I groaned as I climbed the stairs to my apartment.
Simple hookups were easier than this.
But hookups also didn’t soothe the aching loneliness that lived in my chest.
Fine. I would ask Dad for their number, and whatever came out of my mouth when I asked would be the reason.
My door slid open too easily.
Like it hadn’t been locked.
But even unlocked, I’d lived in this place for years and always needed a good push to get it open.
It swung open in front of me…
What thefuck?
My apartment was in shambles.
What I could see of my living room had the couch cushions everywhere, torn open. An apple and a banana were on the floor next to a fruit bowl from the kitchen—shattered.
I took one step inside, and everything in me froze. The destruction was worse than it looked. Almost nothing hadn’t been touched. Every instinct I had told me not to go into the apartment. It was quiet, but what if they were still here?
The rack I kept my keys on was on the floor. I looked, but I didn’t see the ring I had withallmy keys. The one to Dad’s house, the mailbox keys, everything I needed but also didn’t want to carry back and forth to work.
What else had been taken?
The door finally bumped into the wall, the quiet sound like a gunshot in the silence. I needed to get out of here. Somewhere. Anywhere.
I was dialing Isolde before I fully registered, pulling the door closed behind me. It wouldn’t close as well as I needed it to.
“This is Isolde Allen, please leave a message!”
“Fuck,” I muttered, sprinting back down the stairs to my car.
They’d just told me they were both going to dinner. She wouldn’t be looking at her phone. Neither would Ocean.
I needed to call the police, but if the person who broke in was still close by? I wanted to be somewhere safe first.
What the man had said last night about accidents rang in my head. But Ididbelieve in accidents. And coincidences.
Sometimes bad luck happened, and I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions just because someone had decided my apartment looked like an ideal target.
I didn’t take a full breath until I pulled into my father’s driveway. At the very least, I would bephysicallysafe here. Until I could call myfriends and make sure it would be okay for me to stay with them. I couldn’t stay here.
They would say yes. I knew that. I knew, too, that they would probably be furious with me for not calling them repeatedly until they answered in this kind of emergency. But even now, I wasn’t operating in a clear state of mind.
Just get inside, Trinity.
I reached for the keys I had to Dad’s, and…
Shit. His keys were some of the ones missing.
I knocked on the door, panic about being out in the open making me frantic. It didn’t matter that the thought wasn’t rational. I was an Omega. If I had a nest, that’s where I would want to be. Only I was glad I didn’t, because having a nest and then having it destroyed was a whole different kind of pain.
Steps behind the door had me shaking in relief. But when the door opened, Logan stood there. And he looked just as surprised to see me. “Trinity?”
Cinnamon and sugar wrapped around me like the best comfort in the world. Everything in my body relaxed, recognizing the safety I’d felt with them.
