncrowd the exit.”
I’m a terrible friend.
“We need to talk, Hadley.” Leif walks over in his pristine black suit. He stops beside the man on his knees. “Davi.” He reaches a hand down, and Davi slips his fingers into his.
Oh.
Oh.
I read that all wrong.
Davi smirks like he’s got front-row seats to whatever’s happening behind my face. I really wish he’d stop. I really wish he’d do it again.
“How are you feeling?” Leif asks me carefully, still holding onto Davi’s hand.
“Confused. Sticky. Reconsidering every decision since roughly the third grade.”
Enzo wraps his other arm around me, tighter. Every time the room gets heavier his grip answers in kind. Like he’s the one about to come apart and I’m what he’s holding onto.
I try not to inhale him. The spice of him. I fail, obviously. I’ve been failing at the bare minimum all night, why stop now. And I try not to notice the way his breathing regulates the tighter and longer he holds me.
“What is this?” Not a question so much as a demand. “And don’t say complicated.”
“Your period, Hadley.” Leif doesn’t ask, not really. He just lets the question sit there.
If he wants to talk about women’s issues, then. Fuck it.
“I’ve never had a period, Leif.” Anger spikes in my veins. Sharp, fast, hot. “Not. One.” The words come out flat now. Because long ago I buried my barren emotions. “The doctors don’t understand.”
Enzo goes still behind me. The arm across my chest stops being a restraint and starts being the only thing holding me up.
Nobody says anything.
Nobody is surprised, either.
Leif and Davi look at each other. I know that look. I’ve given that look, over a donor file, a problem that just solved itself. It’s the look of confirmation. Thirty-two years of we don’t know what’s wrong with you.
The floor does something.
I open my mouth to say more.
But I can’t. Because I think of Callie.
Callie, who—
The room holds its breath with me.
I need to get to Callie.
“You’ve got the wrong impression.” My voice is somebody else’s voice again. “This was two people, some aggression, and a door. I didn’t sign up for whatever this is.”
“She does this.” Davi’s voice is dry, almost fond, directed at Leif more than me. “Talks more the less she wants to feel something.”
“I’m standing right here.”
“I know.” He smirks. “It’s adorable.”
“Hadley.” Leif again, his voice careful like his words are about to spook me more. “There are things we need to tell you before this goes any further. Tell me, what do you know of your birth parents?”
I frown, unconsciously leaning back into Enzo. “What?”
Real dignified, Hadley.
“Your birth parents.” He steps closer, until I’m all but sandwiched between him and Enzo. “You are a very, very special woman, Hadley.”
“Explain. Fast. And use small words. At least one that isn’t special, because every time you say special a little more of my patience dies.” He opens his mouth and I stop him, even though I asked him to speak. “What is this?”
“This is you, hopefully, choosing us.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m hearing you. You’re just not saying anything. It’s a real gift, honestly. All those words, zero content.”
“It’s not an easy thing to understand.” He deflects. “There are things I cannot say. Not outright.”
“Auspicious.”
“He’s not being cagey to be a dick.” Davi speaks up. “There are rules. The dick part’s just a bonus.”
“Things you have to figure out on your own.” Leif keeps going like neither of us said a word. “Because if I told you, you’d never accept the words.” He closes his eyes and inhales slowly. Then opens them to my confused face. “Life is about to move very, very fast for you, Hadley.”
Not fast enough.
“I should go.” I wiggle. Enzo doesn’t let go.
“Do you really want to go right now?” Leif says instead.
“Yeah. To check on Callie.”
“You have my word she’s okay.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then don’t.” He shrugs and presses a kiss to my shoulder that lights up my entire body.
And just like that, Callie slides one inch down the list. I feel it happen. I let it. Worst friend in Philadelphia, population me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not offering you anything.” He kisses along my collarbone. “I’m showing you what you already are to us.”
I absolutely do, in fact, let my head drop back onto Enzo’s shoulder.
“And what does that mean?” I gasp as he nips my skin.
“Use us,” he says.
The words. I hear them. But I don’t really understand them. Use us. Who says that? That’s a billboard, not a sentence. Use us. For what, exactly?
I should make sure.
“What does use us mean?”
“Out of everything he just said.” Davi tilts his head. “That’s your question, Hadley?”
Why do they keep using my name? It is, in fact, my name. But it’s the way they keep saying it. In a way no one ever has. Soft, with an undercurrent that promises things.
So use me does, in fact, mean exactly what I think it does.
“Let’s pick this up later.” I try for breezy. “After the fundraiser.”
“Can’t do that, Hadley.” Leif inhales slowly, like he’s drawing in my very essence, before he lifts his head.
“You’re a very important woman. But there are rules we cannot break.
” He grips my chin between his fingers, turning me to look at him, then cups my jaw.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it.” The words aren’t for me.
I know it by the way he says them, more to himself than anyone.
“And what if I say no?” I pause and lick my lips, my very swollen kissed lips. “Do I turn into a pumpkin, or do you just bill me for the dress?”
Those blue eyes lock onto mine. The crystals are back. The iris does that pulsing thing again. Definitely not normal irises.
“I really hope you don’t.” He leans in, a breath away. “Tell me yes. Right here. Right now. And we are yours.”
We.
We.
“Are you implying what I think you’re implying?” He can’t possibly mean the three of them. Right now. Right here. In a locker room.
His lips twitch. “All of us. Or none. That’s the shape of it.”
“That’s…” I swallow. Three grown men? “That’s a lot of shape, Leif. That warrants overthinking. That warrants a lawyer.”
“You’re overthinking.”
“It warrants overthinking.”
Davi. Enzo. Leif.
The three of them.
A part of me still wants to run. I don’t get deals like this. I couldn’t tell you the last time I felt wanted. Desired. It’s why I cut men off.
I didn’t want to cut men off.
They were mean. Coercive. I never felt like me in a relationship.
But they aren’t asking for a relationship, are they?
They’re asking for right here, right now. This moment. And this moment only.
A triple one-night stand. On the biggest night of my life. Where I should be up in that room, mingling, making connections. Where I’m supposed to meet Judy and her husband.
“You’re overthinking,” Leif says again, and brushes a whisper of a kiss over my lips. His closeness makes me want to press my thighs together to starve the ache he creates just by existing.
“Say yes.” It’s Enzo, behind me. His teeth graze my neck before the slightest pinch. Pleasure ricochets through me, from that seemingly innocent spot on my neck straight to my clit, where I nearly come undone all over again. “Just for tonight.”
“Enzo,” Leif warns.
There’s something there I’m missing. Something outside my operational awareness.
Just for tonight.
Tonight.
One time, I played Never Have I Ever at a bridal shower.
The most daring thing I’ve done in thirty-two years was sneak out of high school a half hour early to get ice cream.
I want to live.
Thirty-two years and that’s the headline. Ice cream. I’ve existed. I’ve never once lived.
“Yes.”