A pause.Not long.Just enough for me to picture him wherever he is—sitting, standing, pacing, jaw tight, eyes fixed on nothing.Monty doesn’t waste silence, so when he uses it, it’s because he’s holding back the part that would scare me.
“Do you want me to come?”he asks.
My breath catches so hard it’s embarrassing.
I could remind him it’s hockey season.I could say he can’t just hop on a plane like he’s not a professional athlete with obligations and cameras and a team that owns his time.
But Monty has never cared about convenience.
He cares about me.He cares in a way that has always felt too intense for daylight.
“No,” I say automatically.“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Ves,” he replies, flat and sure, like he can see me through the phone.“I can hear it.”
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.“Monty?—”
“Tell me what’s going on with your dad,” he says, voice firm.“Exactly.”
That’s Monty.He doesn’t accept vague platitudes.He wants facts.He wants truth that can be handled.
I swallow.My throat feels raw from holding everything in.“He fell.Dizzy.They want more tests.He has to go to Baker’s Creek for the hospital stuff.The county showed up early.They’re threatening closure if we can’t meet new standards.”
“Okay,” Monty says, and somehow that single word contains movement—like gears clicking into place.“When are you flying to Portland?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know yet.I have to talk to Harvey.”
A low sound leaves him, half frustration, half relief that there’s at least a plan.
“You talked tohimfirst,” he says.
“Monty.”An edge of warning enters my voice without me meaning it to.
A beat.He exhales, slower, like he’s forcing himself to climb down from whatever ledge he was on.“Sorry.Not the point.”Then, quieter, more human, “You want me there?”
“Boston is a long way from Oregon,” I say, trying to sound reasonable, like reasonable has ever stopped him.
On the other end, he makes a sound—pained, almost.Not a groan.Not a laugh.Something that slips out when you’ve been holding too much inside your body.
“What happened?”I ask, because that sound doesn’t belong to him.Monty doesn’t leak emotion.He locks it up and pretends it’s fine.
He doesn’t answer right away.
Then he says it, blunt as a punch.“I got traded.”
My stomach drops.
“Again,” he adds, and there’s fury in it, sharp-edged and exhausted.“It’s like you can have the best stats in the league and they still say, ‘Fuck you, Monty.We don’t need you.’”
My first instinct is to crawl through the phone and wrap my arms around him.To put my mouth on his jaw and feel him unclench.To tell him he’s not disposable, he’s not a pawn, he’s not something people move around when they get bored.
But my Monty doesn’t want comfort that sounds like pity.
He wants truth.
