“I will. And thank you.”
The doctor handed her discharge papers to Jon and left them alone in the dimly lit room again.
Jon turned to her. “Have you called your psychiatrist and made an appointment?”
“Trust me, I have no doubt my brother Drake already did.” She didn’t want to talk about her mental state. “Let’s get Emmy and go home.”
Jon didn’t let it go. “I’m worried about you.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I need some time. And sleep. Then we’ll see where my head is. Right now, it’s too fresh and up front and overwhelming. I want to go home!” She couldn’t hide the desperation for wanting to get back to normal.
“Okay. I’ll take you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Trinity. For anything. If not for me, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
She closed her eyes because she really needed to block out the light and sort of turn things down in her mind. “Jon . . .”
“You’re tired. Okay. No more talk about it. Sit. I’ll help you put on your shoes and I’ll take you home.”
“That’s all I want and need right now.” She opened her eyes and met his. “And you.”
“You’ll always have me.” He helped her finish getting dressed and packing up the few items she had with her, which included her purse thanks to one of the officers retrieving it from Steph’s apartment last night and putting it in the ambulance with her.
Emmy managed a smile when the nurses, who were pushing them both out in wheelchairs, pretended to race by letting Trinity get ahead, then racing Emmy ahead to take the lead to brighten her day.
Tate, Declan, and Skye hugged her goodbye at the curb, promised they’d call and check on her first thing tomorrow, and waved as Jon drove her out of the hospital lot. Her eyes and brain couldn’t take watching the scenery pass by, so she closed her eyes and settled in for the drive out to the ranch with Jon’s hand on her thigh and Emmy softly humming in the back seat.
Startled awake by something, she flung her hands up to ward off an attack she couldn’t really see and screamed.
Someone grabbed her by the wrists. “Stop, Trinity. It’s me. It’s Jon.”
The fight went out of her. She wrapped her arms around her middle and sucked in a slow breath as the pain in her ribs subsided to a dull throb again, even though her heart still pounded with fear. “What’s going on?”
Jon stood close, so she focused on him. “We’re home.”
She looked around, not recognizing anything.
“I pulled into the garage and closed the door so you wouldn’t have to deal with the bright sunlight.” He gently took the sunglasses from her face, making it much easier to see in the dim garage interior.
“Oh.”
“Emmy’s already inside. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I . . . I don’t know what happened.”
“As much as you need the darkness, it triggers too many bad memories. We’ll have to figure something out.” He stepped back to allow her to exit the car.
She pressed her trembling hand to her temple. “I’m sorry. I overreacted.”
“After all you’ve been through, you’re working on pure instinct. I’ll try to be more aware of it and not scare you.”
“It’s not you.”
“I know. I just want to make things as easy as possible for you right now.” He followed her into the house through the door that led into a mudroom off the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”
She went to shake her head, remembered how that set off all kinds of side effects and discombobulated her, and used her words instead. “I should eat, but I’m too tired.”
“I’ll help you get into bed so you can sleep for a few hours.”
Emmy lay on the sofa watching a cartoon on the big TV with her stuffed bunny and one of her super-soft blankets.
Trinity leaned down and kissed her on the head. “I’m going to sleep. See you in a little while.”
Emmy nodded but didn’t say anything.
Trinity waited until she and Jon were in their room before she voiced her concerns. “I don’t like how quiet she is.”
“Me either. The pediatrician said to give her some time and to coax her to talk and interact with us. I’m hoping you’ll both feel better after a good night’s sleep.”
She dumped her purse on the floor beside the bed and kicked off her shoes. Jon pulled the covers back and she lay down and closed her eyes the second her head hit the pillow.
He brushed his fingers through her messy hair, pulling it back and away from her face. “Rest.”
Her phone vibrated in her purse again. She’d been ignoring it since she woke up in the car. “It’s probably one of my brothers. Will you check?”
Jon made some ruffling sounds as he dug through her purse to get her phone. “Your battery is about dead. I’ll plug your charger in, but you’ve also got twenty-eight messages.”
“Probably work stuff. Will you listen to them and call Adria with anything that needs to be handled right away?”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
With his assurance that he’d handle it, she gave in to the incessant need to shut off her brain and fell into oblivion, only to wake up sometime later caught in a barrage of nightmarish images, Steph’s warning ringing in her head, and a raging need to know why Jon deceived her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jon had enough to worry about with Emmy’s quiet intensity and Trinity sleeping for the last sixteen hours. He truly couldn’t handle anything else. If she didn’t wake soon, he’d go in and try to wake her again. His last attempt an hour ago got nothing but her mumbling incoherently and pushing his hands away from her. After watching her through the night restlessly shift and move in bed and listening to her muffled screams and babbling nonsense he wished he could decipher, he just wanted to see her awake and alert, not stuck in some nightmare.
Emmy had her own nightmare during the night. It took him nearly an hour to calm her down and put her back to bed next to Trinity, which seemed to make her feel much better. He had a feeling she’d be sleeping with them for the foreseeable future.
But those weren’t the only things keeping him up most of the night.
Trinity asked him to listen to her messages and relay anything urgent to Adria. The messages were dire, and when he spoke to Adria, she had no idea how to handle the situation. Added to that, she was supposed to be on bed rest and couldn’t deal with the situation herself. Not without jeopardizing her health and that of her babies.
After all Trinity had been through, he couldn’t let her wake up to this drama, so he offered to step in and take care of it. Adria agreed, so long as he kept her in the loop and all final decisions were made by either her or Trinity once she woke up.
So he got on the phone with the Billings store manager to assess the situation and discovered it was far worse than the original desperate messages Nathan had left Trinity.
Jon had handled a recall with one of his companies, but it had been small, voluntary, and didn’t risk anybody’s life.
With twelve confirmed cases of food poisoning and four people in the hospital already, this had the potential to kill someone and potentially lots of people if he didn’t get the word out immediately. So he’d contacted the local news and given them all the information to warn the public.