And my treacherous heart does something soft and stupid.
It whispers,This could’ve worked.
If they’d ever looked at each other with even a fraction of what they give me—if they’d been willing to want the whole truth instead of fighting over pieces—maybe we wouldn’t have broken each other the way we did.
My eyes burn.
I blink hard, but the tears slip out anyway, hot and humiliating and impossible to control.
Cally notices instantly.Of course he does.His thumb brushes under my eye, gentle like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.“Hey,” he murmurs.“Don’t do that alone.”
Monty’s voice is even quieter, closer to my ear.“Talk to us.”
I shake my head because if I speak, I won’t stop.
And then Monty says, calm and relentless, like he’s calling a play he already knows I can’t dodge, “When was your last period, Ves?”
My breath stalls.
Cally goes utterly still beside me.
And the room—this perfect, expensive, too-bright bathroom—suddenly feels too small to hold what that question just opened.
ChapterFifteen
Vesper
I’ve survived airports, grief, and men who love me like I’m home.Their home.So why does one question make me feel cornered?
Monty’s question hits me hard, and the world keeps going even when my axis has shifted.The fan hums overhead like it has no idea three lives just got pushed to the edge.The lights keep bleaching my skin into something ghost-adjacent.The mirror keeps reflecting me back like I’m a person who has her shit together, which is hilarious.
Then he repeats it—because Monty doesn’t do “maybe.”Monty does confirmation.
“When was your last period, Ves?”
Cally freezes so hard I swear he stops existing for a second.His hand stays near my cheek like he was mid-save and got interrupted by a disaster he can’t body-check.
I stare at Monty in the mirror.
Of course it’s him.Of course it’s the man built out of control and obsession and quiet, ugly devotion who takes my nausea and my jokes and my “it’s fine” routine and peels it down to the one question that doesn’t care how charming I am.
My mouth opens.
Nothing.
Because here’s the fun part: I don’t have an answer.Depo did what Depo does.Four years of it turned my cycle into a myth.A bedtime story.A vague memory of cramps and rage and crying at puppy commercials.
Until ...I come to a halt because things aren’t the way they should.Nope.I was in New Zealand in early December.That’s when my next appointment slid off my calendar.Then Finland crossed my path and I didn’t even fly home.Now that I was supposed to get my affairs back in order Portland happened.Dad happened.Life is happening.
Technically, I’m three months past the window everyone pretends is flexible until it’s your body that’s the headline.
I haven’t had a shot since early December.
That should be fine, right?I mean, that there hasn’t been any period.
That’s what I tell myself as my brain drags up the last time I had sex like it’s pulling a file from a locked drawer.It was late January, in Finland.
The first time in over a year.
