Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Callaway
Vesper doesn’t want her father riding back to Juniper Ridge alone, not even with a driver. Not surprising though. She wants to make sure he’s settled, that he has groceries and someone to yell at him if he forgets to eat again.
I’m on the phone with Harvey, making sure he assembles a team to help him not only with the camp but also with Philippe’s care. Everything needs to be set up before we leave for Portland. I’m trying to act like I have it all under control.
I wish I could stay overnight, but there’s no way to make it to training by eight-thirty if we do. I could leave Monty behind, let him handle things, but he has to be there with me. Plus, I’m not that big of an asshole.
Our rivalry is something we have to put aside for now, maybe even for a while. Though our current seating situation is a sick joke.
Philippe’s up front. That leaves the three of us—me, Monty, and Vesper—crammed into the backseat like a sitcom gone feral. She’s in the middle, her shoulders drawn in, her knees pulled close, head leaning toward the window like maybe she can escape us both if she closes her eyes hard enough.
She hasn’t said much since we left the hospital. Her fingers have curled around the hem of her sleeve, tugging it, twisting. It’s her tell. She’s anxious. Trying to stay small. Trying not to show it.
Monty breaks the silence.
“You okay?” he asks, low and even, like he doesn’t want to spook her.
She waves him off. “Peachy.”
“You’ve been pale since the airport,” I say, voice casual, but it comes out too clipped.
She glares at me. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do the concerned voice.” Her jaw locks. “It’s fine. I haven’t slept much. I’ve had coffee, sugar, and not much else.”
Philippe cranes his neck around. “We can stop at the diner. You need something in your stomach.”
“I’ll make food at your place,” she says too fast, almost as if she wants us to drop the subject.
The road curves, sloping down toward the turnoff, and the car shifts. Her hand flies to her mouth. A sound breaks from her throat.
It’s small, but it guts me.
“Pull over,” Monty says, already reaching for the door handle.
“What—” I start, but he’s already halfway out, dragging Ves with him.
She stumbles onto the shoulder, knees bending. Then she’s bracing herself with both hands, gasping—and vomiting.
It crashes into me like I’m the one kneeling there. Like every dry heave she can’t hide is a tally mark of how much we’ve failed her. I want to go to her. I want to fucking fix it. But I don’t know how.
I’m out of the car with a water bottle and a crumpled pack of tissues I shoved into my pocket like a joke when I got in.
Monty’s crouched beside her, one arm curved around her back, the other holding her braid.
He’s murmuring something I can’t make out.
Useless words, but they’re tender, maybe even loving.
I hate him for it.
She spits into the gravel, rinses her mouth with the water I hand her, and wipes her face with the tissue like she’s apologizing for this moment.
“Sorry,” she mutters, avoiding both our eyes.
“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.
I slide in beside her before my instinct can do something stupid, like try to claim space that isn’t mine to claim. She leans her head back, eyes closed, and her face is drawn too tight—like she’s holding herself together with pure will and caffeine fumes.
Monty shuts the door, and the car eases back onto the road.
Without talking about it, Monty’s hand finds one of hers. Mine finds the other.
Our hands linked as if we’re both trying to keep her tethered to the present. Like if we let go, she’ll disappear into whatever dark corner her fear keeps dragging her toward.
She doesn’t squeeze back, but she doesn’t pull away either.
The drive goes still after that, the way a room goes still after someone says something you can’t forget. The road curves. Trees close in. Juniper Ridge appears the way a memory does—suddenly, and with too much force.
The town is small and at the end of the main street, the sign comes into view, worn and familiar, letters faded but stubbornly upright.
The cabins sit tucked back like they’re holding their breath.
The rink is there, waiting for the next round of campers to visit this upcoming summer.
The lake beyond it is gray under the winter sky, flat as metal.
Vesper’s breathing changes the second she sees it.
Her eyes go bright again, and she blinks fast like she’s angry at the tears for existing. Like grief is an inconvenience she can bully into submission.
I want to reach across her, touch her cheek, press my thumb right under her eye the way I used to—I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you—but Monty’s hand is already in hers and mine is already holding the other and I don’t know which move would comfort her and which one would make her bolt.
So I do nothing.
Which is its own kind of torture.
We pull up in front of the main house—the Lafontaine home, the place that used to smell like pancakes and wet gear and Margaret’s coffee and Vesper’s laughter bouncing off every wall like the camp couldn’t contain her.
Monty’s out immediately, opening Vesper’s door. She swings her legs out and stands too fast, then catches herself with a tiny wobble. Both Monty and I move at once.
She glares at us like we’re the problem. “I’m fine.”
“Sure,” I say. “You’re radiant.”
She shoots me a look that could ruin a man’s self-esteem for sport. “That’s sleep deprivation. Don’t romanticize it.”
“I romanticize everything,” I tell her. “It’s a flaw.”
Monty helps Philippe down, then angles his body slightly—subtle, protective, already scanning the steps, the path, the distance to the door like he’s mapping exits.
He doesn’t even realize he does it.
She murmurs, “I’m definitely not going with you,” as if she can sense me reaching for control. Then she’s at her father’s side, fussing like she isn’t fussing. Philippe lets her, because he’s her dad and he knows this is how she loves—loud, bossy, terrified.
They head inside.
Monty’s voice drops. “We’re not leaving her here.”
“Fuck no,” I say, relief and worry tangled together. “She’s not taking care of herself and now that her father needs care . . . that’s going to end up pretty bad.”
He scoffs, a quick exhale. “Is this us agreeing?”
“For her?” I don’t even hesitate. “I’d agree with you on literally anything.”
His eyes cut to me. Suspicious. Like he’s waiting for the punchline.
There isn’t one.
“The question is—” I start, because there’s always a question with Vesper.