26. Calliope #3
Sloane takes one cautious step forward and holds out the coffee. Steam rises in a thin white curl from the cup. “I have you, baby,” he says, voice low and thick enough to go straight through every defense I have left. “If you want me. If you are ready to let me hold you up for a minute.”
The if is the bridge.
I don't think about the faculty building behind me or the truck or the legal mess waiting beyond this parking lot.
I go to him because my body has been starving for him since before I had proof it was allowed.
Sloane receives me without grabbing. His arms close only after mine circle his waist, and then I am against his chest, face buried in the heavy wool of his coat while smoked cedar and brown sugar surround me, familiar enough to hurt.
He shakes when he exhales. I feel it through my cheek, through the hand he lays carefully across my back, through the restraint in every inch of him.
Behind me, Idris moves closer but does not touch until my shoulder angles back toward him.
Then his hand comes to the nape of my neck, thumb resting just beneath my hairline, and the black tea and rain of him settles over my skin with a steadiness that makes my throat close.
“We can stay steady while you find your footing,” Idris says. “You don't have to trust the whole room at once.”
I let the satchel slide from my shoulder.
It hits the pavement with a dull thud, and none of them reach for it right away.
That should annoy me. The bag has grading inside.
Notes. My calendar. The proof that Professor Monroe existed for an hour inside a room that didn't know how much it cost to keep her spine straight.
But Sloane does not look at the bag. Idris does not look at the bag. They are watching my breathing like it is the only assignment that matters.
“I thought I would feel stronger after the meeting,” I whisper into Sloane’s coat. “I thought if I proved I could still do my job, the rest of me would stop feeling so fragile.”
Sloane’s hand flexes once, then smooths over the middle of my back with careful pressure. “You were strong in there,” he says. “You are allowed to fall apart after. The falling apart does not erase the part where you walked in.”
The words hurt because I want to believe them.
I pull back enough to look at him, and his eyes are rimmed red, the old ferocity softened into something rawer and more frightening to trust. Idris bends to pick up my satchel only after I nod toward it, and the fact that he waits makes the gesture feel like care instead of management.
“How is Theo?” I ask as Idris lifts my satchel from the pavement.
“Back at the house with Dash,” Sloane says. “The drive here was enough for him. Dash took him home as soon as you went inside, and he settled once he was back near your room.”
The thought of Theo, curled up in my borrowed bed with my scent around him, brings a fresh wave of heat to my chest. He's the most visible casualty of Garrett’s engineering, the one who was told his need made him dangerous, that wanting me made everything worse.
But when I picture him in my room, I don't only see panic.
I know panic. This is need, yes, but it is also preference.
He curls into me because he wants me there when the world is quiet too.
“We should go back to him,” I say, though my body is reluctant to leave the circle Sloane and Idris have made around me.
“We will,” Idris says, opening the passenger door of the truck. “You can sit in the middle if that feels better, or by the door if you need the space.”
The choice is small enough that I can hold it. I look at the truck cab, at the space between them, at the open door and the lot behind us. “The middle,” I say. “But don't close the door until I tell you.”
Idris nods. “I will wait.”
I climb into the middle seat, my shoulders brushing Sloane’s and my thigh pressed lightly against Idris' when he gets in after me.
It is tight. It should be too much. Instead, the closeness feels like a perimeter I have chosen.
Sloane keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the seat between us until I turn my palm over.
Only then does he lace his fingers through mine.
The drive back takes the long way because Idris suggests trees, and Sloane listens.
Outside the windshield, Halston falls away into damp roads, wet branches, and the pale green shimmer of leaves after rain.
I drink the coffee Sloane brought me in slow sips, and neither of them asks me to talk.
The silence in the cab holds differently than the silences Garrett built.
This one has Sloane’s hand around mine, Idris' quiet heat at my side, Theo waiting for me in the room that still smells like my sleep, and Dash keeping the house steady enough for all of us to breathe.
None of it is fixed. Garrett Crane is still out there, and the legal battle waits like weather on the horizon. But when the truck turns back toward Dash’s house, I don't ask them to let go.