30. Sloane
Sloane
The house goes quiet by inches. Theo loses the fight against sleep first, somewhere in the middle of explaining why Callie Day should include a second dessert even though lunch was barely two hours ago.
His words slow, then his hands, then the bright, stubborn line of his mouth softens against Callie’s shoulder.
He’s been warm all afternoon, warm enough that Idris has checked him more than once without making him feel watched, and his scent has gone sweet enough that cardamom lingers at the back of my throat whenever I breathe too deeply.
Callie falls asleep after him, though she fights it longer.
Her eyes keep opening whenever the room shifts, and her fingers twitch against Theo’s wrist like she’s counting all of us even as her body gives out.
She’s wearing one of Idris' shirts beneath Dash’s cardigan, her legs tucked under the blanket Theo dragged over her with possessive satisfaction, her hair loose and tangled where Dash’s hand had been stroking it earlier while she pretended she was awake enough to follow the movie.
The nest has taken over half the living room.
Theo built the first version in the sunroom after breakfast, moved most of it when Callie said the afternoon light was better in here, then decided the couch disrupted the shape and made Idris rearrange three cushions.
Dash watched the process with the resigned patience of a man who’d stopped trying to understand Omega logic and started accepting it as a force of nature.
Idris took every instruction seriously until Theo insisted the green blanket had to be folded diagonally because it kept Callie’s knees warmer, and then even he had to look away before his mouth gave him up.
Now the floor is covered in pillows, blankets, half-empty mugs, Callie’s open book, Theo’s socks, Dash’s discarded sweater, and the woman I spent three months failing to find.
The sight should steady me. She’s safe, surrounded, warm enough to sleep.
Instead, relief and grief push into the same space until I can barely tell them apart.
She’s safe in my brother’s house, wrapped in my brother’s cardigan, sleeping in a nest my brother has started entering while still carrying himself like someone might ask him to leave.
Dash sits on the floor beside the couch with his back against it, one knee raised and his hand resting near Callie’s ankle where she reached for him before sleep took her.
He isn’t touching her now, though he’s close enough that she won’t have to search if she wakes and wants him.
The fact that I know that hurts. The fact that he knows it too hurts worse.
Idris sits in the chair near the end of the nest with his phone facedown on his thigh.
His eyes are lowered, though I know he isn’t resting.
He’s listening to Theo’s breathing, watching Callie’s fingers, tracking the house, the doors, and the new sweetness in Theo’s scent while allowing the room to believe he has finally looked away.
Callie makes a small sound in her sleep, and every one of us reacts, the room easing around her.
I can’t keep sitting there after that. Seeing what we’re building and all the places where it’s still fragile presses too hard against the months she slept without me.
I rise carefully, step over the blankets, and make my way toward the kitchen while every instinct in me argues that I should turn around and put my hand on her.