35. Theo #3
“His heat hasn’t started,” Callie says when the nurse asks about my cycle status. Her hand is on my uninjured wrist, thumb moving slowly. “He’s close to it. We’ve been tracking the spikes, and he was cleared for a short campus visit.”
The nurse looks at the tablet. “The listed emergency contact is Garrett Crane?”
My stomach tightens before I can stop it.
“He drove me,” I say, and I hate that my voice is smaller now. I try again. “He said he’d stay nearby until lunch was finished.”
The nurse nods and taps the screen. “Given the proximity to heat, the fall, and the distress response, I need to call the listed contact for transport. He should go home and be monitored. You said you have an interview starting soon?”
Callie’s hand tightens on my wrist. “I can stay with him.”
“You have the interview,” I say, turning toward her before she can make that decision sound easy. “You have to go.”
“I don’t have to do anything when you’re hurt.”
“I’m hurt a little.” I lift my bandaged hand because it is proof and also not enough proof to let her give up the day. “I was scared. I’m still scared, but I’m not scared of you. I don’t want you to miss it because a mug broke.”
Her eyes fill so quickly her anger rises with it, like she is furious at the tears for arriving where a solution should be. “You’re more important than a room full of people asking me about curriculum design.”
“I know.” My own eyes burn. “That’s why I need to say it clearly. Please go be brilliant. Then come home.”
Garrett arrives while the nurse is finishing the wrap on my palm.
He comes in with his suit jacket still buttoned, rain beaded on one shoulder, and concern arranged across his face so neatly that the nurse’s posture changes with relief.
His gaze moves over the room: the gauze, my knees, Callie’s wet sleeve, our joined hands.
Something tightens at the corner of his mouth before he smooths it away.
“Theo,” he says, crossing to us. “Tell me what happened.”
“A mug broke,” I answer before anyone else can. My voice is hoarse, but the sentence holds. “It startled me, and I cut my hand when I reached down. Callie helped.”
Callie’s thumb presses into my wrist.
Garrett crouches in front of me. He doesn't touch me at first, and that makes it harder to object when his hand finally settles near my knee. “I’m glad she was with you.”
The nurse gives him the professional version: café crowd, broken ceramic, shallow palm cut, mild burn, bruised knees, elevated distress response due proximity to heat.
Garrett listens without interrupting. He asks one question about the wrap, one about monitoring, one about whether campus safety needs a report because an Omega close to his heat was injured in a public café.
The nurse says they’ll document it internally.
“This close to his heat, public environments can shift quickly,” Garrett says, still looking at the nurse while his hand rests on my knee. “We were hoping lunch would stay simple.”
“It was simple,” I say.
Garrett turns toward me with a softness that makes the room feel smaller. “I believe it started that way.”
Callie sits straighter. “It was a crowded café and an accident. He handled it beautifully.”
“No one is blaming him,” Garrett says at once. His eyes lift to her, warm and sad in a way that makes her mouth tighten. “Or you. Plans meet biology, and then we adjust.”
I don’t like the way the nurse glances at Callie. I don’t like the way the sentence makes biology sound like a verdict and lunch sound like a plan that failed. My palm throbs under the gauze, and the heat beneath my skin gives another warning pulse.
“I wasn’t scared of Callie,” I say.
Garrett’s attention returns to me. “No one said you were.”
“I wasn’t scared of lunch either.” I turn my wrist until Callie’s hand can fit more securely around mine. “I got startled. Everything got loud. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Callie says, and her voice shakes only a little.
Garrett nods as if we have both been brave and incomplete. “Then I’ll take you home before the noise catches up with you again.” He stands and looks at the clock on the wall, then at Callie’s folder where it rests against her bag. “Your interview starts soon.”
Callie follows his gaze. Her face changes.
I see the moment she prepares to choose me anyway, and panic flares so sharply that it almost becomes anger.
I don't want to be the reason Garrett gets to be right.
I don't want Callie walking into that room already bleeding from another choice she had to make around me.
“Go,” I say, catching her hand with my bandaged one before she can stand. “Please. I want you to go.”
“Star.”
“I mean it.” My voice breaks, but the words stay words. “You told me you’re coming home after. I believe you.”
Her mouth trembles. “I am.”
“Then go be brilliant.” I try to smile because Idris said it first, and I want to send her into the interview with one piece of home that isn't fear. “Then come home.”
She bends and kisses my forehead, then my cheek, then my mouth in a quick, desperate press that makes the nurse look away.
I hold still under it, trying to keep every second.
Her lips are warm. Her hand is careful around my bandage.
She smells like tea and pear and rain from the walk over, and when she pulls back, her eyes are wet.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you too.” I press my forehead to hers before Garrett’s shadow can make me move. “Call me when you’re done.”
“I will.”
I believe her when she says it. That matters later, when belief starts to feel like something with teeth.
Garrett holds my jacket while I stand. Callie stays beside me until the doorway, then stops because the nurse is saying something about forms and the interview building is across the quad and the clock is turning every second into a smaller room.
I look back once before the hall bends. She is standing with one hand pressed to her mouth, her folder clutched against her ribs, her blazer sleeve still damp from the tea she didn’t care about because she was too busy holding my hand.