The air changes.
Vesper’s breath stutters.Her grip on my hand turns fierce, her knuckles whitening like she’s trying to brute-force the future into behaving.
“Okay,” she says, and the bravado slips for half a second, revealing the raw, trembling underside.Then she steadies herself—no, not the right word.She sets herself.Puts herself back together with sheer will.“If you’re up to it, I am too.”
My throat burns.Not from some cliché tightness—just from the fact that she’s offering herself up to the blast radius without flinching.Like love is something you can plant your feet in front of and dare it to do its worst.
I turn my head, needing to see Monty, needing to read him the way I always do.Monty doesn’t do fear in public.He doesn’t do anything in public that can be used against him.But right now, in this room, with Vesper between us and the future circling like a shark, his eyes look stripped down.
I nod at him.“What do you want, big guy?”
He exhales through his nose, a sound that’s almost a scoff, almost a groan.His gaze drops to Vesper’s stomach like it has gravity.Like it owns him.
“Honestly?”he says.One word and I can hear how hard it is for him to admit anything.“I’m not ready.”
Vesper’s face flinches even though she tries to hide it, even though she’s been pretending she doesn’t need reassurance every second.
Monty’s jaw flexes.He swallows.Then he forces the next part out like he’s dragging it up from somewhere deep.
“But we can’t wait.I’ll keep up with therapy.I’ll talk more and ...”His eyes lift, and for a second I see the boy he used to be—the one who learned early that wanting something could get it taken away.“We’re doing this not only for us.For our baby.”
The words hit Vesper like a wave.
Her mouth opens.Closes.Her eyes squeeze shut and she shakes her head once, like she can’t accept the shape of this.Like she can’t accept that her body is doing something miraculous while the rest of her world threatens to implode.
“What did we do?”she whisper.
My heart does something painful and stupid.
I lean in, and I don’t ask permission, because I know her.Because my need to hold her is louder than my fear of getting it wrong.I gather her to me, careful of her belly, and her hands go to my shirt like she’s grabbing onto the only solid thing in the room.
“I don’t know,” I whisper into her hair.“But I know what we’re going to do next.”
She makes a wet, broken little laugh that turns into a sob, and I hate the universe for the way it keeps asking her to be brave.
Monty shifts closer, sliding his hand to her back, pinning her to him in a way that reads like possession and devotion all at once.His palm spreads between her shoulder blades as if touch is the only thing keeping her in one piece.
Vesper pulls back just enough to look between us, mascara threatening, nose pinking, trying to be funny again because silence is too dangerous.
“You’ll do this for the baby,” she says, and her voice wobbles so hard it cracks.“You two keep calling them our baby.”
I lower my hand to her stomach—the soft curve of her that now holds everything we’re fighting for.My fingers splay there, possessive in the most tender way I know how to be, like I’m imprinting myself on this truth.
“Ours,” I say.“And the beginning of our family.”
Vesper’s face crumples.She tries to bite her lip like that will stop the tears, and it doesn’t.She cries like she’s been holding it in for too long, like her body finally decided it’s done pretending this isn’t terrifying.
Monty makes a low sound under his breath—something that might be a curse, or a prayer.He shifts again and presses his forehead to her temple, eyes shut, as if he’s drawing strength from her existence.
I pull her in tighter, and my brain keeps running because that’s what mine does when my heart starts to drown.
I have a plan though.
We go to the rink and we don’t let this blow up in public first.We control the narrative.We talk to Mills Aldrige.He’s the owner and hopefully we’ll have his support.We talk to Coach.
Today is a recovery day.No morning skate with cameras lurking.No locker room jokes that land wrong.No reporters hanging around like vultures.
Tomorrow night we have another game, and maybe we’ll be done with this stressful issue.Harvey usually works fast and there’s a lot of dirt he has on my family.I’m sure they’re going to be too busy controlling that shitshow.
