Page 121 of What We Don't Say: Part One

I don’t like the way the nurse glances at Callie. I don’t like the way the sentence makes biology sound like a verdict and lunch sound like a plan that failed. My palm throbs under the gauze, and the heat beneath my skin gives another warning pulse.

“I wasn’t scared of Callie,” I say.

Garrett’s attention returns to me. “No one said you were.”

“I wasn’t scared of lunch either.” I turn my wrist until Callie’s hand can fit more securely around mine. “I got startled. Everything got loud. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Callie says, and her voice shakes only a little.

Garrett nods as if we have both been brave and incomplete. “Then I’ll take you home before the noise catches up with you again.” He stands and looks at the clock on the wall, then at Callie’s folder where it rests against her bag. “Your interview starts soon.”

Callie follows his gaze. Her face changes. I see the moment she prepares to choose me anyway, and panic flares so sharply that it almost becomes anger. I don't want to be the reason Garrett gets to be right. I don't want Callie walking into that room already bleeding from another choice she had to make around me.

“Go,” I say, catching her hand with my bandaged one before she can stand. “Please. I want you to go.”

“Star.”

“I mean it.” My voice breaks, but the words stay words. “You told me you’re coming home after. I believe you.”

Her mouth trembles. “I am.”

“Then go be brilliant.” I try to smile because Idris said it first, and I want to send her into the interview with one piece of home that isn't fear. “Then come home.”

She bends and kisses my forehead, then my cheek, then my mouth in a quick, desperate press that makes the nurse look away. I hold still under it, trying to keep every second. Her lips are warm. Her hand is careful around my bandage. She smells like tea and pear and rain from the walk over, and when she pulls back, her eyes are wet.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you too.” I press my forehead to hers before Garrett’s shadow can make me move. “Call me when you’re done.”

“I will.”

I believe her when she says it. That matters later, when belief starts to feel like something with teeth.

Garrett holds my jacket while I stand. Callie stays beside me until the doorway, then stops because the nurse is saying something about forms and the interview building is across the quad and the clock is turning every second into a smaller room. I look back once before the hall bends. She is standing with one hand pressed to her mouth, her folder clutched against her ribs, her blazer sleeve still damp from the tea she didn’t care about because she was too busy holding my hand.

Theo

My palm starts to throb beneath the gauze before Garrett clears the campus parking lot. My knees hurt where they hit the tile, but the heat under my skin is worse. The spike at the café didn’t finish. Callie’s voice held it back long enough for me to leave, and now it moves through me in waves with nowhere to break.

Garrett notices. His eyes flick to my hands, then to the road. “Are you hurting?”

“My hand hurts.” I rub the edge of the bandage against my thumb, then stop because the friction makes sparks crawl up my arm. “My knees. The rest is just the spike.”

“We’ll get you home.”

“Callie handled it right,” I say, staring at the trees beyond the window.

Garrett’s answer is immediate and gentle. “She handled you with love.”

That should be enough agreement. It isn’t.

“She handled it right,” I repeat.

The car hums beneath us. Garrett changes lanes, then speaks in the same steady tone. “I didn’t say otherwise, Theo.”

When we reach the house, Sloane is already outside. He must have heard the car or felt the change in the air because he reaches my door before Garrett can walk around the front. The moment he sees the bandage, his face goes white beneath the flush of panic.

“What happened?” he asks. His voice is rough, but his hands are gentle when he unbuckles me and helps me turn toward him. “Sweetheart, what happened?”