ChapterThirty-One
Callaway
Vesper’s asleep.
She crashed after dinner like her body finally cashed the check her nerves have been writing all day, curling into the smallest version of herself on the oversized couch like she’s trying to take up as little space as possible.
Which is ridiculous, because Vesper doesn’t know how to be small.
She fills rooms, conversations, and every pause with some random fact she learned while filming in places I have to Google just to confirm they’re real.Half the time she says we should go there in the off-season—for the experience—and I want to say yes.I want to book the flights and make it happen, because it’s Vesper and she makes the world feel bigger.
But there are things you don’t do when you’re trying not to want more.When life is impossible because you broke every rule.I didn’t just fall in love with the same girl my best friend wanted.
I fell in love withhimtoo.
Love becomes lust, then need, then desire—and then you fuck up the entire dynamic.Welcome to my shitty love life, a story where the newest plot twist is that she’s expecting, and the ex-best friend and I can’t agree on shit.Fucking lovely, isn’t it?
And now, years later, we’re pretending we can untangle what’s left of us, like this isn’t a tragedy wrapped in a second chance.
There are things you try to forget when you can’t have it all.
Things you definitely shouldn’t remember ...
But I do.In the quiet moments—those rare seconds when the world goes still.I still remember the way he tasted.
The way he trembled when I pushed into him the first time, body clenched, hands in my hair, begging without words.I remember how wet her mouth was when she kissed me right after kissing him.
How full we felt, the three of us—her between us, my hand on his jaw, his lips on her skin.My cock still slick from her when he finally let me fuck him.
Everything is ruined.We’re stuck in this almost-life.Trying to act like grown men.Like we can show up for her and this baby and pretend we didn’t already burn the bridge we’re supposed to walk together.
A love story rewritten too many times.
A rivalry built on denial.
A family we’re still too afraid to believe in.
Loving each other like we never stopped.
It’s fucked.
Not sure what to do, but honestly, I’d crawl through glass just to have one more night of his breath on my neck and her nails in my back, just to feel us all give in at the same time.
I want them both.
Still.Always.
And I don’t know how to stop wanting what the world was never going to let me keep.
I should probably focus only on Vesper and try to forget the other one exists.Try to ...what?Pretend I don’t love him?I tried for years.But now we’re so close again that I realize that I never stopped.
I fucking love him.
Still want him, need him—can’t live without him, just as it’s almost impossible to live without Vesper.
Who is trying her best to figure out her new life.
Today left her subdued, which is rare for her.It’s like someone turned the volume down on the pinball machine in her head.She joked, she teased, she threatened to haunt us, but the appointment took something out of her.The scan.The heartbeat.The way the room went quiet when it became real.
