Page 57 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

The room pulls tight around us.

“Callie,” he says, and there is a warning in the softness. Not danger. Permission waiting for shape.

I should step back. I should make some comment about dishes or committees or how late it is. I should go through the lockoff door, press my back to it, and remind myself that wanting is how people end up with their lives packed into a suitcase and their old phone full of messages they can't answer. I should remember Sloane’s name on a screen, the bite at my shoulder, the way I sat in a strange office with paperwork in my lap while every future I trusted folded shut.

Instead, I look at Dash’s mouth.

He exhales once, slow and controlled, then lets go of the plate. “Tell me to move.”

I do not.

The plate settles onto the counter with a small sound. My fingers are still caught in the ghost of his touch, and the ache that moves through me isn't clean. It has grief in it. It has guilt. It has three months of waking up in a room that was safe and still feeling like I had failed to find the right door back. It has every draft of a message I wrote and deleted because I could not survive another silence wearing Sloane’s name.

Dash doesn't take the last inch.

I do.

The kiss isn't gentle because I'm not gentle when I finally break. I rise onto my toes and press my mouth to his with a sound trapped somewhere behind my teeth, and for one terrifying second he doesn't move. Then his hand comes to my waist, broad and warm and careful even with the force that shudders through him. He kisses me back like restraint is something he has to hold with both hands, like he has been standing at the edge of this for longer than either of us has admitted.

His other hand lifts to my face. His thumb brushes my cheek, and the tenderness of it undoes me faster than heat would have. I make a small, broken sound into his mouth, and Dash pulls back immediately, forehead hovering close to mine, breath uneven.

“Callie.” His voice is rough now. “I need you to tell me what that was.”

I try to answer. Nothing comes out.

My phone vibrates on the island.

We both look at it.

Not a call. Not an old name dragging itself out of the dark. A text from Mara lights the screen, and I pick it up with hands that feel too awake for the rest of me.

You laughed tonight.

Another message follows before I can respond.

I missed that.

Then another.

Before you overthink yourself into a grave, you’re allowed to want something good. Go slow, but don’t punish yourself for wanting it.

I stare at the words until they blur. Dash has stepped back. Not far, but enough. He stands on the other side of the island with his hands open at his sides, watching me with want written plainly across his face and no demand underneath it. The sight should make this simpler. It does not. His restraint leaves the choice with me, and choice is heavier than being carried.

“I’ve tried to find every way home,” I say, because the kitchen is too quiet for anything but the truth. “In my head, I mean. I’ve gone through it so many times. What I’d say. What I’d ask. What I’d need to hear before I could believe any of it was safe.”

Dash’s expression shifts, but he doesn't interrupt. He gives me the room, and I hate how much that makes me want to walk into him.

“I keep getting stuck in the same place.” I set the phone facedown on the counter, not because I'm hiding from Mara, but because her permission has already done what it came to do. “What if Sloane meant it? What if the messages were ugly because the truth was ugly? What if Idris let it happen because it was easier than saying it himself? What if Theo really was better without me in the nest?” My voice wavers, and I fold my arms over my middle before I can reach for the old bite. “My old pack didn’t end cleanly.”

Dash’s jaw flexes once. The anger is there, controlled so tightly it barely changes his posture. Somehow that makes me feel safer than if he hid it. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you want to ask.”

“I do.” He admits it without shame and without stepping closer. “But wanting to know doesn’t give me the right to take the story from you.”

The tears come fast enough to embarrass me. I turn my head, wiping them with the heel of my hand, and almost laugh because of course this is what breaks me, just basic decency, standing across the kitchen from me in a gray sweater with pizza sauce on one sleeve, looking at me like my no would be as welcome as my yes.

I'm so tired of waiting to be someone’s rejected thing.