His tone is careful.Protective.But there’s something else in it too—something like he already knows what it’s like for family to turn into a tribunal.Like he can see the exact second this could go wrong.
Vesper’s shoulders rise with a sigh that tries to be casual and fails.“It’s your careers I’m worried about,” she says to me, and I hate that her instinct is still to protect us from the consequences of loving her.“Hockey isn’t accepting of ...”Her voice drops on the last word, like she can’t finish the thought without telling us what we already know.
I reach for her hand and squeeze.
“We’ll figure it out, Ves,” I say, aiming for convincing and landing somewhere between I’m lost and delusional because this world doesn’t get a love like ours.“Maybe the Orcas will understand.”
Monty exhales through his nose like he’s already done the math and found a loophole.“Santos Calderón-Bélanger, one of the defensemen on our team, has a husband.And a wife.”
Vesper’s head snaps toward him.My eyebrows shoot up.
“He’s open enough,” Monty continues, “just not ...public-public.His husband is a famous musician and learned how to keep everything low key.Mills is totally supportive of them.”
I arch an eyebrow.“A famous musician?”
“Yeah.”Monty nods as if it’s not big deal.“They have a kid.Another on the way.”
My brain scrambles, because this is the first time in twenty-four hours I can picture a version of our future that doesn’t involve blood in the water.
“When were you going to share this morsel of information with us?”I demand, because what the fuck?“You’ve been holding on to that like it’s classified.”
“I found out last night after the game,” he says, calm as ever, like this isn’t the most important thing he could have told me while I was on the verge of taking a bat to my family’s legacy.“You were too busy celebrating the win and the whole we might make it to the playoffs.”
I lift my free hand.“Still.It seems like something you could’ve mentioned in the past twelve hours.”
Monty’s gaze slides to me, and his expression turns into that flat, warning look he gets when I push.Like he’s a door with three locks and I’ve learned exactly where to put my shoulder.
“On the drive back,” he says, voice stripped down to gravel, “you were too busy taunting the fuck out of me while I drove.”
I try not to smile.
I really do.
But the memory hits me anyway—hot and immediate, like my body kept the receipt and has been waiting to slap it on the counter.
It had been a seventeen-minute drive.Seventeen minutes from Portland to Lake Oswego, and somehow it had felt like a lifetime and a crime and a confession all at once.
Dark roads.Streetlights spacing out like they were giving us privacy on purpose.The dashboard glow turning Monty’s face into something carved—jaw tight, eyes fixed forward, every muscle insisting on control like control could save him from wanting.
His hands were on the wheel, knuckles pale, grip brutal.Like if he held on hard enough, he could keep everything inside him contained.
He was wrong.
Because I’d been there—close enough to feel the tension rolling off him in waves, close enough to see the way his throat worked when he swallowed, like he was forcing down a sound.Close enough to watch him pretend I wasn’t undoing him.
And I’d touched him, with that bright, reckless confidence I put on when I’m terrified of how much I want something to go right.
“You’re so good at pretending you don’t want anything,” I murmured, leaning in until my mouth hovered near his ear, my breath landing where his restraint lived.
His eyes stayed on the road.
But his whole body reacted—one sharp inhale, a fractional shift in his posture, the tiniest flare of his nostrils like he’d caught a scent he hated that he loved.
I’d watched his throat move again, another hard swallow.
I’d smiled at the windshield like I wasn’t holding a live wire.
“Tell me what you want.”
