43. Sloane
Sloane
The Next Evening
Callie’s inside my sweatshirt, and I’m trying not to be embarrassing about it. She complained about the study being cold twenty minutes ago, though Idris keeps the house warm enough that Theo wanders around barefoot and Dash has already threatened two windows.
I looked at her tucked sideways in the big leather chair with me, saw the way she kept rubbing her fingers against her sleeves, and lifted the hem of the sweatshirt I was wearing so she could duck underneath it with me before she could decide she was being inconvenient.
Now she’s curled up in my lap with her cheek pressed to my chest and her knees tucked against my thigh. The sweatshirt is stretched over her head and shoulders, making a warm little cave out of my chest and the soft cotton, and every breath she takes ghosts over my skin.
My hand rests against her back through the fabric. When my thumb moves, she melts heavier into me, and something in my chest goes soft enough that I have to stare down at the papers Idris left on the desk so I don’t make a sound about it.
The study has gone quiet around us. The lamp throws a low amber glow over the bookshelves, the desk, and the rug where Theo built a nest beside the bookcase with all the stubborn focus of an Omega personally offended by available furniture.
He’s asleep in it now, curled around Callie’s cardigan with one of my shirts twisted beneath his cheek. His phone is tucked close to his hand, screen dark, like he fell asleep guarding the pack chat in case one of us needed him.
Dash sits on the rug with his back against the couch, a book open in one hand and a folder beside his knee. He’s had the same page open long enough that I know he’s only pretending to read, but I don’t call him on it because I’ve been pretending to review the same paragraph for just as long.
Callie shifts under the sweatshirt, rubbing her face against my chest with a sleepy little sound. I slip my hand beneath the hem and touch the warm skin at her waist, keeping my palm still when she settles again.
“You still with us, baby?” I ask.
“Barely,” she mumbles against me.
Dash glances up. “That came from your shirt.”
“She lives here now.” I look down at the lump in my lap, and Callie pinches my side hard enough to make me catch a laugh in my throat. “Violently, apparently.”
The hem stretches at my side as she shifts around inside the sweatshirt, pushing her head through the gap between the fabric and my ribs.
Her face appears a second later, flushed and squished on one side from being pressed against me, hair caught against her cheek, eyes narrowed at me with no real force behind it.
Dash looks over and goes still. Then he laughs softly, the kind of laugh that barely disturbs the room. “Hi, Callie.”
“Hi,” she whispers.
I put my hand over the back of her head before I can stop myself. She lets me keep her there, halfway hidden and halfway peeking out, like she can’t decide whether she wants to be part of the room or buried against me until the world stops asking things of her.
Dash’s smile stays small. “You good?”
She nods against my stomach. “Don’t let him move.”
“I wasn’t moving,” I say.
“You twitch when you think too hard.”
Dash lowers his book to his lap. “She’s right.”
Callie makes a pleased sound and disappears back inside the sweatshirt. Her body goes soft across my legs again, and I keep my hand on her back until her breathing evens out.
Dash looks at Theo first, then at the shelves behind me, then down at the book he still isn’t reading. His thumb rubs once along the page edge, and I know the question is coming before he asks it.
“Do you ever think about it?” he says.
I keep my voice low. “About what?”
“Whether we would’ve crossed anyway.” He does not look at Callie when he says it. His eyes stay on the book in his hand, like that makes the words easier to let out. “Not like before. I know we weren’t that anymore.”
I breathe in through the ache the words leave behind. “Not the way we used to be.”
“No.” Dash nods once, accepting it without flinching. “But the city, the work, the people around us. You were already with Idris. I was already at Oakhaven. We were close enough to miss each other by accident for years.”
I look toward Theo’s ridiculous nest because it’s easier than looking at my brother. “I used to think about finding you all the time. Then I got angry enough to stop letting myself.”
Dash’s mouth tightens.
“I thought if you wanted me to find you, I would’ve known where to look.” My hand moves once over Callie’s back, slow enough not to wake her. “That wasn’t fair. I know that now.”
“I didn’t make it easy.”
“No,” I say quietly. “But I don’t think either of us was easy to find by then.”
Dash lets out a breath that is almost a laugh and almost something worse. He sets the book aside, giving up on the lie of reading, and rests his forearms on his knees.
“I wondered about Blackline before I knew you were here,” he says. “A few times. Idris’ name came up around Oakhaven security reviews, and I thought about applying for contract work just to see what the place was like.”
My head lifts.
Dash’s smile is faint and crooked. “Didn’t do it. Told myself I had enough work. Told myself a lot of things.”
“I almost took an Oakhaven job six months before I left Rourke.” The memory lands strange now, too close and too far. “Kade told me I’d get bored.”
“He was probably right.”
“He usually is. It’s irritating.”
Dash looks down at his hands. “We were circling the same places.”
“Yeah.” I swallow around the tightness in my throat. “We were.”
Callie’s breathing stays slow beneath my palm. She is asleep now, or close enough that her hand has gone loose against my waistband, fingers curled into the fabric like she forgot she was holding on.
Dash notices too. His gaze flicks to her, then away again, careful not to make her the center of a conversation she didn’t agree to carry.
“After everything,” he says softly, “I hate that this is what finally put us in the same room.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
Upstairs, the house creaks as the heat kicks on. Theo sighs in his sleep and drags Callie’s cardigan closer, his nose buried in the sleeve like the scent has personally wronged him by fading.
“So do I,” I say. “I hate that all of it had to break before I got this back.”
Dash’s face shifts at the word this, but he understands I mean more than him. The study, the breathing, the sleeping Omega on the floor, Callie tucked against me, my brother close enough to reach if I could make my hand move.
He leans forward and picks up the throw from the couch. “Theo’s going to wake up with the rug printed on his face.”
“He’ll blame us.”
“He should. We’re enabling him.”
Dash lays the throw over Theo’s legs, careful not to disturb the nest. Theo makes a sleepy, offended sound, then immediately settles deeper into the cardigan.
Callie stirs inside the sweatshirt. “Leave him.”
Dash looks over, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her hand slips out from beneath the sweatshirt, searching blindly toward the rug. Dash sees it before I do and shifts closer, putting his fingers into hers.
I watch my brother hold her hand from the floor.
He does not look at me for a few seconds. When he does, his expression is quieter than I’m ready for.
“I’m glad I found you,” he says.
My arm tightens around Callie before I can stop it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His thumb moves once against her sleeping fingers. “Even if it was late.”
The words sit between us, simple enough to survive being said.
I look down at Callie, then at Theo, then back at Dash. “Stay tonight.”
Dash’s eyes flick toward mine.
“There’s food in the kitchen, Theo’s committed crimes against the guest-room linens, and Callie’s going to be upset if she wakes up and you’re gone.” I keep my voice even because anything more will make the ask too heavy. “Stay.”
Dash looks toward the doorway, then at the couch behind him. After a moment, he nods.
“Okay,” he says.
Callie makes a tiny satisfied sound from inside my sweatshirt, proving she is either less asleep than she looks or capable of issuing approval unconsciously. Dash hears it and laughs under his breath, as I press my mouth to the top of her covered head.