Page 120 of What We Don't Say: Part One

People are talking around us. The student with the backpack keeps apologizing, and someone from behind the counter brings towels. Callie doesn't let go of my face until I’m looking at her properly. Then she speaks over the noise with her professor voice, not loud but impossible to miss.

“Please step back and give him space,” she says, still holding pressure to my palm. “We need a towel and a clear path to campus health.”

The crowd moves. It doesn't disappear, but the air around me opens by a few inches. Callie wraps the towel around my hand, checks the red splash on my wrist, and looks at my knees without making me feel inspected. Her hair has come loose from its pins, and her blazer sleeve is wet with tea, but her hands are steady.

“I can walk,” I tell her.

“I know you can.” She slides one arm around my waist and waits until I lean into her. “I’m walking with you.”

Campus health is two doors down, but the hallway feels much longer. Callie keeps me against her side the whole way, one hand at my waist and the other around my wrapped palm. She talks to me about the floor, the next door, the chair by the wall. She doesn't tell me I'm fine. She doesn't tell me I'm safe until we are sitting down and she has put herself between me and the open doorway.

The nurse smells like peppermint gum and antiseptic. She is kind in a brisk way, asking questions while she rinses my palm and checks the cut under the bright exam light. The line across my skin is shallow. My wrist is red but not blistering. My knees are bruised from the tile, and my body keeps trembling around the spike that came too fast and left too much brightness behind it.

“His heat hasn’t started,” Callie says when the nurse asks about my cycle status. Her hand is on my uninjured wrist, thumb moving slowly. “He’s close to it. We’ve been tracking the spikes, and he was cleared for a short campus visit.”

The nurse looks at the tablet. “The listed emergency contact is Garrett Crane?”

My stomach tightens before I can stop it.

“He drove me,” I say, and I hate that my voice is smaller now. I try again. “He said he’d stay nearby until lunch was finished.”

The nurse nods and taps the screen. “Given the proximity to heat, the fall, and the distress response, I need to call the listed contact for transport. He should go home and be monitored. You said you have an interview starting soon?”

Callie’s hand tightens on my wrist. “I can stay with him.”

“You have the interview,” I say, turning toward her before she can make that decision sound easy. “You have to go.”

“I don’t have to do anything when you’re hurt.”

“I’m hurt a little.” I lift my bandaged hand because it is proof and also not enough proof to let her give up the day. “I was scared. I’m still scared, but I’m not scared of you. I don’t want you to miss it because a mug broke.”

Her eyes fill so quickly her anger rises with it, like she is furious at the tears for arriving where a solution should be. “You’re more important than a room full of people asking me about curriculum design.”

“I know.” My own eyes burn. “That’s why I need to say it clearly. Please go be brilliant. Then come home.”

Garrett arrives while the nurse is finishing the wrap on my palm. He comes in with his suit jacket still buttoned, rain beaded on one shoulder, and concern arranged across his face so neatly that the nurse’s posture changes with relief. His gaze moves over the room: the gauze, my knees, Callie’s wet sleeve, our joined hands. Something tightens at the corner of his mouth before he smooths it away.

“Theo,” he says, crossing to us. “Tell me what happened.”

“A mug broke,” I answer before anyone else can. My voice is hoarse, but the sentence holds. “It startled me, and I cut my hand when I reached down. Callie helped.”

Callie’s thumb presses into my wrist.

Garrett crouches in front of me. He doesn't touch me at first, and that makes it harder to object when his hand finally settles near my knee. “I’m glad she was with you.”

The nurse gives him the professional version: café crowd, broken ceramic, shallow palm cut, mild burn, bruised knees, elevated distress response due proximity to heat. Garrett listens without interrupting. He asks one question about the wrap, one about monitoring, one about whether campus safety needs a report because an Omega close to his heat was injured in a public café.

The nurse says they’ll document it internally.

“This close to his heat, public environments can shift quickly,” Garrett says, still looking at the nurse while his hand rests on my knee. “We were hoping lunch would stay simple.”

“It was simple,” I say.

Garrett turns toward me with a softness that makes the room feel smaller. “I believe it started that way.”

Callie sits straighter. “It was a crowded café and an accident. He handled it beautifully.”

“No one is blaming him,” Garrett says at once. His eyes lift to her, warm and sad in a way that makes her mouth tighten. “Or you. Plans meet biology, and then we adjust.”