Vesper
This isn’t what I expected to do this weekend.
A few weeks ago, my biggest problem was whether I could finish a project without starting five more and forgetting where I put my keys.Now I’m sitting in a clinic that smells like vanilla and lies, waiting for someone to show me proof that my body has decided to build a whole new human.
Cally and Monty have been on the road for a stretch of games—one of those brutal trips where the days blur into airports, hotels, and adrenaline.They got back late last night, still carrying that rink smell in their clothes, eyes rimmed with exhaustion, mouths full of questions they tried to pretend were casual.
How are you feeling?
Did you eat?
Any nausea?
Any bleeding?
Any weird pain?
As if they could talk me out of reality by interrogating it.
Cally slept on the couch.He said it like it was no big deal, like he wasn’t doing it because the idea of leaving me with Monty in the apartment felt impossible to him.His excuse was that we had a lot to do today, and technically he wasn’t wrong.
He and Monty have a couple of days before the team’s back on the ice.This morning started with houses.Not “cute apartments with decent lighting” houses—real houses.Gates.Cameras.Panic buttons.
Two properties.Both “safe.”Both “ideal.”Both making me feel like I’m being packed into a life I didn’t order.I’m still not sold on the whole “let’s live together, the three of us,” while those two are still circling each other like they might bite.Sometimes it’s ice-cold silence.Sometimes it’s clipped politeness that’s even worse because I can feel everything they’re not saying.
But I’m also me, which means my brain can hold two truths at once: terror and sarcasm.
So when we toured the place with an indoor pool and an outdoor pool, I pointed at it and said, “This one.Obviously.If I’m going to ruin my life, I’d like to do it with aquatic options.”
Cally mumbled, “Knew it,” like he’s had me memorized since we were teenagers and I hate that it’s comforting.
Then we flew to Seattle, because there’s a discreet doctor here who can do the sonogram without asking questions that end up on some gossip site by dinner—courtesy of the Winthrop family.
And yeah, Cally is handling his parents—whatever that means when your parents have money, lawyers, and a talent for turning love into leverage—but he wants my location locked down for now.
When I leave the apartment, John goes first.He checks corners.He checks cars.He checks reflections in windows like we’re in a spy movie and I’m the idiot who wandered into the plot without reading the script.
Apparently, there’s even a decoy—a lookalike—walking around New York so anyone watching thinks they’re tracking me.Which would be flattering if it weren’t horrifying.
I didn’t know Cally’s parents wanted him to quit and take over the business.I didn’t know they were willing to yank strings hard enough to snap his life in half.I keep wondering why his older brother can’t do it.Or literally anyone else who isn’t Cally, who built a whole career around hockey.
But I’m not in their world, so I wouldn’t understand.
I’m in this one, and I’m still failing at figuring it out.
In the one where I’m in a waiting room that’s suspiciously comfortable.Plush chairs.Soft lighting.Pale walls.Framed pictures of sleeping woodland animals that look like they were chosen by someone who’s never been pregnant a day in their life.
On my right, Cally sits with a brochure about 3D sonograms, his knee bouncing like his body can’t fully relax.On my left, Monty reads on his tablet, posture controlled, expression blank in that way that makes him look calm until you’ve known him long enough to recognize it as restraint.
Across from me, another pregnant woman flips through a magazine like she belongs here.Like she has a birth plan and a nursery theme and a name picked out in a font that comes with a matching monogrammed diaper bag.
I stare at her and try not to feel like a stray dog that accidentally wandered into a luxury spa.
Cally’s gaze drifts over the pastel walls.“They’re really committed to the whole ‘peaceful, magical experience’ thing, huh?”
I inhale slowly.“They have to be.Otherwise, people might ask why pregnancy books leave out the part where your organs play musical chairs and you lose control of your bladder.”
His mouth quirks.“You want some light reading?”He points to the laminated pamphlets stacked on a side table.Stages of Labor.Breastfeeding Basics.They sit there like a threat.
