31. Sloane
Sloane
The light above the sink is dim. A bundle of flowers sits in a glass measuring cup near the window because I bought them that morning and realized too late that I had no idea where Dash kept a vase.
Flowers should’ve been simple. I saw them outside the grocery store on the way back from getting coffee, pale yellow roses mixed with small white blooms I couldn’t name, and thought Callie might smile if the house held something pretty that wasn’t trying to repair her.
She did smile, which nearly ruined me. She touched one of the petals with the tip of her finger, looked at me as though I’d handed her something precious, and said they were lovely.
Theo tried to take half of them into the nest until Idris informed him flowers needed water more than territorial devotion, and Callie laughed so hard she had to sit down on the arm of the couch.
I stand at the sink now and wash a mug that is already clean.
I know it is because I washed it ten minutes ago, but I keep my hands beneath the warm water anyway.
If I stop moving, I’ll go back into the living room and watch Callie breathe until she wakes up feeling observed.
The mug is one of the heavy ceramic ones with a wide base, the kind Dash gives her because it holds heat longer.
Dash knows which mug she prefers, how long she lets tea sit before she remembers it, and what kind of chair she chooses when her phone makes her go quiet.
He learned those things during nights when I was calling dead numbers and threatening men who didn’t know enough to help me.
I hate how naturally the knowledge sits in him because he doesn’t use it to make himself important.
He simply puts the right mug in her hands and lets her drink.
Footsteps stop near the kitchen entrance, and I know it’s Dash before he speaks. He doesn’t come in loudly or announce himself. He has learned how to move around Callie with the awareness of someone walking through a room where broken glass still hides under the furniture.
“You keep doing that,” he says quietly, his voice low enough that it won’t carry into the living room. “Cleaning things that are already clean.”
I set the mug on the drying rack and reach for another before I catch myself. “I need my hands busy, or I’m going to go back in there and stare at her until she wakes up.”
Dash comes farther into the kitchen and stops near the counter instead of beside me. In the yellow light, he looks older than the brother I remember while still carrying enough of that younger face to make the years between us feel suddenly visible. “I know the feeling.”
I dry my hands and turn. For several seconds, all I see is the way he held Callie earlier, how his hand knew where to settle, how his voice changed when she startled, how he could read one look from her and decide whether she needed closeness or space.
“I hate it,” I say, the words rough on the way out.
“I hate that you know what she looks like when she’s trying not to cry.
I hate that you know how she takes her coffee at Halston and which chair she chooses when her phone scares her.
I hate that you learned the version of her who flinches at a hallway light because I wasn’t there to stand between her and anything. ”
Dash’s face changes, though he doesn’t interrupt or soften himself to make the confession easier for me. He takes the words as they are, which almost makes the anger worse because some part of me still wants him to become someone I can resent cleanly.
“I hate it too,” he says after a long moment.
“I hate that I had three months to learn those things because she was hurt badly enough to need a map for surviving a normal day. I hate that I know the sound she makes when she wakes up and forgets where she is. I hate that when I first learned how to help her, I didn’t know your name was part of the wound. ”
My jaw tightens until it aches. Dash didn’t take her from me.
He answered a door I didn’t know existed.
He gave her coffee, a bed, and a place where she could breathe while I was tearing apart the wrong pieces of the world with my bare hands.
I can hate the shape of that and still know he saved her from being completely alone.
“I’m grateful,” I say, and the word nearly chokes me. “I need you to know that. I hate it, and I’m grateful. Both are true, and neither of them sits easily.”
Dash looks toward the living room before answering.
“She thought you didn’t want her. She believed you used the bond, the paperwork, and the money to tell her she was extra.
I know you didn’t do that, but I lived with the version of her who believed it, Sloane.
I can’t forget those months because you came back destroyed. ”
“I’m not asking you to forget them.” I brace both hands against the edge of the counter until the stone presses into my palms. “I’m asking you not to turn them into a reason to stand between us forever.”
