Page 78 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “Then don’t make me temporary,” he says. “Come back to me because you want me too. Don’t stay because guilt pinned you here.”

“Dash,” I whisper, and his name sounds like an apology I don’t know how to finish.

“The answer isn’t letting you punish yourself for wanting them.” His thumb brushes my jaw, and his voice goes quieter. “You learned how to survive by denying yourself the thing that hurt the worst to miss. I’m not going to become another reason you do that.”

I kiss him again because there is nothing else large enough. He lets me. His hands slide under the hem of my blouse to the warm skin of my back, and for a few minutes, the room narrows to his mouth, his breath, the solid weight of him beneath me. Heat gathers slowly, low and aching, and when I shift in his lap, he exhales against my lips like it costs him to keep his hands gentle.

“You’re allowed to want me here,” I tell him, because he deserves the truth too. “You’re allowed to hate sharing this moment.”

“I know.” His hands flex at my waist, then loosen. “I’m going to feel a lot of things, Callie. I’m not going to make every one of them your job.”

I stand on shaky legs, and Dash stays seated, his eyes following me with an expression I will think about for the rest of my life. Before I reach the door, he says my name.

I turn back to see he's still in the chair, one hand curled over the arm, the other resting against his thigh like he's keeping himself there by force. “Bring back the version of you who doesn’t feel ashamed for being loved,” he says.

I nod and walk down the hall.

Calliope

Sloane is still awake when I reach the door, watching me from where he lies beside Theo. Idris is awake too, exactly as he was when Dash found me looking in a few minutes ago. Theo is still sprawled across both of them, but his head lifts as if some part of him feels me before the room gives me away.

I stand in the doorway with my hand against the frame. “I want in,” I say, and my voice shakes but does not break. “I want all of you, and I don’t want to spend another night pretending I don’t.”

For a second, no one moves.

Then Theo scrambles upright with a sound that is half sob, half relief. “Callie,” he breathes, already reaching for me. He catches himself halfway, hands hovering, his eyes going wide with the fear of asking too hard.

I cross the room before that fear can take root. My knees hit the mattress, and then Theo is on me, arms around my shoulders, face in my neck, body trying to occupy every inch of mine at once. He's warm and shaking and so alive against me that I gasp. His mouth finds my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, greedy with sleep and grief and want.

“I want you here,” I tell him, holding his face between my hands so he has to hear it. “I want you in this. I want you with me.”

Theo makes a broken little sound and kisses me full on the mouth. It is clumsy and deep, his hands sliding into my hair, his body pressing me back toward the center of the bed. Sloane shifts but doesn’t touch until my hand finds his. Idris sits up behind Theo, his gaze locked on mine, his control so careful it feels like heat under glass.

“Tell me where,” Sloane says, voice hoarse.

I bring his hand to my waist. “Here.”

He touches me like the word is sacred. His palm spreads over my side, thumb brushing the bare strip of skin where my blouse has ridden up. His breath catches when I lean into it. Idris' hand comes to the mattress beside my hip, not on me yet, and the restraint in it pulls another confession out of my chest.

“I want your voice,” I say to him. “I want you careful, but I want you there.”

Idris' eyes darken. “Then you’ll tell me if careful becomes too much,” he says, and even that is phrased like a place for my answer to stand. “You’ll keep your no where we can all hear it.”

Theo’s eyes fill. He nods once, hard, and kisses me again like the words have unlocked something he was not allowed to open alone.

Sloane is still waiting. I turn my head just enough to find him and tighten his touch over my waist, over the thin fabric of my blouse.

“Here,” I say. “Keep touching me.”

His breath leaves him in a shaky rush. His hand stays exactly where I put it, thumb stroking once along the edge of my ribs.

Idris sits up more fully behind Theo. His voice is low and careful. “Before I use mine, I need the boundary clear. You want my voice?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Soft. Guiding. Not command. As long as my no stays where everyone can hear it.”

“It will,” Idris says. “You say stop and everything stops. You say slower and we slow. You say yes when you want more. Full sentences when you can. If you can't find the words, we pause until you can.”

I nod.