Page 123 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

“You twitch when you think too hard.”

Dash lowers his book to his lap. “She’s right.”

Callie makes a pleased sound and disappears back inside the sweatshirt. Her body goes soft across my legs again, and I keep my hand on her back until her breathing evens out.

Dash looks at Theo first, then at the shelves behind me, then down at the book he still isn’t reading. His thumb rubs once along the page edge, and I know the question is coming before he asks it.

“Do you ever think about it?” he says.

I keep my voice low. “About what?”

“Whether we would’ve crossed anyway.” He does not look at Callie when he says it. His eyes stay on the book in his hand, likethat makes the words easier to let out. “Not like before. I know we weren’t that anymore.”

I breathe in through the ache the words leave behind. “Not the way we used to be.”

“No.” Dash nods once, accepting it without flinching. “But the city, the work, the people around us. You were already with Idris. I was already at Oakhaven. We were close enough to miss each other by accident for years.”

I look toward Theo’s ridiculous nest because it’s easier than looking at my brother. “I used to think about finding you all the time. Then I got angry enough to stop letting myself.”

Dash’s mouth tightens.

“I thought if you wanted me to find you, I would’ve known where to look.” My hand moves once over Callie’s back, slow enough not to wake her. “That wasn’t fair. I know that now.”

“I didn’t make it easy.”

“No,” I say quietly. “But I don’t think either of us was easy to find by then.”

Dash lets out a breath that is almost a laugh and almost something worse. He sets the book aside, giving up on the lie of reading, and rests his forearms on his knees.

“I wondered about Blackline before I knew you were here,” he says. “A few times. Idris’ name came up around Oakhaven security reviews, and I thought about applying for contract work just to see what the place was like.”

My head lifts.

Dash’s smile is faint and crooked. “Didn’t do it. Told myself I had enough work. Told myself a lot of things.”

“I almost took an Oakhaven job six months before I left Rourke.” The memory lands strange now, too close and too far. “Kade told me I’d get bored.”

“He was probably right.”

“He usually is. It’s irritating.”

Dash looks down at his hands. “We were circling the same places.”

“Yeah.” I swallow around the tightness in my throat. “We were.”

Callie’s breathing stays slow beneath my palm. She is asleep now, or close enough that her hand has gone loose against my waistband, fingers curled into the fabric like she forgot she was holding on.

Dash notices too. His gaze flicks to her, then away again, careful not to make her the center of a conversation she didn’t agree to carry.

“After everything,” he says softly, “I hate that this is what finally put us in the same room.”

I close my eyes for a moment.

Upstairs, the house creaks as the heat kicks on. Theo sighs in his sleep and drags Callie’s cardigan closer, his nose buried in the sleeve like the scent has personally wronged him by fading.

“So do I,” I say. “I hate that all of it had to break before I got this back.”

Dash’s face shifts at the word this, but he understands I mean more than him. The study, the breathing, the sleeping Omega on the floor, Callie tucked against me, my brother close enough to reach if I could make my hand move.