Chapter 23 #2
Not dramatic. Not heavy. Just…inclusion. Like I’m standing at the edge of something old and familiar to them, and instead of leaving me outside it, they’re making space.
Shaina’s eyes meet mine. Then she says, in a voice that carries just enough to make Mac start laughing before she’s even halfway through it: “We drink to those who love us, we drink to those who don’t. We drink to those who fuck us, and fuck those who won’t.”
Mac nearly chokes.
Kya is already laughing.
Emma just shakes her head like she’s heard it a thousand times and still somehow finds it funny.
And I laugh.
Actually laugh. The kind that slips out before I can stop it, warm and surprised and a little disbelieving.
Shaina watches me for one second, then clinks her bottle lightly against mine.
“There,” she says. “Now you’re less suspicious.”
I raise a brow. “Less?”
“Don’t push it.”
That makes me laugh again. And when I take my first drink a second later, it goes down easier than it probably should.
Emma hands me another drink before I can ask what’s in it. “Try this.”
I take a cautious sip. It’s stronger than I expect and a little sweeter too, enough to go down easily if you’re not paying attention.
Mac lifts her bottle toward me. “There she is.”
“There who is?” I ask.
“The woman who is leaving that room and acting like a human.”
Kya snorts into her drink. “Give her five minutes before she threatens to go back to her room.”
I take another sip and look around.
Raven one week ago would’ve had every nerve on edge in a room like this. Raven now still has most of them on edge, if I’m being honest. But less. Less than before.
That should probably scare me more than it does.
The women keep talking, drawing me into small conversations that don’t require anything heavy.
Casey and Amy come over once to grab popcorn and report that Lexi is absolutely fine, Jason is down for the count, and Gio has been outvoted on movie choice but is “dealing with it like a man,” which, judging by Amy’s face, means complaining nonstop from a nest of blankets.
That image alone nearly softens me clean through.
Lexi is okay.
She’s with the kids. Safe. Happy. Entirely unconcerned with where I am. That should feel strange. Instead, it feels like a gift.
So I let myself take another drink. Then another. Not too many at first. Just enough to feel my shoulders start to come down. Just enough for the room to soften around the edges and stop feeling like something I need to assess every second.
People talk to me. I talk back. Someone laughs at something I say, and for once I don’t hear strain in my own voice when I answer. It’s subtle. But it’s there.
A little loosening. A little warmth. A little dangerous. Because this is what happens when you finally feel safe enough to let your guard slip. You don’t always know where to stop.
I know that.
And still, when Mac presses another drink into my hand and tells me the first two didn’t count because I was “still making your hostage face,” I take it.
That’s on me.
Alcohol doesn’t make me wild. It doesn’t make me someone else. It just turns down the volume on all the things I’m usually carrying.
The exits stop feeling quite so urgent. The noise stops scraping over my nerves quite as sharply.
When Emma laughs and tugs me into the edge of the dance space for one song, I actually let her. I am not dancing well. No one is dancing well.
That appears to be part of the point.
Kya joins in halfway through, laughing when one of the brothers nearly takes out a chair trying to spin his woman and failing catastrophically. Someone whistles. Someone else heckles. The whole room feels warm and alive and messy in a way that should be too much and somehow isn’t.
For the first time in a very long time, I stop holding every piece of myself in a fist. And that’s dangerous. Because the problem with dropping your shoulders is that sometimes your body forgets how exposed that leaves you.
It starts with the song. Not the whole song. Just the opening bars.
A low guitar line and the first few lyrics sung in a voice too smooth and too familiar, and suddenly I’m not in the clubhouse anymore.
I’m in my old kitchen.
Cal’s hand around the back of my neck.
That same song playing from his phone while he smiles like he’s in love with me and squeezes just a little too hard when I tell him I’m busy.
The memory hits fast and mean. Not enough to fully drag me under. Enough to knock me sideways internally.
I freeze for half a beat. Then force myself to move again. Keep smiling. Keep breathing. Keep acting normal. No one notices.
I tell myself I’m fine. I’m not.
Before I can recover, Mac catches my wrist lightly to pull me away from the edge of the dance space before one of the brothers backs into me.
The touch is harmless. Casual. Warm. My body doesn’t care.
The second fingers close around my wrist, memory crashes harder.
Cal in a hallway.
Cal by the front door.
Cal catching me mid-step because he didn’t like the look on my face.
My skin goes cold.
I jerk instinctively, not enough to make a scene, but enough that Mac’s expression changes immediately.
“Hey,” she says, loosening her grip at once. “You okay?”
I nod too fast. “Yeah.”
Lie.
My pulse is suddenly too fast, too loud.
The room tilts a fraction. I need air.
I need—
Someone behind me laughs. Loud. Sharp. A man’s voice with a rough, amused edge that sounds just enough like Cal on the wrong night to send the next wave of panic straight through my chest.
My vision narrows. Not a full blackout. Not fainting. Just that awful tunnel where the world pulls too tight around the edges and all your senses start grabbing at the wrong things. Too much sound. Too much movement.
The song is still playing. The room is too warm. Somebody brushes too close at my back and my whole body locks.
Mac is saying something.
I can’t make out the words.
Emma turns toward me from across the room, her face sharpening.
I try to breathe and get half a breath before a drunk man stumbles sideways near the bar and ends up too close, one arm braced on the edge of the wall beside me as he catches himself.
He’s not touching me. Not really. But he corners the space for one second too long, his body angled wrong, his breath thick with beer, his grin vague and unfocused.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says.
Sweetheart.
The word alone is enough to turn my blood to ice.
I go still. Completely still. I know what this is now.
The spiral. The storm.
One trigger after another until your body stops recognizing what’s actually in front of it and starts reacting to every ghost at once.
The song.
The wrist.
The laugh.
The cornered space.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. I can’t feel my fingers. The room goes too bright and too far away at the same time.
And then Joker is there.
I don’t see him cross the room. I just know one second the drunk man is in front of me and the next he isn’t.