His gaze returns to mine, and the Alpha beneath the professor comes forward in the set of his shoulders. “I’m asking you to understand that making room for you can’t mean I disappear.”
“I’m going to hurt about it sometimes,” I say, my voice coming out rougher than I intend.
“I’m going to see your hand on her back and feel like I missed a language I should’ve been speaking.
I’m going to hear you tell her something about herself that I didn’t know yet, and I’m going to want to break something. I won’t lie to you about any of that.”
Dash watches me without moving.
“But I’m not asking her to give you back because I got here late,” I continue. “She doesn’t have to choose which version of safe she’s allowed to keep. If she wants you in the room, you’re in the room. If that hurts me, I deal with it without handing the pain to her.”
His throat works, though he remains quiet for a while.
Water ticks into the sink behind me. The refrigerator hums. Somewhere in the living room, Theo makes a sleepy sound, and Callie murmurs something too faint for either of us to understand.
We both turn toward the doorway, then remain where we are once the house settles again.
Dash exhales and leans back against the opposite counter. “I’m not giving her back like I borrowed her from you.”
“I know,” I say, and this time I mean it.
His expression tells me the answer isn’t enough yet.
“I don’t think she was ever mine alone. I know what you were to her before any of this happened, and I know what Idris and Theo are becoming to her now.
I’m still not turning myself into another person who leaves because the room got complicated. ”
The words find an old bruise between us.
There were years when Dash and I did exactly that with each other.
We left when the room became difficult. We stopped calling because neither of us knew how to make the first ordinary move after the last hard conversation.
Birthdays became messages sent too late, holidays thinned into obligations, and family turned into something we remembered instead of something we maintained.
My gaze drifts toward the flowers in the measuring cup, bringing up an old memory.
Dash and I were teenagers when we found the rowboat tied behind the bait shed at the public dock.
The wood was half-rotted, the rope looked older than both of us, and Dash had decided we could make it seaworthy with duct tape, borrowed oars, and the kind of confidence only foolish Alpha boys possess.
We made it halfway across the lake before the first board gave beneath us. Dash blamed me for shifting my weight. I blamed him for choosing a boat that had mushrooms growing along one side. We ended up waist-deep in lake water, laughing so hard we swallowed half of it.
“Do you remember the rowboat behind the bait shed?” I ask, my voice quieter now.
Dash blinks at the change, then his mouth shifts before he can stop it. “The one you swore was seaworthy because the hole was above the waterline?”
“You said duct tape was waterproof.”
“It is waterproof under sane conditions.” His shoulders loosen, and warmth edges into his voice. “You stood up because you wanted to prove we weren’t sinking.”
“We weren’t sinking until you panicked.”
“We were standing in the lake ten minutes later, Sloane. The boat had already made its position clear.”
The laugh leaves me before I can stop it. It is small, rusty, and painful around the edges, though it still feels like relief. Dash laughs too, and for several seconds the kitchen belongs to a time when he was my brother on the dock, dripping lake water and trying to stay angry while he smiled.
When the laughter fades, I twist the dish towel between my hands and look down at it. “Why did we stop talking?”
Dash takes his time before answering. There is no single fight we can blame, no clean moment where the relationship broke and gave us something obvious to repair.
“Because we’re two stubborn Alphas,” he says.
“Neither of us knew how to be the first one to knock after we decided silence was easier than admitting we were wrong.”
I nod because the answer is painfully close to the truth. “I thought about calling. More than once. Then enough time passed that calling felt like admitting I’d let the silence grow into something I couldn’t control.”
“I thought you didn’t need me,” Dash says, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
“I thought you didn’t want to need me.”
He studies me for a moment before his shoulders lower. “We were both wrong enough to make the distance last.”
The flowers lean to one side in the measuring cup, their stems too long for the glass.
Callie touched them as though they mattered.
Theo tried to place two of the small white flowers in her hair and nearly cried when they wilted against her curls.
Idris promised to find a vase, and Dash mentioned there might be one in the attic if any of us were brave enough to face the boxes.