Page 76 of What We Don't Say: Part One

Her fingers slow in my hair. “Good?”

I nod against her. “Said it.”

Callie goes still for one breath. Then she bends over me and presses her mouth to the top of my head, and the tenderness in that kiss almost hurts more than fear. “Yeah, Star. You did.”

The praise doesn’t sound like a command or a correction or a careful note written in someone’s file. It sounds like she understood, and the relief of that makes my throat ache.

“I like when you tell me,” she says, her fingers moving again. “With words, with your hands, any way you can. I like knowing.”

I close my eyes. The rain on the glass roof sounds farther away now, and the door under my ribs isn’t gone, but it’s covered by her hand, by her warmth, by the steady rise and fall of her breath above me.

“Don’t go,” I whisper.

Callie’s hand pauses.

I regret the words immediately. They’re too large in the little sunroom, too sharp after something so soft, too close to the fear I wasn’t going to hand her. Her fingers slide from my hair to the side of my face, coaxing me to look up.

“I’m right here,” she says.

I shake my head before I can stop myself.

Callie searches my face. “Theo, what happened?”

The office comes back in pieces: Garrett’s pen, the compass, the offer, farther than I’d like. I can’t make the pieces into a sentence without making them real, so I give her the only words that don’t crack open in my mouth.

“It’s okay now,” I say.

Callie doesn’t believe me this time either. She strokes my cheek once, and her expression stays gentle even though worry has entered it. “All right. We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

Right now.

My chest tightens around the words, but she’s still touching me, still here, and my body believes her more than my fear does. I turn back into her and let myself be held.

Callie pulls the first student paper into her lap as I stay curled against her thigh with her cardigan under my hand. She murmurs comments at the margins of her papers, some of them too low for me to catch and some of them clearly insults aimed at comma usage, and every so often, her fingers return to my hair like she can’t help checking that I’m still there.

Theo

The sunroom door opens again, Garrett pausing at the threshold with one hand on the doorframe and his shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms. He takes in the blankets first, then the window bench, then Callie’s papers on the plant stand and me curled against her in the middle of the nest. His expression doesn’t change quickly enough for me to name anything inside it.

“There you are,” he says.

Callie’s hand stills in my hair. Garrett steps into the room as if he has every right to enter, which he does. This is his house too.His blanket is in the nest, tucked under my knee, and when he notices it, his mouth lifts slightly.

“A sunroom nest,” he says. “That’s new.”

My face heats. I start to sit up, but Garrett is already closer, and his hand lands gently on my shoulder before I can scramble out of the shape I made.

“Stay,” he says, not quite a command and not quite a request. His thumb brushes once over the sweatshirt at my shoulder. “You look settled.”

I’m settled. I’m also suddenly aware of Callie beside me, of her clothes fixed but her hair mussed where my hands touched it, of the papers she isn’t reading anymore. Garrett doesn’t look at her like he knows exactly what happened, and he doesn’t need to, because my skin tells too many stories.

“Green?” Callie asks softly.

I look at her first. “Green.”

Garrett’s hand warms on my shoulder. “May I?”

I know what he’s asking. I nod, then say, “Yes.”