22. Theo
Theo
Garrett’s office smells like cold mint, leather, paper, and the polish he uses on the desk when he wants the room to feel less like work. I know that because I’ve been in here twice now, and both times he’s let me touch things without making me feel like I’m being tested.
I try to sit in the chair across from him.
I put my hands in my lap and keep my ankles crossed, but my skin feels too full today, too aware of the hallway, the kitchen, the stairs, every sound that might be Callie moving through the house.
Garrett doesn’t tell me to sit still. He only glances up when my hand finds the small brass compass on the shelf near the framed photograph of the lake house.
“That one opens,” he says, his pen still moving over the document in front of him. He looks back down like he trusts me with it, and that makes my chest loosen enough for me to breathe.
I turn the compass carefully until the lid clicks. The needle trembles beneath the glass, restless even though I’m standing still, and I like that too much. Something can be held safely in a round brass case and still want to move.
Garrett signs the bottom of a page and slides it into one of the neat stacks on his desk.
“Idris has been reviewing the security language for the Rourke transition file, and Sloane keeps pretending he’s not still the only person alive who can make sense of Kade’s archive system.
I’m beginning to suspect competence is his favorite form of martyrdom. ”
I look over at him because Sloane’s name always pulls my attention. Garrett’s mouth curves like he knows it, but the smile doesn’t feel sharp. It feels like he’s letting me sit near the part of the house that keeps moving when everyone else is asleep.
“Everyone here has work they should probably complain about less,” Garrett says, opening another folder and tapping the edge of the papers into place. “Idris has contracts. Sloane has old ghosts in server rooms. I have clients who think calling me six times turns panic into strategy.”
My thumb follows the cool ridge of the compass. The question slips out small, barely more than breath, but Garrett hears it anyway. “Callie?”
His pen pauses for less than a second. Then he keeps writing, his voice even and easy. “Calliope teaches literature and ethics, which sounds quieter than it is. Students in crisis, conduct panels, department politics, all of it wrapped in committee language so no one has to admit it’s messy.”
“She’s good,” I say, and my face warms because it comes out too fast. I know the way she reads emails with her mouth pressed tight and then answers them gently anyway. I know the way her students’ names stay in her head after she closes the laptop.
“She is.” Garrett reaches for a gray folder near his elbow and glances through the top page. “She’s good enough that Halston sent over an offer for her to consider. Stronger department, better title, more room to grow. She’s earned that.”
My head lifts before I know I’ve moved. The compass goes still in my hands, the brass suddenly too hard against my palm, and Garrett notices because he notices everything. He turns one page, thoughtful and calm, like this is ordinary house talk.
“It’s far, of course,” he says. “Farther than I’d like, selfishly. Still, I think it may be good for her.”
The compass clicks shut too hard.
The sound cracks through the office, bright and wrong, and my fingers lock around the brass until the edge presses into my palm. Garrett looks at my hand, then at my face, and the concern in his expression makes my throat close faster.
“Theo,” he says softly. “Careful.”
I put the compass back on the shelf. My hand misses the first time and bumps the wood, but I get it settled in its place before Garrett can stand. “Water,” I say, because that’s smaller than asking where Halston is.
“There’s water in the den.” Garrett leans back in his chair, watching me in a way that feels warm until it feels too warm. “Do you want me to walk with you?”
I shake my head. “I’m okay.” The words scrape a little, but they come out clear enough, so I use them to get myself into the hall before the room can ask more of me.
The hallway is too bright after Garrett’s office.
The house isn’t loud, but every sound has a secret under it now: water moving upstairs, a delivery truck passing outside, the faint clink of a spoon against ceramic near the kitchen.
Then Callie laughs once, soft and surprised, and my whole body turns toward it.
She’s home because she doesn’t have afternoon classes today.
She said that at breakfast, smiling over her mug while Sloane tried to steal toast from her plate and Idris told him to act like someone had fed him before.
She said she’d grade from the house and complain about commas where people could hear her.
She’s home, and there’s an offer somewhere far away with her name on it. She’s home, and the house suddenly feels like something I need to hold together with both hands before it changes shape around me.
