26. Sloane #2
“I know.” Idris’ voice is quiet now, scraped down from command into something rougher. His hand stays at my neck, not letting me drift too far from my own body.
“No, you don’t.” I turn my face toward the mat, then force myself to look back at Idris because he deserves the full ugliness of it if he's going to keep standing here. “I hate how he sounds right. I hate that for one second, before I can get my head around the sentence, I hear him and think maybe there’s a rule I missed. Maybe there’s a thing Callie will believe because it sounds like care. ”
Idris says nothing, but his mouth tightens. That is enough to make the words spill faster.
“He keeps getting close to the truth and bending it.” My throat feels raw.
I can still taste him and fury and the metallic bite of my own restraint.
“Theo is raw. Fine. The day should be gentle. Fine. Early spikes make everything louder. Fine. Then somehow the next step is always Callie standing a little farther away.”
Idris’ hand stills at my neck.
I look at him. “You see it.”
“I see enough to dislike the pattern.”
That isn't the same as agreement, but it is more than he has given me before. I take it and hold it like a blade.
“She woke up smiling,” I say, quieter now. “Callie. This morning. She woke up smiling because Theo built a place with her in it and nobody moved her. I felt it. I felt her believe us for a little while.”
Idris’ eyes close briefly.
“If Garrett makes her doubt that,” I continue, and my voice drops until it barely sounds like mine, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You’ll come to me before you do it.” Idris opens his eyes again, and there is nothing gentle in them now. Only command, stripped clean and aimed at me. “You’ll come to me, Sloane. You’ll come to me, and you’ll let me hold the line until you can think.”
I want to argue, but I don't. “Yeah,” I say, the word rough as gravel. “Okay.”
Idris studies me long enough to know I mean it. Then he leans in and kisses me again, slower this time, with the kind of care he never announces before he gives it. When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.
“We keep Callie in the room,” he says. “We keep Theo asking for what he wants. We stop letting Garrett be the only one who sounds calm.”
I laugh once, tired and humorless, but it doesn't cut the way the earlier laugh did. “I’m famously good at calm.”
“You are good at being honest.” Idris’ mouth twitches, faint and brief. “We can work with that.”
I shove his shoulder, and he lets me. It is ridiculous how much better that makes me feel.
We clean up in the small bathroom off the gym without talking much. Idris tosses me a towel, and I catch it against my chest while I watch him wash his hands in the mirror. Red marks circle my wrists, and bruises are already beginning near my hips where he held me down.
I run my thumb over one mark before following him into the hall.
The house is quieter than I like. Callie’s voice drifts up from downstairs, soft and amused, and Theo answers with something too low for me to catch.
Garrett’s voice follows a moment later, calm enough that my body starts to rise again on instinct.
Idris catches my wrist before I can move faster. I look at him, and he doesn't say steady. He doesn't need the word. His grip says it. His eyes say it. The faint ache in my muscles says it too, because I have already given him the worst of the pressure and let him hand me back something usable.
I breathe once, then again, until the hallway stops narrowing.
Downstairs, Callie laughs. It is quiet, but it is real, and Theo makes a pleased sound right after like he caused it on purpose. My chest loosens by a fraction.
Garrett says something I still can't make out, and the sound of him is enough to put the edge back under my ribs.
I don't run toward it this time. I walk, and Idris stays beside me all the way down the stairs, shoulder close enough to brush mine, black tea and rain cutting through the heat still clinging to my skin.
I follow Callie’s voice, not Garrett’s. In the kitchen, Theo is mangling a clementine while Callie tries not to laugh, and the sight slows me before Garrett’s silence can sharpen me again.
Garrett stands near the coffee machine, mug in hand, watching them with that mild expression I'm learning to hate.
Callie looks up when I enter, and her eyes move over my face, my throat, the damp ends of my hair. She knows exactly what Idris and I did upstairs, or enough of it to pink her cheeks before she looks down at the demolished clementine in Theo’s hands.
“Better?” she asks.
I cross to her slowly, giving Theo time to track me and Idris time to stay within reach. When I get to Callie, I don't grab. I don't crowd. I set one hand on the counter beside her and lean down to kiss her temple.
“Getting there,” I murmur.
She studies me for a second, then nods as if she hears everything underneath. Her hand lifts, fingers brushing my jaw before she turns back to Theo.
“Your radiator is back, Star,” she says. “Give him the ugly clementine.”
Theo looks at me, then at the mangled fruit in his palm. His mouth curves, shy and wicked at once, and he holds it out like an offering.
I take it and eat the whole thing, torn membrane and all, because Theo watches my face while I do it and Callie’s shoulder stays warm against my arm.
Garrett says nothing, which is almost worse, but I don't give him the growl sitting under my ribs. I swallow the last bitter thread of peel and hold Theo’s gaze until his smile settles into something real.