Page 71 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Callie shivers. Her head drops back against my chest, but her eyes move toward the doorway where Dash stands with his hands in the pockets of his worn cardigan. He has the look of a man who wants to be anywhere else and would still burn the house down before leaving her alone in the room. His face is composed in that careful academic way of his, but I see the tension in his jaw and the anger he has put behind glass so she does not have to manage it.

“Callie,” Dash says, his voice level and steady. He does not step closer. He looks at her first, not at me, and that is why I can't hate him for taking up space in a room I should have reached before he ever had to. “Tell me what is true in this room right now. Not three months ago. Not the report. Not Garrett. This room.”

Her fingers tighten in Theo’s hair, and I loosen my arms before she has to ask. She notices. Her hand presses against my chest, keeping me there, and the small choice nearly breaks me in half.

“I am in your living room,” she says, voice rough but steadying as she goes. “Theo is with me. Sloane is holding me because I reached for him. Idris is close, but he's waiting. The door is open.You are here.” Her breath catches, but she stays with it. “I am scared, but I am here. I am safe right now.”

Dash nods once. “Then we stay with right now.” He pauses, letting the silence take over the room. “Do you want the couch?” Dash asks after a while, still looking at Callie, still keeping his voice low. “You can stay on the floor, or we can move you somewhere warmer.”

Callie does not answer quickly. She looks at Theo first, at the way he's trembling against her side with one hand locked in my sleeve and the other twisted in her robe. Then she looks at Idris, whose whole body goes still under her attention. Finally, she looks at me. I hold my breath and refuse to move until the decision leaves her mouth.

“I want the couch,” she says. Her voice is cracked, but it is hers. “I want everyone to move slowly.”

“We can do that,” I tell her, and I keep the relief out of my hands. “I have you only as much as you want me to.”

She nods once against my chest. That is all the permission I take. I shift with care, one arm under her knees and the other around her back, moving slowly enough that she can tell me to stop at any point. Theo refuses to detach, so Idris helps him up with the same visible patience, keeping one hand open until Theo chooses to grab it. Dash clears a path without comment, moving a stack of books from the coffee table and pushing the armchair back far enough to give us room.

When I settle Callie onto the sofa, I don't sit beside her until she catches my wrist. The grip is weak, but it is clear. I sink down at her feet instead of taking the cushion next to her, and she keeps my hand, her fingers tucked in mine like she's testing how long it takes for love to turn into pressure. Idris sits on her other side after she nods to him, his arm resting along the back of the couch where she can lean if she wants. Theo crawls into the narrow space between her body and the cushions, foldinghimself around her lap with a tired sound that makes her eyes fill again.

The air in the room does not become easy. It becomes breathable, and that is more than I thought I would have tonight.

Callie’s thumb moves once over my knuckles. “I thought you were happy without me,” she says, quieter now. “I thought the house was finally right.”

I press my mouth to the back of her hand because anything else would ask too much from my voice. “The house was a tomb,” I say against her skin. “I could not go into our room. I slept outside the closet some nights because the floorboards still had a little of you in them. I thought I had failed you so badly you had to cut the bond to survive me.”

Her face crumples, and I want to take the sentence back even though it is true. Idris reaches for her only after she leans toward him, and when his arm comes around her shoulders, she folds into the contact with a sound that leaves him blinking too fast. Theo pushes his face into her stomach, muttering something I can't make out, and Callie’s hand leaves mine long enough to slide into his hair.

Dash disappears into the kitchen and returns with water, not tea, not soup, not a performance of caretaking that turns the room into a scene we are all expected to understand. Just water, a box of tissues, and a folded blanket he sets on the arm of the sofa within Callie’s reach. He does not tuck it around her. He does not make himself necessary. He gives her the tools and steps back.

“Thank you,” I say to him, and the words are rough.

Dash looks at me for a long moment. Whatever lives between us as brothers isn't healed by two words in the middle of the worst night of Callie’s life. He nods anyway, once, because this isn't about us.

Callie sips the water with both hands around the glass. Her eyes keep drifting to the door, then to Theo, then to me, then to Idris. Every time she looks at me and doesn’t flinch, the bond gives that faint, damaged thrum in my chest.

Every time she does flinch, I loosen my hold on her hand and wait for her to decide whether she wants it back. Most times, she does. Once, she doesn’t, and I sit with my palm open on my thigh until she touches two fingers to my wrist again.

Dash

I bring Sloane and Idris into the kitchen because the living room needs fewer people breathing grief into it. Calliope is still sitting on the sofa with Theo folded against her side, one of his hands trapped in the hem of her robe while the other keeps reaching for Sloane’s sleeve whenever he shifts too far away. Idris has stayed near enough for her to find him, though his hands remain open and his shoulders are rigid with the effort of containing every instinct that tells him to gather her close.

Callie keeps looking from one face to another as though she's responsible for knowing which of us might fall apart next. She wants them near her. Anyone watching her can see that. She also looks like one more apology could push her beyond the edge of what she can hold tonight.

“I need both of you in the kitchen for a minute,” I say, keeping my voice low. Before I move, I look at Calliope and make sure she can see the doorway behind me. “I’ll be ten feet away. You’ll be able to see where we are the whole time.”

Her hand tightens in Theo’s hair before she nods. Sloane sees the small movement and looks like it has carved another piece out of him, but he gets up without turning her agreement into something she has to manage. Idris follows after one last look at her, and I leave the living room lamps low as we move into the kitchen.

The overhead light is too bright, so I switch it off and leave the one above the stove. It softens the counters and turns the windows into dark glass. I fill the kettle because my hands need something ordinary to do, then pull the coffee beans Callie prefers away from the wall.

Sloane braces both hands against the island. His knuckles are pale, and his scent is scraped raw by grief and self-loathing. He looks older than the brother I remember, broader through the shoulders and hollowed through the face, as though the life he built after we stopped knowing how to speak to each other has spent the past three months eating him alive.

Idris stays near the doorway where he can see the edge of the sofa. His gaze moves between us and the living room with the constant calculation of a man counting exits, injuries, and consequences. Even now, with Callie safe inside this house, neither of them seems capable of believing the danger has stopped moving.

“She’s still shaking,” Sloane says. His eyes remain fixed on the spill of Callie’s robe visible beyond the doorway, and each word sounds like an accusation aimed inward. “She reached for me, and she’s still shaking.”

“She’s been shaking for months.” I set three mugs on the counter carefully, keeping the ceramic from striking too hard. “One night of reaching doesn’t erase what her body learned while she believed you sent her away.”

His jaw tightens, though he nods. For a moment, I see the boy he used to be when he knew he had broken something and understood charm would not repair it. I hate that I still recognize him that easily. I hate that some part of me has been waiting years to see whether he would ever look at damage without trying to outrun it.