7. Theo #3
I press my face into Idris’ neck. He makes a broken sound and folds around me with his clean arm, careful to keep the cut hand away from my back.
His throat moves against my cheek when he swallows.
I can feel how badly he wants to hold tighter and how hard he's fighting not to make his need bigger than mine.
My purr comes back small. It isn’t strong enough to soothe a whole room. It barely soothes me. But it moves against Idris’ skin, and his breath shudders through his chest as he bows over me.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter this time. “I scared you.”
“You’re scared too,” I whisper.
“Yes.” His mouth presses to my hair, then stops there. “I am.”
“You didn’t touch me.”
“No.” His arm wraps a little more securely around my shoulders when I lean into him. “I won’t.”
I close my eyes and lean into him. Sloane wraps Idris’ cut hand and clears the broken glass while I stay pressed against Idris’ neck. Once the glass is cleared, I settle between Idris’ legs with Callie’s sweater in my lap.
I smooth the fabric again and again until the loose thread lies flat.
“I need paper,” I say.
Both Alphas go still, but neither of them asks why.
Sloane reaches for the notebook Dr. Mercer left on the side table, the one Dr. Mercer left for recovery tracking.
He opens it to a clean page and sets it on the floor in front of me.
Idris gives me a pen, then pulls his hand back before his fingers can linger.
The white page hurts to look at.
My hand doesn’t want to hold the pen. The muscles in my fingers are tired from shaking, tired from gripping Callie’s sweater, tired from being part of a body that keeps surviving things it doesn’t understand.
I place the tip against the paper, but no ink comes at first because I’m pressing too lightly.
Sloane shifts forward, then stops himself.
Idris’ breath warms the side of my face.
“This is for her,” I whisper.
Sloane’s eyes close. Idris' arm tightens around my middle for half a second, then eases.
I press harder.
C.
The letter comes out jagged. My hand cramps before I finish the curve, and pain travels up my forearm in a hot line. I don’t stop. I write the next letter, then the next, each one too large and uneven, the pen dragging where my grip fails.
a. l. l. i. e.
I have to stop after her name. My eyes blur so badly the page swims, and for a second, all I can see is her on the voicemail I never got to hear, her voice going to Zana instead of us, safe and willing, safe and willing, like safety is something she might have somewhere without me.
I make myself breathe. Sloane’s hand is flat on the floor near the notebook, close enough that I can see the tremor in his fingers. He doesn’t touch the page.
I force the comma onto the paper.
Callie,
The next word is harder because it’s where the lie lives.
My hand wants to fold around the pen and never open.
Garrett’s voice is still in the room, telling me abandonment, telling me structure, telling me she chose distance.
The messages are in my head too, my name beside words I never wrote, my picture above a sentence that made her think I didn’t want her in the nest. I press my lips together until they hurt and write through the cramp.
you didn’t
The apostrophe's a dark little slash. My hand jerks after it, and the pen skids. Idris’ breath catches near my ear, but he doesn’t speak. Sloane makes a sound so low it barely becomes sound at all.
I keep going.
leave me
The last word tears through the page. The pen catches on the paper, digs in, and rips a small black wound through the fibers.
Pain locks my hand into a claw. I drop the pen because I can’t hold it anymore, because the sentence is out now and I don’t know how to survive the shape of it where everyone can see.
Callie, you didn’t leave me.
Sloane covers his mouth with one hand. His eyes are on the page, but his face looks like he’s seeing her instead. Idris bows his head over my shoulder, and for a moment, his cheek rests against my hair.
I stare at the torn paper until the words stop moving.
“She didn’t,” Sloane says at last. His voice sounds scraped raw, but it doesn’t shake. “She didn’t leave you, sweetheart.”
I look at the page because I can’t look at him. “She thinks I did.”
“No,” Idris says, and grief moves through that single word so heavily that I feel it against my back. “She thinks someone wearing your name did. That isn't the same thing, Theo.”
“It feels the same to her.”
Sloane lowers his hand from his mouth. His face is wet now, and he doesn’t wipe it away. “Then we make sure she hears the truth from us. From you. However long it takes.”
Sloane reaches for his phone, slow enough that I know he’s making sure the movement doesn’t scare me. “I’m calling Zana,” he says, voice low and ruined and finally moving. “Then I’m going to the police.”
Idris nods against my hair. His bandaged hand stays where I can see it. I close my eyes and press my face back into Callie’s sweater, a small cracked purr starting up in my chest again.
Callie, you didn’t leave me.