Page 69 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

“I can't do the whole story tonight,” I say. My voice is wrecked, but it belongs to me.

Sloane shakes his head immediately, then seems to catch himself and stills. “You don't have to.”

“I can't go back to that house,” I say, and my eyes move to Idris because some part of me needs him to hear it most. “I can’t breathe when I think about it.”

“We have rooms at the inn,” Idris says. He does not rush the answer. He gives it to me like a tool set on a table. “No one is asking you to go back there. No one is asking you to leave Dash’s house tonight. We came because we found you, and because you deserved to hear our voices without Garrett standing between them and you.”

Theo lifts his head enough to look at me, panic flashing through his face before he buries it. “Please,” he whispers. “Do not make me leave you yet.”

“I am not making you leave,” I tell him, and the certainty comes from somewhere deeper than the fear. My hands cup his face, thumbs moving carefully beneath his eyes. “I am not sending you away from me, Star.”

The old pet name lands between us like a match in a dark room.

Theo’s mouth crumples. He presses into me again, and this time the sound he makes is still broken, but it has relief threaded through it. He isn't calm. None of us are calm. But he heard me. He heard the part Garrett tried to steal.

Sloane is still on his knees. His gaze keeps dropping to the place where Theo clings to me, then lifting back to my face, never lingering anywhere that would turn my body into proof for him. He looks at the bond mark hidden beneath my robe with the restraint of a starving man refusing food because it has not been offered.

“I want to say I am sorry,” he says, voice low. “I need to say it a thousand times, but I know an apology can become pressure if I use it wrong. So I will say this first. I will stay wherever you put me. Porch, driveway, inn, another state. You set the distance, baby. I will honor it.”

The baby hurts. The honor hurts. The way he looks like he means both hurts worst of all.

I reach out before I can think myself out of it.

My fingers hover over his hand. Sloane goes absolutely still, his breath catching so sharply that Theo lifts his head again. I lower my hand the last inch and touch Sloane’s knuckles. His skin is hot, rain-cold on the surface and fever-warm underneath. The bond doesn’t flare back to life. But the place in my chest that has been cold for three months gives one low, wounded thrum.

Sloane makes a sound like it hurts to receive even that much. I pull my hand back before either of us can make it too large. “Inside,” I say, because my knees ache, Theo is shivering, andthe rain has soaked through every layer of me. “Slowly. Everyone comes in slowly.”

Dash opens the door wider.

No one moves at first. Sloane looks at me before he shifts his weight. Idris does the same, waiting until my nod is clear. Theo stays locked around me like he has decided the shape of his body belongs wherever mine is, and for the first time in three months, the choice in the room is mine.

I step back from the rain with Theo in my arms, and the men who loved me, lost me, and failed to reach me cross the threshold only after I let them.

Sloane

My knees hit Dash’s hardwood with a hollow thud I barely feel. Callie crosses the threshold with Theo wrapped around her, and I stay where she left me. Dash closes the door against the rain while Idris steps inside behind me, but I can't make my body move farther into the room. Callie’s robe is soaked at the hem. Theo is shaking against her, his face buried in her shoulder, and her bare feet leave wet marks across Dash’s hardwood as she takes three careful steps toward the living room.

She keeps looking at me. Every glance lands and disappears before I can understand what she's asking for. Her hand moves over Theo’s back, trying to soothe him, but her own breathing has begun to fracture. She reaches the edge of the sofa and stops as though the room has tilted beneath her.

“Callie,” I say, then force myself to stay where I am when her shoulders jerk at the sound.

Her eyes find mine again. The fear is still there, tangled with grief and a hunger so familiar that the bond gives one weak, wounded pull beneath my ribs.

I stay on my knees where I dropped, keeping my hands open on my thighs while she stops at the edge of the sofa. I don’t move toward her or make her close the distance before she’s ready.

“I’m here,” I tell her. “You don’t have to come any closer. I only need you to know I’m here.”

Callie makes a small, broken sound. Theo clings tighter when she shifts, but she keeps one arm around him and reaches toward me with the other.

Her fingers touch my shoulder first. I still don’t move. I wait until her hand slides into the front of my shirt and closes there, until she gives one devastated pull that brings her body toward mine.

Then I slowly gather her and Theo down with me, easing Callie across my thighs while Theo remains locked against her side. My arms come around her slowly enough that she can change her mind, and I feel the exact second her body gives up the distance and folds into my chest.

She’s warm. That is the first thing that gets through. Callie is warm in my arms, her weight real across my lap, her breath damp through my shirt, and her fingers twisted so tightly in the fabric that I hear a seam give near my ribs. Every part of me wants to lock down and hold, but wanting has done enoughdamage for one lifetime, so I make my body ask even after hers has already answered.

“I’ve got you,” I say into her hair, and my voice breaks hard enough to hurt. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m right here, and I’m going to keep asking before I touch you.”

Theo does not let go of either of us. He's tucked against her side in a jagged knot of limbs and grief, one hand fisted in her robe and the other locked around my sleeve like he's furious and relieved in equal measure. He keeps making a low, wounded sound that vibrates through Callie’s ribs and into mine.