I don’t go to the den. The closet is wrong for this; the closet was small and dark and secret, built around the first terrifying relief of having Callie’s scent close enough to breathe. This feeling needs air and light and a place where she might find me without having to search too hard.
The sunroom is warm with gray afternoon light.
Rain taps lightly against the glass roof, and the long window bench sits beneath the plants Callie keeps forgetting to water until she remembers them with dramatic guilt and brings them back from the edge.
There are cushions under the bench, folded blankets in the wicker trunk, and an old green throw Idris uses when he reads in here late at night.
I pull everything down with hands that won’t stay steady.
The green throw goes across the bench first, then one of Sloane’s sweatshirts along the back, soft and heavy where my shoulder can press into it.
Garrett’s blanket from the leather reading chair goes near the entrance, and I smooth it twice before I let myself take Callie’s cardigan from the hook by the doorway and place it in the center.
It isn’t enough, so I add one of her scarves from the basket by the stairs, then the little pillow she uses behind her back when she grades.
The mug she abandoned on the plant stand this morning goes near the edge, empty except for the faint smell of vanilla tea clinging to the ceramic.
By the time I climb in, the nest looks open and obvious and strange, like a question made out of fabric.
I curl around the cardigan anyway. The rain softens above me, and the house moves around me, and I press my face into her sleeve until honeyed pear and vanilla tea fill my lungs.
My body settles for one breath, then surges again around Garrett’s calm voice saying far, good, earned, and I grip the cardigan harder.
A floorboard creaks outside the sunroom.
I stop breathing, but the scent reaches me before fear can. Callie comes into the doorway with a stack of student papers tucked under one arm and a pen caught between her fingers. Her hair is pinned up badly, curls already escaping around her face, and she stops when she sees the window bench.
“Theo,” she says, very softly. Her eyes move over the blankets, the scarf, the mug, the cardigan in my arms, and then they come back to my face. “What is this?”
Heat climbs up my throat. I look down at the cardigan and reach for the mug, trying to move something so the nest doesn’t say everything at once. My hand shakes before I reach it, and Callie’s face changes before her voice does.
“No, don’t fix it.” She sets the papers on the plant stand and crouches near the edge of the bench, keeping both hands where I can see them. “Can I come in?”
I nod, but she waits. My fingers tighten in the cardigan, and I force the word out before she has to ask twice. “Yes.”
Only then does she step over the edge of the blanket and sit beside me. She moves slowly, giving me room to shift away, but I make space for her with my knee instead. The nest changes around her immediately, turning from a pile of stolen things into somewhere she belongs.
Callie looks over the bench again, then at me. Her expression stays warm, but her worry is there too, tucked carefully around the edges. “Did something happen?”
My mouth opens, and nothing useful comes out.
She reaches for my hand without taking it. When I uncurl my fingers from the cardigan, she turns my palm up and brushes her thumb over the red line the compass left behind. Her brows draw together, and I wish I’d hidden that part better.
“It’s okay now,” I say.
Callie’s eyes lift to mine. She doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t make me defend it. “Do you want me to stay?”
I nod too fast. “Stay.”
“I’m staying.” She shifts closer, folding one leg beneath her so her knee brushes mine. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I shake my head.
“All right.” Her thumb moves once more over my palm before she lets my hand rest between us. “Do you want me to stop asking?”
I nod, and shame follows it because she’s only trying to help. Callie sees that too, because she’s Callie, and her voice gentles until it feels like a hand over the sore place in my chest.
“Okay, Star.” She leans back against the cushions, close enough that her shoulder almost touches mine. “I can stop asking.”
The quiet should help, but it doesn’t. She’s beside me, warm and real and home, and the thought of far opens under my ribs again. My body moves before I decide what I’m asking for, and then my mouth is on hers.
Callie inhales softly, surprised but not pulling away.
Her free hand lifts to my jaw and stays there, not holding me in place, only feeling me choose it.
The kiss is supposed to explain that I don’t want far, that I don’t want good if good means gone, that I’ve only just learned the shape of her mouth and I can’t stand the idea of it becoming something I remember instead of something I reach for.