Page 106 of What We Don't Say: Part One

Idris laughs behind me, low and warm, and the sound makes my chest loosen. It isn’t teasing. It’s affection and approval, the kind of laugh that says he knows exactly how gone Sloane is and likes him that way.

Sloane lets Callie breathe only because she taps his shoulder. His forehead stays against hers, his breath rough, his hand still wide on her back. “Missed you,” he says, though she can’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.

“I was in the dining room,” she says, but her voice has gone soft.

“Too far.”

That’s the only thing he says before kissing her again, shorter this time but no less hungry. Idris’s arm comes around my middle while we watch them, and his hand settles over mine where I’m holding Callie’s sweater. He doesn’t pull me away from the wanting. He lets me see it. Sloane’s obsession, Callie’s answering warmth, Idris’s quiet amusement, all of it happening with me laid across Sloane’s lap instead of pushed out of the shape.

I reach before I think too hard about it, fingers catching the sleeve of Callie’s cardigan. She looks down at me right away. She always does that, comes back to me like my touch has a sound only she can hear.

“Hi, Star,” she says, breathless and flushed and still close enough that Sloane’s hand rests at her waist.

“I want one too,” I tell her. My voice is quiet, but the sentence comes out whole. “Please.”

Sloane goes still under me in a way that doesn’t feel angry. Idris’s hand settles at the back of my neck, steady and warm, and he says, “Take your time, Theo.”

“I know what I’m asking,” I say, because I do. My stomach is tight and my skin feels too full, but Callie’s sleeve is in my hand and Sloane is still breathing hard beneath me. “I want to kiss her.”

Callie bends slowly, giving me every chance to change my mind. I don’t. I lift my face to hers, and when her mouth touches mine, the noise in my body dips for one clean second. She tastes like tea and the apple slice she must have stolen from the kitchen, and my purr starts before I mean for it to, uneven and embarrassed.

Sloane’s hand tightens on my hip like the sound has done something to him. Callie smiles against my mouth, and Idris’s thumb moves once at my nape. She whispers, “There you are,” without pulling away, and I smile because for a minute the nestdoesn’t feel like a test I’m supposed to pass. It feels like all of them touching all of me, Sloane’s palm on my hip, Idris’s body behind me, Callie’s fingers resting on my cheek after she sits back.

Callie stays on the edge of the nest for a few minutes because I ask her to. I don’t make the request pretty, and I don’t pretend I only want help with the cooling cloths. I tell her everything feels less loud when she’s in the room, and her face changes with so much tenderness that I have to look down at my hands.

Sloane reaches for her again, slower this time. He pulls her down until her shoulder rests against his chest, his arm wrapped around her middle while his other hand returns to my leg. Idris passes Callie the water bottle first, and when she starts to protest, he only waits until she takes it and drinks. She mutters that he’s bossy under her breath, but she leans back against Sloane while she says it, and Idris’s fingers briefly cover hers when he takes the bottle back.

I like the way they touch each other without thinking. I like Sloane’s mouth at Callie’s temple and Idris’s hand at her lower back when he reaches past her for the temperature strip. I like that when my foot shifts against Sloane’s stomach, he catches my ankle and rubs the bone there with his thumb, bringing me back into the circle without looking away from her.

The heat is still coming. I can feel it under my skin, patient and bright, a pressure that makes the blankets too heavy one minute and not heavy enough the next. I want the Alphas so much it scares me. I want Callie just as much, and that shouldn't feel like a separate confession.

Sloane’s phone buzzes on the side table, and his whole body tightens beneath me. He looks at the screen, jaw flexing, then bends to kiss my forehead before his hand slides to Callie’s waist and holds there for one more second. “It’s Kade,” he says, voice rough with reluctance. “I have to take this.”

“Go,” Idris says, though his hand smooths down my chest before he lets the moment change. “Keep it short.”

Sloane catches Callie’s mouth once more before he stands, a fast, deep kiss that leaves her blinking after him. He touches my knee on his way out, then answers the call in a voice that already sounds less like the man who was feeding me fruit and more like the man who can make server logs confess their sins.

Idris waits until Sloane’s voice fades down the hall, then shifts me carefully off his chest. “The delivery should have been here by now,” he says. “I’m going to check the side entrance and come back with the cooling inserts.”

“I’m okay,” I tell him, though my hand catches his sleeve before he stands all the way.

He looks at my hand, then my face. “Say it again.”

“I’m okay,” I repeat, and I mean it enough that he nods. “Please come back.”

His expression softens. “I’m coming back, sweetheart.”

He kisses me slow, warm and steady, then touches Callie’s lower back as he passes her. The contact is brief, a question and a reassurance at once. She nods, and he leaves us with the nest half rumpled from all of us being in it.

Callie stays long enough to straighten the blanket near my knee and press the cooling cloth Idris brought against the back of my neck. “I really do have to grade, Star,” she says gently. “I’m right down the hall.”

“I know.” I make myself let go of her sleeve. “I’ll come find you if I need you.”

“You can always find me.”

She says it lightly, but I hold onto the words after she leaves. I hold onto them while I sit in the nest and listen to Sloane talking somewhere down the hall, Idris opening the side door, and Callie’s softer steps moving toward the dining room. The roomstill smells like them. The blankets are still warm. The fruit bowl is still beside my hip.

My body starts reaching after her anyway.