18. Dash #2
I touch her cheek with two fingers, light enough that she could step back and keep most of her pride intact. The ink comes away easily. Callie’s eyes half-close before I finish, and she exhales into the contact, not quite a sigh and not quite surrender. It goes through me so hard I stop breathing.
For one second, she leans toward me.
It would take almost nothing. A tilt of my head.
My hand turning under her jaw. One stolen inch dressed up as inevitability.
She's warm under my fingers, closer than she has ever let herself be, and every Alpha instinct I have spent my adult life disciplining wakes with a quiet, devastating certainty.
I want to kiss her. I want to put my mouth to the bite at her shoulder and tell the man who left it there that I have questions he won't enjoy answering. I want to gather every name and rumor and careful half-truth from Briarwick and lay them at Callie’s feet until she can decide what deserves to matter.
I want to hear her laugh in my kitchen again.
I want to be the reason her breath catches for something other than fear.
I lower my hand.
Callie’s eyes open, and the expression in them is raw enough that I nearly apologize for doing the right thing. Instead, I step back to my side of the desk and pick up the pen. “This version gives them a fair exam.”
She looks at the page for a few seconds before she manages to look down properly. Color touches her cheeks, soft and uneven. “Good,” she says, her voice quieter than before. “I’ll update it before I send the review packet.”
“Mara still coming at seven?”
“Yes.” Callie gathers the folder against her chest like it can hold the moment closed. “She found some old committee notes that may help with spring placement. And she says the pizza place has been warned about basil restraint.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” I keep my face calm because she needs my restraint more than she needs my honesty about how badly I want to follow her when she leaves. “I’ll finish here and meet you at the house.”
She nods and turns toward the door. At the threshold, she pauses with one hand on the frame, and for a breath I think she might say something about the touch, the almost, the thing we both stepped around and left alive in the room.
Instead, she looks back with a small, careful smile that hits me worse than confession.
“Don’t work with your murder face too long,” she says.
“I’ll be home before the pizza gets cold.” I let home stand because she doesn't flinch from it this time. She only nods again, then leaves me with the ghost of her cheek against my fingers.
By the time I finish the last of my work and get home, Callie has already changed out of her work clothes and left the side door unlocked for Mara.
Mara arrives a little after seven with two pizza boxes balanced against her hip and a folder tucked under her arm, already talking before Callie has the side door fully open.
She brings the weather in with her, cold air and damp wool and the sharp paper smell of campus copies, and Callie steps back to let her into the kitchen with the first real ease I’ve seen from her all week.
Mara presses the folder into her hands and tells her the committee notes are a disaster, but the useful kind, and Callie makes a sound that is almost a laugh before she catches herself.
I stay at the counter and take the plates down because it gives me something to do with my hands.
Mara has a way of filling space that doesn't feel like taking it over, and Callie responds to her before she remembers to be careful. Her shoulders lower. Her mouth softens. The line between her brows eases as Mara opens one box and complains, with obvious affection, that Callie’s preferred toppings look like someone lost a bet at a farmer’s market.
Callie glances at me then, color warming her cheeks.
“There’s cheese too,” she says, as if she has suddenly remembered I’m here and might need rescuing from roasted peppers, olives, pineapple, and whatever else Mara talked her into ordering.
Her voice is gentle around the edges, still carrying the remains of the laugh she didn't fully let out.
“I saw.” I take a slice from the plain box and sit at the end of the island, close enough to be part of the table and far enough that the rhythm between them stays theirs. “I’m grateful someone was merciful.”
Mara gives me a look over the top of the folder, but she lets it pass because Callie is smiling into her plate.
That smile does something to the whole kitchen.
It changes the light more than the lamps do.
I have seen Callie polite. I have seen her brave.
I have seen her so tired she could barely lift a fork and still ask whether anyone else needed anything before herself.
This is different. This is a piece of her unguarded, and I have the sense to sit still while it happens.
They spread the papers between the pizza boxes, and the conversation settles into campus business: midterm schedules, spring placement, a course sequence Callie thinks will punish first-years for the sins of an overconfident committee.
Mara argues from the other side only long enough to make Callie defend herself, and Callie does, leaning over the island with one hand braced beside the folder, eyes brighter than they were an hour ago.
She talks with her whole face when she forgets to hide. I didn't know that before Mara came.
I eat the cheese pizza and listen. Every once in a while, Callie looks to me for an answer about a requirement or a faculty name, and I give her what she needs without taking the conversation away from her.
She accepts the help easily tonight. That is new too.
No apology first. No careful explanation of why she's asking.
Just her eyes on mine, her voice warm from arguing with Mara, and my name fitting into her mouth like something ordinary.
Mara reaches across the island for a napkin and nudges Callie’s plate closer to her at the same time, a practiced movement that says she has known Callie long enough to feed her without making a production of it.
Callie notices, rolls her eyes, and takes another bite anyway.
The laugh comes after that, small and helpless, when Mara mutters something about committee chairs and crimes against common sense.
Callie ducks her head, but this time she doesn't swallow the sound.
I smile before I can stop myself.
She catches me doing it. For a second, the room goes very still between us, even with Mara sorting papers and the pizza cooling on the counter.
Callie’s smile doesn't vanish. It gentles.
Her scent warms faintly, honeyed pear and vanilla tea threading through basil and melted cheese, and the want in me settles into a quieter, more dangerous shape.
I have been telling myself this is care.
Practical care. Ethical care. A safe house, a stocked fridge, a chair at the island, a ride when the weather turns and a video message when calls make her flinch.
All of that is true, but it is no longer the whole truth.
The woman across from me is laughing with sauce at the corner of her mouth, arguing about midterms, letting her friend put food in front of her, and looking at me like maybe this kitchen has become a place she expects to find me.
Somewhere in the middle of the papers and the pizza and Mara’s hand resting over Callie’s wrist, the shape of it changes.
Calliope Monroe isn't a problem I'm helping solve.
She's a Beta in my kitchen, alive in ways I had only seen in flashes, and I like her with a force that has nothing to do with rescue.
I like the way she thinks. I like the way she laughs when she forgets to be afraid of it.
I like the softness of her scent when the room finally lets her breathe.
I like her enough that it scares me, and for once, the fear doesn't make me want to step back.