18. Theo
Theo
The house is quiet when I wake, but it takes me a while to understand why it feels wrong.
At Bellwether, quiet always had someone behind it.
Shoes passed outside my door, pages turned on clipboards, voices dropped when my name came up where I could hear it.
Here, the quiet has rain in it and the low hum of the dryer somewhere beyond the closet wall.
It should feel better. It should feel like the kind of space my file says I need after a transition, but my eyes stay open and my body stays tight under the blanket Garrett put over me during the movie.
I sit up slowly, holding Callie’s hoodie against my chest before I move anything else.
Sloane’s shirt is tucked along the edge of the nest where my knee keeps brushing it.
Idris’ sweater is folded beneath my arm, heavy and clean, and the blanket over my lap still holds Garrett’s cold mint and polished leather.
The closet smells like all of them now, but Callie is strongest at the center, honeyed pear and vanilla tea caught in the fabric under my cheek.
She kissed me last night before I crawled back inside.
The memory makes my mouth warm. Callie stood outside the closet door with her hand on the frame, tired from the long day and still soft enough to wait for me to lean first. She let me choose it.
She let me touch her sleeve afterward and didn't ask me to explain why one small kiss made my hands shake.
I like her lips. I like how she pauses before she gives them to me, like the waiting matters as much as the kiss. I like the way she says Star in a voice that doesn't ask me to become someone louder before I can be wanted.
Warmth rolls low under my skin, and I shift beneath the blanket with a quick breath.
It has been happening since yesterday, small waves of discomfort that make my clothes too heavy and my skin too aware of every scent in the house.
It isn't heat yet, but it feels close enough to make my stomach tighten.
I press my thighs together, then push the blanket off before the nest starts feeling too small to hold me.
The hallway is empty when I crawl out.
There is water waiting outside the closet door, a bowl of cards beside it, and a pair of socks with blue moons folded on top of a clean blanket.
Someone has placed everything close enough for me to reach and far enough that nothing blocks the door.
I look down the hall while I pull the socks on, balancing one hand against the wall, and listen for Callie.
Nothing.
I go to the kitchen first. The island is clean except for a covered plate with half a lemon bar on it and a note in Sloane’s handwriting telling me it is mine.
I touch the edge of the paper, then look toward the mudroom, expecting Callie’s bag on the bench or her shoes near the door. They aren't there.
The sunroom is empty too. The plant book is on the low table with sticky notes lined up beside it, and the blanket from last night is folded over the back of the couch.
I stand near the place where Garrett sat during the movie and remember his arm around me, Callie’s hand in mine, Sloane pressed close on her other side, Idris watching the room without making it feel watched.
I liked Garrett’s lap.
My face heats when the thought settles, but it doesn't feel wrong. Garrett held me like my body already made sense to him. He let me keep Callie’s hand. He adjusted the blanket over both of us, and when I fell asleep, no one moved me away from the shape I had chosen.
I check the living room next, then the front hall, then the little room near the stairs where Garrett sometimes leaves files when he says he isn't working.
Each room is warm, clean, and open. Each one gives me enough space to turn around in.
That is what they wanted, I think. They wanted the house to feel easy, with no one crowding me and no one waiting for me to perform being settled.
The space keeps getting bigger.
My fingers brush the cards in my pocket, but I don't pull one out. There is no one standing in front of me to read it. There is only the house, and my breath, and the growing pressure under my skin that makes me need someone before I know how to ask for anyone.
I go upstairs.
Callie’s room is at the end of the hall, her door half-open.
I stop outside it with both hands tucked into the sleeves of her hoodie.
No one has told me I can go in. No one has told me I can't. The space between those two things makes my chest ache, so I stand there for a few seconds before I step past the doorway.
Her room looks like she left in the middle of doing three things at once.
One side of the bed is tangled, the sheets kicked down and the pillow dented.
A book lies facedown on the nightstand beside a mug with tea dark at the bottom.
A sweater hangs over the back of the chair near the window, and her bag is open on the bench with papers tucked inside at crooked angles.
Callie is everywhere, except where I need her.
I sit on the edge of the bed before my knees decide for me.
The scent there is warmer than it is in the closet, sleep-soft and threaded through the sheets.
