6. Theo #3
The phone buzzes again. A banner drops down from the top of the screen, another message field, another wrongness I can’t understand fast enough.
The preview shows Callie’s disconnected number, an automated notice, then a routed thread label I don’t know.
There are too many names, too many paths, too many pieces of me being moved by hands that aren’t mine.
I scramble out of the closet so fast the towel stack crashes behind me.
“Theo?” Sloane’s voice hits the bathroom door from the hallway almost immediately. “Theo, sweetheart, talk to me.”
I unlock the door with fingers that don’t feel like fingers. When it opens, Sloane is there with Idris right behind him, both of them stopped short by the sight of the phone in my hand. Sloane looks at my face while Idris’ attention fixes on the phone in my hand.
“I didn’t send them.” The words come out louder than I expect, cracked but whole. “I didn’t send those messages. I didn’t tell Callie I didn’t want her. I didn’t say she confused me. I didn’t say she made the Alphas fight.”
Sloane’s face empties.
I shove the phone toward him, then yank it back before he can touch it because I don’t know if touching it will make it vanish or lock or become another thing no one believes. Idris moves first, slow enough not to startle me, his hand open.
“Theo,” he says, voice low and controlled. “May I take it?”
I nod, and the phone leaves my palm. The loss of it makes me shake harder. Sloane reaches for me at the same time, and I go to him because my legs stop pretending. He catches me carefully, wrapping me against his chest without blocking my view of the phone in Idris’ hand.
Idris reads.
I know the moment he sees it because the scent of rain in the room goes storm-sharp. Sloane is breathing too fast above me, his hand spread across the back of my head, his other arm locked around my waist. I feel him trying to see over my shoulder and not tear the phone out of Idris’ hand.
“Tell me,” Sloane says.
Idris' mouth is a hard line. “Messages from Theo’s name to Callie.”
“No.” Sloane’s voice disappears under the word.
“They say Theo needed distance. They say Callie confused him during heat prep. They say she shouldn’t return until he was stable.” Idris scrolls once, and his face gets worse. “There are replies from Callie.”
I press my face into Sloane’s shirt. “She thought I said it.”
Sloane’s whole body shakes. It starts in his chest and moves through his arms, into the hands holding me.
For one terrible second, I think he’s going to roar.
I think the house is going to splinter around us.
My purr starts in a broken rush, frantic and useless, and he hears it before the sound gets big enough to hurt.
“Fuck. Fuck, no. Sorry, sweetheart.” Sloane folds over me, voice cracking apart. “Don’t calm me. You don’t have to calm me. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
“You have to believe me,” I say into him, and the words are suddenly the only ones that matter. “Please. I didn’t tell her to go. I didn’t want her gone.”
Sloane pulls back enough to cup my face. His eyes are wet, furious, devastated, and entirely on me. “I believe you. Theo, I believe you with my whole fucking soul.”
Idris comes closer, phone still in hand. “I believe you too.”
The relief should help. It hurts instead, because believing me means Callie was made to believe something else.
She was somewhere with my name cutting her open, thinking I pushed her out of the only nest I ever wanted to share.
I think of her voice on Zana’s call yesterday, soft and ordinary on the voicemail, and wonder if she listened to messages from my name the way Sloane listened to hers.
I wonder if she held the phone to her ear and let my fake rejection become the last piece of home she could reach.
“There’s more,” Idris says.
Sloane’s hand tightens on my cheek before he catches himself. “What?”
“This isn’t just a saved thread.” Idris turns the screen so Sloane can see while keeping it angled away from the hallway. “It’s an active route. The message interface is open. I need to test something before this locks.”
Sloane looks between Idris and me as I hold onto his wrist. “Do it,” I whisper.
Sloane shakes his head. “Sweetheart—”
“Do it.” My voice steadies because this part matters more than fear. “I want to know.”
Idris nods once. “Sloane, text Callie’s number from your phone. One word. Nothing emotional. We preserve everything after.”
Sloane’s jaw works like the instruction physically hurts him. He pulls his phone from his pocket, and the screen lights on Callie’s contact. His thumb hovers over the message box.
He types one word.
Test.
He hits send.
The phone in Idris’ hand lights before Sloane’s screen shows delivered.
A notification slides down across Garrett’s open screen with Sloane’s name attached to it, clean and impossible and bright enough to carve the room in half.
Sloane goes silent above me. Idris holds Garrett’s phone like evidence and a blade, and across the screen, under Callie’s disconnected number, Sloane Rivera’s message waits inside the wrong man’s phone.