Jonas’s POV
It wasn’t what they said that unsettled me—
it was what they chose not to say.
Because in spaces like this, silence isn’t the absence of information; it’s a way of organizing it, of distributing it without fully exposing it. And what was happening in front of us wasn’t improvised, wasn’t spontaneous, wasn’t even merely reactive.
There was a structure operating beneath the surface.
A logic that didn’t need to be explained to be evident—
in the way they moved, in how they stopped each other without words, in how no one intervened unless something—or someone—allowed it first.
I stayed slightly behind Callie.
Not because I needed protection—
but because I understood that this was her point now, not mine.
And any attempt to step ahead, to occupy that space without being re
