Page 96 of What We Don't Say: Part One

I nod into him because that’s all I can manage. Outside the door, Callie’s footsteps fade down the stairs, and the part of me that wanted to run after her stays locked behind my ribs. Idris doesn’t ask again. He only reaches for the charcoal cardigan, folds it once, and hands it to me so I can put her back in the center with my own hands.

Calliope

The laundry room is the only place in the house that doesn’t feel like a stage. It smells like unscented detergent, warm cotton, and the humid heat of the dryer, a steady mechanical thump that softens the polished silence of Garrett’s hallways. I push the door open with a basket of folded towels balanced against my hip, already reaching for the counter, and stop before I take the second step inside.

Theo is tucked into the corner between the washing machine and the drying rack, surrounded by scent-safe sheets andstacked heat linens. One of my old oversized gray sweaters is pressed to his face, both sleeves clenched in his fists, and his breathing comes in shallow little pulls through the wool. His eyes open when he hears me, and the look on his face makes my chest tighten before either of us says a word.

“Star,” I whisper, setting the basket down slowly. “Hey. I’m right here.”

His mouth trembles against the sweater. “I know.” He says it like he’s been trying to make himself believe it for a while. “I could hear you in the hall. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to.”

The words land too close to everything we’ve been pretending not to notice. I sit on the tile beside him, close enough for him to reach but not so close that I crowd him, and the dryer rattles through another heavy turn behind us. “You’re always allowed to call me.”

Theo stares at me for a second. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes dark with the heat-cusp haze that’s been building all day, but there’s nothing vague about the way he looks at my mouth. He lowers the sweater an inch, then another, and his fingers tighten around the fabric like it’s the last thing keeping him from falling.

“I want you,” he says.

I go still. “Theo.”

“I do.” His voice shakes, but the words don’t. He shifts onto his knees, closer now, the sweater sliding into his lap as his hands catch the front of my shirt. “I think about you all the time. Your hands. Your voice. The way you look at me like I’m here and not just... heat.” He swallows, and his gaze drops to my lips again. “Can I kiss you?”

My answer comes out rough. “Yes.”

He moves like the word cuts a tether inside him. One second he’s kneeling in front of me, and the next he’s in my lap, knees bracketing my hips, hands fisted in my shirt as his mouthcrashes into mine. It isn’t shy. It isn’t the careful, frightened affection he gave me when he first came home. It’s hungry and certain, salt-warm and shaking, and when he groans into my mouth, the sound vibrates all the way through my spine.

I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him closer. The tile is cold beneath me, but Theo is hot everywhere he touches, his thighs tight against my hips and his chest pressed hard to mine. He kisses like he’s been waiting to be allowed to want this out loud, and every time I try to slow enough to breathe, he follows with a soft, frantic sound that undoes me.

“Oh my god,” he whispers against my mouth, sounding stunned by himself. “I love this. I love kissing you. I thought it would be soft, but it’s—” His words break when I kiss the corner of his mouth, and his fingers slide into my hair. “Callie, it feels so good.”

The little helpless wonder in his voice nearly breaks me. I laugh once, breathless and surprised, because there’s joy in it too, bright and wild in the middle of the linens and the dryer heat. Theo smiles against my mouth, startled by the sound, then presses me back until my shoulders meet the cool tile and his body follows mine down.

“Is this okay?” he asks, already searching my face like the answer matters more than the need pulling at him. His hips settle more firmly over me, but his hands soften in my hair. “Tell me if it’s too much. I don’t want to make it too much.”

“It’s okay,” I say, sliding one hand up his back and feeling the tremble moving through him. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

His forehead drops to mine. “No, I’ve got you.” The correction is so earnest that my throat tightens around a laugh and something dangerously close to a sob. He kisses me again before either sound can escape, his mouth more careful now but no less hungry, and the low thump of the dryer turns the tiny room into a heartbeat around us.

Then the door opens.

Hallway light spills across the tile, cold and bright against the humid warmth of the laundry room. Theo jerks like someone has struck him. He doesn’t just pull away; he twists over me, trying to cover my body with his own while he yanks the stretched collar of my sweater back up one shoulder. The panic in him is instant, brutal, and so out of step with the pleasure from a breath before that I can’t move fast enough to catch it.

Garrett stands in the doorway with a stack of scent-safe sheets in one arm. He looks polished, composed, and mildly inconvenienced, as if he’s walked in on a spill instead of two people with swollen mouths and shaking hands. His eyes move over Theo first, then me, then the sweater bunched between us, and shame blooms hot across my skin even though it hadn’t existed until he arrived.

“I was looking for the linens for the sunroom,” Garrett says, his voice gentle enough to make my stomach turn. “I see you found them first.”

Theo’s hands shake against my shoulders. He doesn’t look at Garrett. He doesn’t look at me either, and that scares me more than anything else.

“We were just—” I start, pushing myself up on one elbow, but the sentence dies before I can figure out what defense I’m trying to give.

“It’s all right, Calliope.” Garrett steps inside and sets the sheets on the counter with careful precision. “Heat-cusp clinginess can make everything feel larger than it is. Theo’s overwhelmed, and you’re a very giving person. It makes sense that he’d reach for the nearest comfort.”

Theo goes pale. The sweater slips from his hand and lands in a gray heap beside my hip.

Garrett’s gaze softens with a concern that feels sharpened at the edges. “The important thing is that we don’t mistake asurvival response for clarity. He needs water, quiet, and the proper nest structure before the next spike. You understand.”

I don’t understand. Or I do, and that’s worse. Theo had been talking to me. Asking me. Telling me he loved it. None of it had felt like confusion until Garrett gave me words for doubting it.

“Go on, Theo,” Garrett says, his hand touching Theo’s shoulder for barely a second. “Get some water, and let Calliope finish what she came in here to do. We need the house steady tonight.”