“Don’t,” I say, stepping close, barely resisting the urge to touch her.“Don’t ever apologize for being sick.”
She straightens slowly.Her breath stutters on the way in.Her cheeks are blotchy.Her eyes are wet.
She’s furious.At herself.At the betrayal of her body.At us, maybe, for seeing it.
Monty doesn’t hesitate.He steps in, one arm slipping around her waist, the other steadying her elbow.
“You good?”he murmurs, voice low.
She leans into him for a second.Just a second.But it’s long enough to make my ribs crack.
She should be leaning on me.
I’m the one who knows how she takes her coffee.I’m the one who can still pick her laugh out in a crowd.But she’s letting him hold her now.
And I don’t get to be angry about it, because she’s not mine.Monty meets my eyes over her shoulder.There’s no victory in it.Just concern, as if he’s asking me to help figure out what’s happening because he’s lost.
I wish I could help, but I’m at a loss too.
If I could, I’d set the entire world on fire until it gave me a clear answer—how do I help you without making it worse?—but apparently arson isn’t an approved coping mechanism.
Vesper takes two breaths like she’s bargaining with her own body.“I’m fine.”
Monty doesn’t budge.Doesn’t soften.Doesn’t pretend.“You’re not.”
Philippe leans out the window, worry creasing his forehead like he hates that he’s the reason we’re on the side of the road.“Kiddo, are you sick?”
“Probably just stress,” she says again, louder, like volume equals truth.Like if she says it with enough authority, her stomach will salute and fall in line.“Two days of nausea.No sleep.Too much coffee.My body is protesting.”
My pulse jumps—too fast inside my own ribs.
Two days?
My brain does what it always does when I’m terrified: it starts sorting, counting, lining things up into neat little columns as if numbers can make feelings behave.Monty’s gaze cuts to mine for half a second, like he got the same intrusive thought and hated himself for it.
He looks away first.I follow his lead because this is not the moment to turn Vesper’s misery into a full-blown interrogation.
Vesper spits again, rinses her mouth, wipes her lips with the tissue I offer like it’s a towel at a five-star hotel and not a crumpled piece of paper I pulled from my pocket with shaking impatience.
“Sorry,” she mutters out of habit.
“Don’t,” I say immediately.
She straightens, eyes watering, anger flickering across her face—not at us, not really.At her body.At the timing.At the fact she’s giving the universe a new way to mess with her.
“Can we go?”she says, swallowing, squaring her shoulders like she’s about to walk into a press conference instead of back into a car with the two men who make her life complicated.“Dad needs rest.”
“Sure,” Monty says, already moving.Then—because he can’t help himself—he adds, “But you’re coming back to Portland.Staying here won’t help him.”
Her head snaps toward him.That look is pure Vesper: sunshine with teeth, sarcasm cocked like a weapon, terrified underneath it all.
“I love when men I didn’t vote for start issuing executive orders,” she says sweetly.
Monty’s expression barely changes.“You can yell at me later.”
It’s infuriating to watch how he does that.He doesn’t argue on her level.He doesn’t get baited.He just ...holds the line.
Vesper hates it, but she still gets in the car.
