Page 94 of What We Don't Say: Part One

“I hate that I keep hearing him,” she says, and there it is. Quiet. Reluctant. More admission than accusation. “Even when he isn’t in the room.”

My eyes lift to the locked door. Downstairs, the house moves around us: a pipe ticking in the wall, Sloane’s low voice from somewhere below, Theo’s faint answering sound. Garrett’s study stays silent.

“What does he say?” I ask.

Calliope’s body tenses.

I smooth my thumb once over her ribs and keep my voice even. “You don’t have to answer.”

She exhales shakily. “That Theo needs things I can’t give. That wanting to give them anyway might confuse him. That being loved by me might make it harder for him to settle where he’s supposed to.”

My jaw locks before I can stop it. I make myself breathe through the first rush of fury because if I let it fill the room, she’ll turn it on herself. She always does when the emotion around her gets too big.

“Did he use those words?”

“Some of them.” Her eyes stay on my hand. “Some of them were mine after.”

That’s the piece that sits cold behind my ribs. Garrett doesn’t need to build the whole cage. He only needs to leave enough wire for the people he’s targeting to finish the shape themselves.

I don’t have proof. I don’t have a clean accusation I can take downstairs and lay at Garrett’s feet. I have Theo’s silence after closed-door conversations. I have Calliope’s unfinished sentence in the kitchen. I have Sloane moving through the house like he can hear a threat none of us can name.

It isn’t enough to act on yet but it’s enough to keep me awake.

I reach for the plate I brought upstairs with the water and lift a cracker with a thin slice of cheese balanced on top. Calliope givesme a look that would have more force behind it if she weren’t half tucked under my body.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry.”

Her mouth tightens, but she takes the bite. I watch her chew, then give her the water again. She mutters something under her breath that might be an insult if she had more energy. Good. I’ll take irritation over emptiness.

“There she is,” I say.

She rolls her eyes, but her shoulders loosen.

I keep feeding her in small pieces until she’s had enough to stop shaking. Then I set the plate aside and pull her closer, her back to my chest, my mouth resting near her hair. I don’t tell her Garrett is wrong as many times as I want to. Repetition won’t undo what he planted. It might only teach her that I’m trying to argue with a voice already inside her head.

So I hold her. I keep one hand over her stomach and the other around her wrist, two points of contact, steady pressure. When she finally drifts, it isn’t peaceful, exactly. Her fingers are still curled around mine, and every few minutes her body gives a small twitch, like some part of her is checking whether I’ve pulled away.

I don’t.

Below us, Sloane’s footsteps pass through the hallway, pause, then move on. He knows we’re here, and he knows I’ll come down when I have something worth saying. For now, the house stays quiet enough that Garrett can pretend nothing has happened.

I keep my breathing even for Calliope’s sleeping body and settle my hand more firmly over Sloane’s bite on her shoulder. The mark stays warm beneath my palm while Garrett’s careful words move through my head.

I don’t sleep well.

Theo

The sunroom smells like lemon wax, warm wood, and the clean cotton Idris has been carrying upstairs all afternoon. It’s smaller than the master suite, with garden-facing windows and a low couch pushed beneath the far wall, and the size of it helps because the bigger rooms keep making my skin feel too easy to see. I crouch on the hardwood with one knee pressed into a pile of blankets, dragging a slate-gray pillow six inches to the left before the shape of it finally stops bothering me.

“Not there,” I murmur, tugging the corner until it sits tighter against the base of the nest. “If I roll, it’ll slide, and then the whole side will collapse.”

Idris stands near the door with two more boxes at his feet and a folded blanket over one arm. He hasn’t tried to take over once, which is probably why I can still breathe. “You’re building a fortress, Theo. Should I be concerned about an invasion?”

“Maybe,” I say, and my voice comes out softer than I mean it to. The joke is there, but it’s buried under the heat-pressure moving through my body, that low hum behind my eyes and under my skin. “It needs to hold.”

He nods like I’ve said something practical instead of strange, then sets the blanket where I can reach it. The basket beside him is full of Callie’s old sweaters, the ones she gave me with a shrug and a smile like she didn’t know she was handing me pieces of the house I could survive on. I pull out the cream-colored one first and press it to my face for one stolen breath before I lay it in the center of the pillows.