Page 84 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Dash sets his coffee down. “We should talk,” he says, his gaze staying on Sloane now. “It has been a while.”

Sloane nods. He does not answer quickly, and I like him better for that because a quick answer would make the ache too neat. His hand flexes once around the mug before he lets go and rests his palm flat on the table. “Yeah,” he says, voice rougher than before. “We should.”

Callie’s fingers tighten on Idris' shirt. Idris kisses the top of her head without pulling the moment away from them. Dash and Sloane keep looking at each other across the table with a whole missing life sitting between their coffee cups, and for the first time since I have known them together, it feels less like a locked door and more like one nobody has touched because they were afraid of what would fall out.

The spike rolls through me again.

This time, it is stronger. Heat licks up my spine, as my scent blooms sweet enough that Sloane’s head turns before he can stop it. Idris' hand stills on Callie’s hip. Dash notices because of course he does, because Alphas notice things like that even when they pretend they are only drinking coffee. Callie looks at me with worry trying to rise in her eyes.

“I am fine,” I start, then stop because the words are too stiff and because I can hear how false they sound. I take a breath and put my hand over Callie’s knee where it rests near mine. “I’m warm. The spikes are closer today.”

Idris' attention sharpens. “How close?”

“Not my heat yet.” I say it clearly because panic would ruin the eggs and the plan and the whole perfect shape of the morning. “I know my body. It is moving, but I am here.”

Callie reaches for me from Idris' lap, and I meet her halfway, pressing my face into her palm. “What do you need?”

The answer is so simple it almost embarrasses me. I need her in the nest. I need Dash in the nest. I need Sloane and Idris close enough that their scents build walls around the room without becoming a cage. I need breakfast and blankets and the whole day arranged around the fact that my body has decided Callie is the center of gravity and everyone else should stop pretending they don't know it.

“I need the Callie Day,” I say, voice muffled against her hand. “And I need everyone to follow the plan.”

Dash’s expression softens. “Including me?”

I look at him, and the irritation from the past few mornings comes back, hot and immediate under the sweetness. “Especially you.”

He does not laugh at that. He looks at Callie, then at the hallway leading toward the nest, and something in his face shifts as if he’s finally understood the nest has made a place for him. Callie’s voice is quiet when she speaks. “You can come in, Dash.”

He looks back at her. “I know.”

“No,” she says, and her hand reaches across the table until he takes it. “You can come in because I want you there.”

Sloane looks away for a second, then gives Dash a small nod.

“After breakfast then,” Dash says, his thumb moving over Callie’s fingers, “I will come in.”

Sloane

The house goes quiet by inches. Theo loses the fight against sleep first, somewhere in the middle of explaining why Callie Day should include a second dessert even though lunch was barely two hours ago. His words slow, then his hands, then the bright, stubborn line of his mouth softens against Callie’s shoulder.

He’s been warm all afternoon, warm enough that Idris has checked him more than once without making him feel watched, and his scent has gone sweet enough that cardamom lingers at the back of my throat whenever I breathe too deeply.

Callie falls asleep after him, though she fights it longer. Her eyes keep opening whenever the room shifts, and her fingers twitch against Theo’s wrist like she’s counting all of us even as her body gives out. She’s wearing one of Idris' shirts beneath Dash’s cardigan, her legs tucked under the blanket Theo dragged over her with possessive satisfaction, her hair loose and tangled where Dash’s hand had been stroking it earlier while she pretended she was awake enough to follow the movie.

The nest has taken over half the living room. Theo built the first version in the sunroom after breakfast, moved most of it when Callie said the afternoon light was better in here, then decided the couch disrupted the shape and made Idris rearrange three cushions. Dash watched the process with the resigned patience of a man who’d stopped trying to understand Omega logic and started accepting it as a force of nature. Idris took every instruction seriously until Theo insisted the green blanket had to be folded diagonally because it kept Callie’s knees warmer, and then even he had to look away before his mouth gave him up.

Now the floor is covered in pillows, blankets, half-empty mugs, Callie’s open book, Theo’s socks, Dash’s discarded sweater, and the woman I spent three months failing to find. The sight should steady me. She’s safe, surrounded, warm enough to sleep. Instead, relief and grief push into the same space until I can barely tell them apart. She’s safe in my brother’s house, wrapped in my brother’s cardigan, sleeping in a nest my brother has started entering while still carrying himself like someone might ask him to leave.

Dash sits on the floor beside the couch with his back against it, one knee raised and his hand resting near Callie’s ankle where she reached for him before sleep took her. He isn’t touching her now, though he’s close enough that she won’t have to search ifshe wakes and wants him. The fact that I know that hurts. The fact that he knows it too hurts worse.

Idris sits in the chair near the end of the nest with his phone facedown on his thigh. His eyes are lowered, though I know he isn’t resting. He’s listening to Theo’s breathing, watching Callie’s fingers, tracking the house, the doors, and the new sweetness in Theo’s scent while allowing the room to believe he has finally looked away.

Callie makes a small sound in her sleep, and every one of us reacts, the room easing around her.

I can’t keep sitting there after that. Seeing what we’re building and all the places where it’s still fragile presses too hard against the months she slept without me. I rise carefully, step over the blankets, and make my way toward the kitchen while every instinct in me argues that I should turn around and put my hand on her.

Sloane

The light above the sink is dim. A bundle of flowers sits in a glass measuring cup near the window because I bought them that morning and realized too late that I had no idea where Dash kept a vase. Flowers should’ve been simple. I saw them outside the grocery store on the way back from getting coffee, pale yellow roses mixed with small white blooms I couldn’t name, and thought Callie might smile if the house held something pretty that wasn’t trying to repair her.