Page 133 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Theo follows her anyway. Sloane stays close behind them while Dash gathers the laptop and carries it to the kitchen table.

I remain in the living room long enough to feel the three bonds stretch toward the next room. Callie’s anticipation warms first, followed by Theo’s hunger and Sloane’s affection as he places his hands on her waist again.

The amount of love moving through me would have been impossible to imagine before I claimed it. Garrett nearlyreplaced it with silence and left each of us believing the others had chosen the loss.

I enter the kitchen before the thought can hold me there. Callie’s transferred the cookies to a cooling rack, though Theo is already reaching toward the nearest one. She catches his wrist before his fingers touch it and draws his hand back to her chest.

“They’re hot,” she says. “Wait.”

Theo remains pressed against her side, watching the cookies with visible longing while Sloane stands behind her and kisses the flour still clinging to her hair.

“Milk or cocoa with them?” Sloane asks Theo.

Theo looks toward the refrigerator. His mouth opens, but nothing follows. Sloane waits as Theo tries once more. His throat moves without sound, frustration beginning to pinch between his brows.

Sloane rubs his thumb once over Theo’s shoulder. “Take your time, sweetheart.”

Theo closes his eyes for a second. “Cocoa,” he finally whispers.

“Cocoa it is.”

Sloane turns toward the cabinet and Theo watches him go, then steals the edge of Callie’s cooled cookie while she’s looking the other way. Dash sets out plates, then takes the chair beside Callie.

She breaks one cookie in half once it has cooled enough to hold. Steam rises from the center, carrying chocolate and butter through the kitchen, and she turns toward me with one piece balanced between her fingers.

“Come here,” she says.

I step between her knees where she sits on the stool. Her free hand rests against my chest while she lifts the cookie to my mouth.

I take the first bite from her fingers. Theo reaches for the other half, Sloane’s arm settles around Callie’s shoulders, and Dash’sknee presses against hers beneath the counter while the bonds remain warm inside me.

Dash

Sloane holds the service-door frame steady while I fit the temporary reinforcement plate over the weakest section of the old wood. The permanent hardware isn't arriving until tomorrow, but neither of us was willing to leave the entrance untouched after Kade pointed out how little support existed around the lock.

The new camera is already active above us, its feed open on my phone beside the drill. It covers the rear path, the easternfence, and the narrow approach to the extension where Callie first stayed when she came here.

Sloane glances at the screen again, then looks toward the open window farther down the wall. Theo’s soft voice drifts from the nest room, followed by Callie answering him, and some of the strain around Sloane’s mouth eases before tightening again.

“Idris is with them,” I say as I align the last screw. “The cameras are running, the filing went through, and Garrett’s firm has him locked out of their systems.”

“None of that means he accepted it.” Sloane keeps his palm against the frame while I secure the plate, his attention splitting between the yard and the voices inside. “He spent months deciding everyone around him belonged where he placed them. He will see losing control as something done to him.”

I understand that too well. Garrett’s name has occupied half the calls coming into this house since morning, but Callie refused to spend the entire day sitting beside the phone, so she took Theo back to the nest after lunch with the records Zana needed them to review.

Idris joined them with tea and the promise that no one would discuss the case unless Callie or Theo chose to bring it up. The last time I passed the open doorway, Callie was stretched against the pillows with Theo curled beside her, and Idris was reading while keeping one hand on each of them.

My phone vibrates against the concrete step. I pick it up and see Kade’s approval beneath the photograph I sent him, along with a note that the preserved access records have been delivered to the investigator.

“He has the digital chain,” I tell Sloane. “The campus access, the assistant account, and the older transition files are all in evidence now.”

Sloane releases the doorframe and wipes sawdust from his palm. “Then Garrett knows the window is closing.”

Before I can answer, Sloane’s body locks beside me.

His head lifts sharply, and the color leaves his face as his hand closes around the front of my shirt. He isn't looking at me anymore, and the sudden terror in his expression is too complete to belong to anything happening in the yard.

“Callie,” he says, the name tearing out of him with a rawness I have never heard before. He lets go of me and runs for the open service door as another sound reaches us from inside.