He didn’t answer.Not at first.
Because Monty doesn’t answer when he’s cornered.He goes quiet.He goes still.He turns into a storm pretending to be a man.
So I pushed.
Not with force.With proximity.With patience dressed up as teasing.With a kind of tenderness that felt illegal between us—because tenderness suggests you care, and caring suggests you’re staying, and none of us knows how to breathe in that future without panicking.
His voice finally came out like it hurt.“Callaway.”
Just my name.Nothing else.
A warning and a plea.
I’d lowered my gaze to his hands on the wheel, to the tendons standing out in his forearms.To the way his control looked like devotion when it was really fear.
“You can say it,” I’d whispered.“You can want me.You can want her.You can want?—”
“Fuck.”The word snapped out of him, raw and sharp-edged, like it surprised even him.
The car drifted a hair toward the line before he corrected, jaw flexing hard enough I thought he might crack a tooth.
I’d softened my touch for a beat—just a beat—and his whole body shuddered like he’d been waiting for mercy and hated that he needed it.
“Look at you,” I’d said, quiet and mean-sweet, like candy with a blade inside.“Acting like you’re not about to lose it.”
His laugh wasn’t a laugh.It was one harsh exhale.
“Eyes forward,” I’d told him, voice warm with sin.“Good boy.”
That did it.
Not the words, exactly—though Monty has always been dangerously responsive to praise he hasn’t earned.
It was the way I said it like I meant it.Like he was allowed to be good.Like he was allowed to be wanted without paying for it.
His grip tightened on the wheel, and he muttered, “Don’t.”
But his voice broke on the last consonant.
And I, being me—reckless sunshine with a self-destructive streak and a mouth that gets me in trouble—leaned closer and murmured, “Don’t what?Don’t want it?Don’t let me see you?Don’t let yourself?—”
“Callaway.”My name again, rougher this time, as if he was trying to drag it across broken glass.
I’d pressed my lips to the shell of his ear—barely there, a threat more than a kiss.
“You can take it,” I’d told him.“You can let go for once.I’ve got you.”
He’d finally spoken, voice low, wrecked.“I want you to stop talking.”
I’d grinned, wicked.“No, you don’t.”
His eyes had flashed to mine—one glance, quick as a match strike.
Then he’d looked back at the road and said, so quietly I almost missed it, “I want you to make me forget how to hold myself together.”
That had nearly broken me.
Because humiliatingly tender wasn’t allowed.