I curl my fingers into the blanket and try to breathe, but the ache under my skin only spreads.
It makes me think about her mouth in the closet, her fingers in my hair, her hand turned palm-up during the movie so I could find it when sitting in Garrett’s lap got too full.
She isn't here, and wanting her in her empty room starts to feel like touching something I shouldn't touch without her.
I leave before the air can tighten around me.
Downstairs, I follow Garrett’s scent.
Cold mint reaches me first, then polished leather and the faint bitter trace of coffee. The scent leads down the quieter hall to the study, where the door is open and Garrett’s typing clicks in a steady rhythm. I stop at the threshold with Callie’s sleeves still covering half my hands.
Garrett looks up before I make a sound.
His hands leave the keyboard. He turns his chair toward me, but he doesn't stand, and that helps more than I expect. His gaze moves over my face, then down to the way I have my fingers curled into Callie’s hoodie.
“Color, Theo?” he asks.
I tap once against the doorframe.
“Green,” Garrett says, and his voice stays low. “Come in.”
The study smells like paper, rain, coffee, and him.
Files sit in careful stacks on his desk, and his tie is loosened at his throat, the top button of his shirt undone.
He looks less like the head Alpha who spoke to Miller and more like the man who kept one arm around me during a movie without making me explain why I picked his lap.
I stop beside his chair.
Garrett watches me for a moment. “Do you want to sit?”
I nod.
He pushes back from the desk, giving me room to choose. I could sit on the arm of the chair. I could sit on the rug. I could leave again if I needed to. The options press at me until the simplest one becomes the only one I can bear.
I climb into his lap.
Garrett adjusts around me without making a sound, one arm coming behind my back while the other shifts the chair so my knee doesn't hit the desk.
His body is firm beneath mine. When I press my face into his neck and breathe him in, the warmth under my skin answers hard enough that I make a small sound against his shirt.
His hand stills. “Color.”
I tap once against his chest.
“Green,” he says. His arm tightens, and he lets me hide my face where the scent is strongest.
He doesn't ask me to name the sound. He doesn't make it bigger by reacting too much. He holds me while I breathe against his neck and try to settle the restless thing moving under my skin.
“You’re warm,” Garrett says after a while. His hand moves once over my back, slow enough that I can follow it. “Uncomfortable?”
I nod against him.
“Is it heat?”
The word makes my body tense. I shake my head, then stop, because no isn't right either. It is near heat. It is the edge of something my body recognizes before my mind can make a safe place for it.
Garrett waits, steady beneath me.
I lift my head and tap twice against his chest.
“Yellow,” he says softly. “Almost, then.”
The word almost settles something I couldn't settle by myself. I nod once, relieved enough that my throat tightens, and Garrett’s hand presses between my shoulders with careful weight.
“We’ll watch it,” he says. “You don’t have to handle that alone.”
I lower my face to his neck again.
For a little while, Garrett lets the study stay quiet around us. He moves one file closer with his free hand and reads without shifting me out of place. When his phone buzzes beside his elbow, he glances at it and leaves it there. His hand stays on my back, warm through Callie’s hoodie.
My mouth brushes his throat when I turn my face.
Garrett breathes in, and I feel the change in his body beneath mine. He stays still, but the air between us warms. My fingers grip his shirt before I decide to do it.
“Color,” he says.
I tap once.
Garrett doesn't move toward me. That is what lets me move first.
I lift my head. My lips touch the corner of his mouth and stop there, clumsy with nerves. He keeps one hand at my back and lets me fix the angle. When I try again, his mouth meets mine gently, the pressure restrained enough that I can leave if I need to. I don't leave.
The kiss is different from Callie’s and Sloane’s. Garrett holds more still than both of them, giving me one careful answer at a time. My body warms too quickly anyway, need rising through my stomach and into my throat until I have to stop and tuck myself back against his chest.
Garrett lets me curl down instead of chasing the kiss.
I count his heartbeat beneath my ear until my breathing slows. The study stays around us, close and steady, but the missing pieces of the house keep pressing at the edges. Callie’s empty room. Sloane’s note in the kitchen. Idris’s folded blanket in the sunroom.