Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Vesper
“Monty,” I say, and his name comes out different.
“Did you land?” he asks.
No hello. No warm-up. Straight to the point, like he’s already halfway through solving the problem and I’m just catching up.
“I landed,” I say. “I’m almost home.”
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 to him first,” 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.
“Where are you going?” I ask, and it takes effort to keep my voice from tipping into panic. I grip the edge of my counter like it’s a railing and I’m standing on a ledge.
There’s a pause long enough for my imagination to start writing worst-case scenarios.
Then he says it.
“I’m already here,” he states. “Portland. I now play for the Orcas.”
My heart does this sick little stumble, like it forgets its rhythm for a beat just to remind me it can.
Portland.
Oregon.
Juniper Ridge is no longer a flight away in my mind. It’s right there—close enough to smell pine and rink air, close enough to hear my mother’s whistle in the back of my skull, close enough to remember what it felt like to be fifteen and invincible and stupidly in love.
“Which means,” Monty continues, voice tight like he’s holding something back with his teeth, “I’ll be at the airport to pick you up tomorrow.”
I blink like my brain just skipped a frame. “What?”
“I don’t have practice until Thursday,” he says, matter-of-fact, like he’s reading off a grocery list and not turning my life inside out. “They want me to settle in, meet people, do the media shit, and . . .” His breath breaks, there’s a stutter. “Fuck.”
“You should use this time to—” I start, because reflex kicks in. Because I want to lecture him into safety. Because I need him to have a plan that isn’t me.
“No. I’ll be there,” he cuts in.
My pulse jumps hard. “No.”
“I didn’t ask,” he says.
It doesn’t sound cruel, or angry. Just . . . Monty.
The man who decides, and then the world rearranges itself around his decision like it never had a choice.
“Monty,” I whisper, and my voice betrays me—soft, raw, too full of truth, “you can’t.”
“I can,” he says. “I’m in Portland. I’m free tomorrow.”
Free.
Like that word doesn’t come with consequences. Like freedom isn’t something the league plays tug-of-war with, like his body and his time and his life aren’t owned by contracts and expectations.
As if being close to me doesn’t cost him anything.
I bring my fingers to my mouth, pressing them against my lips as if I can keep them from saying something reckless. As if I can keep myself from turning into the girl who used to wait for him to look at her like she mattered.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, and the plea slips through anyway.
“Yes. I do.” His voice lowers. The shift hits me low in my body, right where desire lives.
Then, softer—dangerous-soft, like he’s letting me see the real thing beneath all that control—he adds, “You know I take care of what’s mine.”
My whole body stills.
Mine.
Cally says it like he’s claiming territory, like it’s instinct and pride and possession all tangled up.
Monty says it like devotion. Like law. Like a vow he’s been keeping even when we weren’t speaking.
It burns behind my eyes. I stare at the blank wall over my couch because I can’t handle the idea of looking at anything that belongs to my present when my past is suddenly standing in the doorway.
For a second I can’t speak.
Because if I speak, I might beg.
I might say his name like a prayer.
I might admit there’s a part of me that has always waited for him to choose me the way he chooses the net in overtime—no hesitation, no fear, all in.
“Okay,” I manage, because fighting him is pointless when he’s already moved his life into place. “If you come . . . you come for my dad. For the camp. Not for—”
“For you,” he says, cutting straight through the sentence like it’s nothing. Like my attempt at boundaries is paper in his hands. “It’s always for you, Ves.”
The words hit, and it’s not romantic in a sweet way.
It’s devastating.
My throat closes. “Monty . . .”
“Text me your flight info,” he says, snapping back into logistics like he didn’t just crack my world open with a confession. “Rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I swallow and it tastes like heat. “You too,” I whisper.
He hangs up.
The silence that follows is brutal. My pulse is loud enough to feel, like my body is trying to warn me.
And Cally’s unfinished sentence still lingers in my other ear.
If I move to Portland, we could . . .
Now Monty is moving to Portland too.
Of course he is.
Of course they both are.
Because apparently the universe isn’t satisfied with hurting me from a distance.
It wants front-row seats.
It wants to watch me try to survive the collision.
And the worst part—the part that makes my hands shake as I finally lower my phone—is that some treacherous, aching part of me wants that too.