Page 41 of Wild Thorns

"I left my door unlocked last night," I heard myself say. "I don't do that. I never do that."

Something shifted in his expression. A crack in that careful control.

"That’s good, you feel safe here," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I do. I don't know why. I barely know any of you. I have no reason to—"

"You have every reason." His voice was low, rough. "You feel safe because you are safe. Because—"

He stopped. His jaw clenched.

"Because what?"

For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. Then, slowly: "Because you belong here. Whether you know it or not. This is where you're supposed to be."

He moved past me, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine, and disappeared up the stairs to his room.

I stood there for a long time, trying to understand what had just happened.

***

I found Eli in the kitchen an hour later, making coffee with the careful precision he brought to everything. He looked up when I came in, those wire-rimmed glasses catching the light.

“You look unsettled,” he observed.

“I had a conversation with Callum.”

Something flickered in his expression, too quick to read. “Callum tends to say more than he means to. And less.”

“That’s— yes. That’s exactly what happened.”

He poured a second cup of coffee and handed it to me without being asked. My order, exactly right.

“Give him time,” he said. “He’ll make more sense, eventually.”

“Will he?”

He smiled, small, private, like he was amused by a joke I hadn’t heard yet.

***

That night, I sat on my porch with a glass of wine and watched the preserve.

The magnolia tree was a dark shape against the deeper dark of the sky. Somewhere in the distance, something howled, that coordinated, deliberate sound I’d grown used to hearing. I was starting to think it was wild dogs. I should have found it unsettling. Instead, it felt like a lullaby. Like being told the perimeter was secure.

I thought about what Callum had said. You belong here.

It should have sounded presumptuous. Possessive, even, the kind of thing Marcus might have said in a different context, with a different meaning. But from Callum, it hadn’t felt like a claim. It had felt like a statement of fact. Like he was telling me something true about the nature of the universe, and he was surprised I didn’t already know it.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Below, through the floor of my apartment, I could hear the muffled sounds of the house: Jasper’s laugh, Eli’s quieter voice responding, the clink of dishes being washed. Normal domestic sounds. Family sounds. The kind of background noise I’d stopped expecting to be part of.

I pulled out my phone and texted Tara.

Me: Something weird happened today.

Tara: Define weird. Weird-cute or weird-run?