Page 117 of What We Don't Say: Part One

I look at him, then at Theo in my sweater, at Sloane’s hand flexing like he’s forcing himself not to pull me back, at Idris’s steady face and unsteady eyes. The sentence sits in the porch air, reasonable and supportive and just wrong enough that my chest tightens.

I make myself smile. “I’ll text when I arrive.”

Theo

I’m supposed to have a few more days before my heat.

That is the thought I keep touching while Sloane ties my shoes in the foyer like my fingers have stopped knowing how knots work. A few more days. Garrett’s chart says it. Idris’s tracking says it. The binder on the console table says the same thing in clean lines and careful timing windows, with projected spikes and transition markers and words that make my body sound more obedient than it feels. My heat is close, but it hasn’t started. Lunch with Callie is allowed because there’s still time.

Sloane pulls the laces tight, then loosens them again with a low sound in his throat because I flinch. He doesn’t say anything about the flinch. He just looks up at me from where he’s crouched on the rug, broad shoulders tense under his wrinkled shirt, eyes too bright with the kind of worry he keeps trying to make gentle. His scent is smoked cedar and brown sugar, thicker than usual, and it gathers around my knees while his hands settle on my ankles.

“You call me the second anything feels wrong,” he says, and his thumb moves once over the bone at the inside of my ankle. “Not after you decide it’s worth bothering me. Not after you talk yourself into waiting. The second.”

“I’ll call you,” I tell him. My voice is quiet, but the sentence comes out whole, and I can see how much that steadies him. “Even if I’m only nervous. Even if I think I’m probably fine.”

His mouth presses to my knee through my pants. It is quick, almost hidden by the angle of his body, but the kiss is warm enough that my throat tightens. “Good. I want all of that. Nervous, probably fine, annoyed because Garrett parks too close to the curb. Every version gets to call.”

Garrett stands by the front door with my jacket over his arm. He looks calm in his dark suit, his hair perfect, his expression arranged into a patience that makes the whole foyer feel too bright. “He’ll have his phone,” he says, not unkindly. “I’ll stay with him until he reaches Calliope, and I’ll remain close enough to collect him when they’re finished.”

Sloane’s jaw works. He doesn’t look at Garrett right away, and the silence gets thick before Idris steps in from the console table with the protocol binder still open in one hand. Idris has a pen tucked behind his ear, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his tea forgotten beside a stack of labeled supply cards. He looks like control given a body, but his eyes move over me like he’s reading every breath.

“Your heat hasn’t started,” Idris says, setting the binder down so both hands are free when he comes to me. His fingers touch my wrist first, then the side of my throat, counting without making me feel counted. “You’re close to it, and the spikes may come faster today. That doesn’t mean you’re forbidden from wanting one ordinary lunch.”

I glance toward the driveway where Callie’s car was parked this morning before she left. She kissed me on the porch, promised the café with the soup, promised she’d come home after the interview. I heard her say it. I believed her when she said it, and I still believe it now, but my body keeps acting like a promise can get lost between one breath and the next.

“I don’t want to make it harder for her,” I say, twisting one sleeve of her gray sweater around my fingers. The cuff still smells faintly like honeyed pear and vanilla tea, though the scent is thinner than it was when I first stole it from the laundry basket. “She was already nervous.”

“She was nervous because the interview matters,” Idris says. He cups the side of my face and makes sure I’m looking at him before he finishes. “You matter too.”

Sloane stands, and the sudden size of him makes the foyer feel smaller. He slides one arm around my back and pulls me in, his mouth finding my forehead first, then my cheek, then my mouth. The kiss is warm and deep and too short, cut off by his own restraint before my body can try to follow him somewhere we don’t have time to go. When he pulls back, his hand stays at the back of my neck.

“Lunch,” he says, like he is reminding himself as much as me. “You’re going to have lunch with our girl, and then you’re coming back here.”

“With soup,” I tell him, because that was the plan and because saying the simple part makes the whole thing feel less breakable.

“With soup,” he agrees, and his face softens for half a second before worry takes it again.

Idris kisses me last. His mouth is steady, one hand at my jaw and the other between my shoulder blades, anchoring me without pulling me out of Sloane’s lingering warmth. When he lets go, he adjusts the collar of Callie’s sweater like he has to do something with his hands.

“Text when you get there,” he says. “Text when you leave campus. Call if the words get hard.”

“I will.”

Garrett opens the door. Cool air spills into the foyer, and my body tightens like the threshold is a question I haven’t answered. Sloane notices and starts to reach again, but Idris’s hand lands on his forearm before the movement becomes another goodbye I can’t step away from. I leave with Garrett while both of them watch, and I keep my phone in my palm the whole way to the car.

The passenger seat smells like cold mint and polished leather. The vents are already turned low, pushing clean air across my face, and the seatbelt feels too smooth beneath my fingers when I pull it down over my chest. Garrett waits until I’m buckled before he closes my door, and through the windshield I see Sloane still standing on the porch with Idris’s hand at his shoulder. They stay there until Garrett turns out of the driveway and the trees hide the house behind us.

For a while, Garrett drives without speaking. The quiet should help. Instead, it gives every part of me room to listen to itself. My palm sweats around my phone. My knees bounce once before I stop them. Under my skin, the heat is only a low glow, nothing like the spikes from the last few days, and I repeat that silently until my breathing slows. I have a few more days. I’m having lunch. Callie is waiting.

“You handled the morning well,” Garrett says when the house has been gone long enough that I can’t look back for it anymore.

I turn the phone over in my lap. “It wasn’t very hard.”

“It was.” His voice is warm enough that I almost relax. “You wanted more than you asked for, and you still chose something reasonable. That takes discipline.”

The word makes my stomach pull tight. “I didn’t want to be disciplined.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” He glances at me, then back to the road, his face soft with a regret that looks real from the side. “I mean you were careful with someone you love. That’s not a punishment, Theo.”