24. Sloane #2
The edge slips in on the last few words. She cringes, a small instinctive pullback that punches all the way through me. I feel the instant her body expects force to follow feeling, the instant my anger reminds her of his commands instead of my protection.
I loosen my hold before shame can freeze me. My hands go flat against her back, fingers spread wide enough for her to feel every place I am not gripping. I drop my voice until there is nothing in it but the man who loves her and the apology I have not earned the right to finish.
“I am sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I am so sorry, sweetheart. I am not commanding you, and I am not deciding for you. If you want distance, I will give you distance. If you want me outside, I will go outside. If you want me close, I will stay close only as long as you keep choosing it. No one gets to decide for you again, Callie. Not Garrett. Not a paper. Not a law. Not even me.”
She looks up at me then. Her eyes search my face with a precision that hurts to sit under, looking for the hidden thread, the soft hook, the place where an Alpha’s want might dress itself up as her need.
I stay still and let her look. I let her take the measure of my voice, my hands, my scent, my grief.
I let her decide whether there is anything safe enough to touch.
“I was outside the door,” she whispers, and the words destroy me differently than the others because this one has a picture. “I was hitting the wood with my fists. I was calling your name. Why did you not hear me?”
That is the knife.
I see it as if Garrett has forced the memory into my own head.
Callie on the porch of the house we were supposed to make safe for her, rain on her face, hands striking a door that should have opened for her before she ever lifted them.
Callie calling my name while I sat close enough to exist in the same house and far enough away to be useless.
I can blame pheromones, panic, Garrett, Theo’s crashed heat, every poisoned piece of the trap, and none of it changes the fact that she called and I didn't come.
“I didn't hear you because I trusted a man who had learned exactly where to stand so his lies looked like care,” I say, and my throat feels raw around every word.
“I let him stand too close. I let him turn concern into delay and delay into proof. I will never forgive myself for that. I know telling you that does not give you back the night you spent outside that door.”
Idris' hand moves from her nape to her shoulder, his thumb stroking the bone through the thin fabric of her shirt.
“We thought we were fighting confusion,” he says, voice low and controlled in a way that costs him.
“We thought we were managing a heat crash, a bond shutdown, and a legal mess. Garrett was erasing you in pieces while making every missing piece look like your choice.”
Callie shivers. Her head drops back against my chest, but her eyes move toward the doorway where Dash stands with his hands in the pockets of his worn cardigan.
He has the look of a man who wants to be anywhere else and would still burn the house down before leaving her alone in the room.
His face is composed in that careful academic way of his, but I see the tension in his jaw and the anger he has put behind glass so she does not have to manage it.
“Callie,” Dash says, his voice level and steady.
He does not step closer. He looks at her first, not at me, and that is why I can't hate him for taking up space in a room I should have reached before he ever had to.
“Tell me what is true in this room right now. Not three months ago. Not the report. Not Garrett. This room.”
Her fingers tighten in Theo’s hair, and I loosen my arms before she has to ask. She notices. Her hand presses against my chest, keeping me there, and the small choice nearly breaks me in half.
“I am in your living room,” she says, voice rough but steadying as she goes.
“Theo is with me. Sloane is holding me because I reached for him.
Idris is close, but he's waiting. The door is open. You are here.” Her breath catches, but she stays with it.
“I am scared, but I am here. I am safe right now.”
Dash nods once. “Then we stay with right now.” He pauses, letting the silence take over the room. “Do you want the couch?” Dash asks after a while, still looking at Callie, still keeping his voice low. “You can stay on the floor, or we can move you somewhere warmer.”
Callie does not answer quickly. She looks at Theo first, at the way he's trembling against her side with one hand locked in my sleeve and the other twisted in her robe.
Then she looks at Idris, whose whole body goes still under her attention.
Finally, she looks at me. I hold my breath and refuse to move until the decision leaves her mouth.
“I want the couch,” she says. Her voice is cracked, but it is hers. “I want everyone to move slowly.”
“We can do that,” I tell her, and I keep the relief out of my hands. “I have you only as much as you want me to.”
She nods once against my chest. That is all the permission I take.
I shift with care, one arm under her knees and the other around her back, moving slowly enough that she can tell me to stop at any point.
Theo refuses to detach, so Idris helps him up with the same visible patience, keeping one hand open until Theo chooses to grab it.
Dash clears a path without comment, moving a stack of books from the coffee table and pushing the armchair back far enough to give us room.
When I settle Callie onto the sofa, I don't sit beside her until she catches my wrist. The grip is weak, but it is clear.
I sink down at her feet instead of taking the cushion next to her, and she keeps my hand, her fingers tucked in mine like she's testing how long it takes for love to turn into pressure.
Idris sits on her other side after she nods to him, his arm resting along the back of the couch where she can lean if she wants.
Theo crawls into the narrow space between her body and the cushions, folding himself around her lap with a tired sound that makes her eyes fill again.
The air in the room does not become easy. It becomes breathable, and that is more than I thought I would have tonight.
Callie’s thumb moves once over my knuckles. “I thought you were happy without me,” she says, quieter now. “I thought the house was finally right.”
I press my mouth to the back of her hand because anything else would ask too much from my voice.
“The house was a tomb,” I say against her skin.
“I could not go into our room. I slept outside the closet some nights because the floorboards still had a little of you in them. I thought I had failed you so badly you had to cut the bond to survive me.”
Her face crumples, and I want to take the sentence back even though it is true.
Idris reaches for her only after she leans toward him, and when his arm comes around her shoulders, she folds into the contact with a sound that leaves him blinking too fast. Theo pushes his face into her stomach, muttering something I can't make out, and Callie’s hand leaves mine long enough to slide into his hair.
Dash disappears into the kitchen and returns with water, not tea, not soup, not a performance of caretaking that turns the room into a scene we are all expected to understand.
Just water, a box of tissues, and a folded blanket he sets on the arm of the sofa within Callie’s reach.
He does not tuck it around her. He does not make himself necessary. He gives her the tools and steps back.
“Thank you,” I say to him, and the words are rough.
Dash looks at me for a long moment. Whatever lives between us as brothers isn't healed by two words in the middle of the worst night of Callie’s life. He nods anyway, once, because this isn't about us.
Callie sips the water with both hands around the glass. Her eyes keep drifting to the door, then to Theo, then to me, then to Idris. Every time she looks at me and doesn’t flinch, the bond gives that faint, damaged thrum in my chest.
Every time she does flinch, I loosen my hold on her hand and wait for her to decide whether she wants it back. Most times, she does. Once, she doesn’t, and I sit with my palm open on my thigh until she touches two fingers to my wrist again.