Page 124 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

He leans forward and picks up the throw from the couch. “Theo’s going to wake up with the rug printed on his face.”

“He’ll blame us.”

“He should. We’re enabling him.”

Dash lays the throw over Theo’s legs, careful not to disturb the nest. Theo makes a sleepy, offended sound, then immediately settles deeper into the cardigan.

Callie stirs inside the sweatshirt. “Leave him.”

Dash looks over, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her hand slips out from beneath the sweatshirt, searching blindly toward the rug. Dash sees it before I do and shifts closer, putting his fingers into hers.

I watch my brother hold her hand from the floor.

He does not look at me for a few seconds. When he does, his expression is quieter than I’m ready for.

“I’m glad I found you,” he says.

My arm tightens around Callie before I can stop it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His thumb moves once against her sleeping fingers. “Even if it was late.”

The words sit between us, simple enough to survive being said.

I look down at Callie, then at Theo, then back at Dash. “Stay tonight.”

Dash’s eyes flick toward mine.

“There’s food in the kitchen, Theo’s committed crimes against the guest-room linens, and Callie’s going to be upset if she wakes up and you’re gone.” I keep my voice even because anything more will make the ask too heavy. “Stay.”

Dash looks toward the doorway, then at the couch behind him. After a moment, he nods.

“Okay,” he says.

Callie makes a tiny satisfied sound from inside my sweatshirt, proving she is either less asleep than she looks or capable of issuing approval unconsciously. Dash hears it and laughs under his breath, as I press my mouth to the top of her covered head.

Calliope

Theo moves the same pillow for the fifth time while Idris feeds me another slice of peach. He takes it from the bowl balanced beside his thigh and holds it against my mouth until I open. Juice catches at the corner of my lips, and Idris wipes it away with his thumb before pressing the pad of it between my lips. His other arm remains firm around my waist, keeping my back fitted to his chest while Theo studies the section of the nest he has already rebuilt twice this afternoon.

The room is warm from the late sun and the bodies gathered beneath the blankets. Theo has opened the window three inches because his skin feels too hot, then covered himself in one of Sloane’s sweatshirts because the air across his shoulders felt wrong. His scent has deepened with every hour, cardamom and peach blossom gathering around the temporary bite at his shoulder, but he is still smiling when he turns the pillow and pushes it against the headboard.

“It was better where it was,” I tell him.

Theo looks over his shoulder at me, his hair falling across one eye. “You said it was too high.”

“That was three arrangements ago.”

He considers the pillow again, then leaves it exactly where it is and crawls across the nest to take a piece of peach from Idris' fingers. Idris lets him have it without protest, though his hand returns to the bowl immediately and selects another for me.

Theo settles on his stomach near my legs, his chin resting on one folded arm. He watches Idris bring the fruit to my mouth, then reaches over to straighten the blanket covering my knee even though nothing is wrong with it.

“Sloane said he would be home by six,” I say after swallowing. “Dash’s meeting should finish before then.”

Idris' mouth brushes the side of my neck. “They both told you where they were going, when they expected to return, and how to reach them.”

The satisfaction beneath his words warms me as much as the kiss. Sloane had crouched beside the bed before leaving to meet Kade, told me which office they were using, and made me repeat the time back to him because he wanted to know I had heard. Dash had kissed my forehead on his way to campus and left his schedule on the kitchen counter even though his department meeting was supposed to take less than an hour.