Chapter 11 #2
“Are you two coming?” she calls from the doorway, leaning against the frame like she owns it, like she’s not ten seconds from folding in on herself if she stops moving.
Monty huffs. “She knows.”
“Of course she knows,” I mutter. Vesper has always been terrifyingly perceptive when it matters and willfully blind when it doesn’t.
I force my face into something lighter as we walk up. “Okay. Philippe needs food and rest. Vesper needs—”
“Don’t,” she snaps automatically.
I lift my hands in surrender. “Fine. Vesper needs nothing. Vesper is a self-sustaining celestial body.”
“Better,” she says, rolling her eyes, and there it is—her humor like duct tape over a crack.
Monty steps past her like he’s already decided where the kitchen is. “She needs to eat.”
Vesper whips toward him. “Traitor.”
“Doctor’s orders,” he says, already opening cabinets like he pays rent here.
“The doctor did not order you to micromanage me,” she fires back, but there’s less bite in it now. More exhaustion. More . . . relief, maybe, that someone else is making a decision for once.
Monty’s mouth curves, barely there. “She should’ve.”
Vesper freezes for half a second, then lets out a laugh that sounds like surrender dressed up as sarcasm. “Fine. Toast. Something bland. If I throw up again, I’m blaming both of you.”
“I’ll accept the blame,” I say instantly. “And then I’m dragging you to a doctor.”
“It’s probably nothing.” She shrugs like her body didn’t just stage a rebellion on the side of the road. “Or the flu. Or the universe hates me personally.”
“The universe has a long list,” I say. “You’re not that special.”
She points at me. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said all day.”
Monty sets two slices of bread in the toaster with the focus of a man defusing a bomb. “Eat,” he says, like a command.
Vesper looks at him, unimpressed. “You’re bossy.”
“You’re stubborn,” he replies.
“I’m resilient,” she corrects.
“You’re exhausting,” he says, and it should sound cruel, but it doesn’t. It sounds like he’s known her forever.
Vesper’s lips twitch. “You love it.”
“I tolerate it,” he says.
She turns her head, eyes landing on his back as he reaches for plates, and her tired brain does what her tired brain always does—chooses violence via flirtation.
“It’s just a twenty-four-hour bug, and you two need to stop watching me like I’m helpless,” she protests.
“Twenty-four-hour bug, my ass,” Monty mumbles.
“Your ass is pretty fine, Alberto Montoya,” she says, far too casually for a woman who just puked on the highway. Then she glances at me, eyes bright with mischief she can barely hold up. “Don’t you think?”
Monty stills for a fraction of a second—caught, annoyed—and I file it away as proof he isn’t made of stone.
Vesper looks at me as if waiting for something. Probably annoying us both so we stop making plans about her. I don’t look away. I refuse.
I should look away.
I don’t.
“I mean—objectively,” I say, keeping my tone dry, casual, like I’m not imagining what it would feel like to get him under me and see if he still mouths off when he’s not in control. “That’s an excellent ass. I would tap it . . . if it was someone else.”
Montoya’s jaw shifts. His nostrils flare. I know that look. It’s the same one he gives just before he checks someone hard enough to shake loose their past life decisions.
There’s a flash of heat in my gut that shouldn’t be there.
I’ve buried that part of myself so deep it doesn’t usually show. Not on game nights, not in locker rooms, not even when I wake up sweating with dreams I don’t unpack.
But right now? In this house? With him?
It’s there. Taunting me like a bruise I press just to feel something.
The first time I skated toward his crease, he looked up from behind that mask and smirked—like he’d already mapped every weakness I didn’t know I had.
Told me to “do better” after I missed the net by a breath.
I’ve been thinking about that moment for years.
Wondering what else he could say with that mouth, what else he could pull out of me if I let him too close.
It wasn’t attraction, not exactly.
It was friction—the violent, beautiful kind that doesn’t stop when the buzzer sounds. That coils in your gut and sits behind your ribs like something alive. That demands to be touched, tasted, fucked into submission.
And fuck, have I wanted to.
I’ve buried it, buried him, under years of snide remarks and checked hits and subtle cruelty dressed up as competitive edge.
But it’s never been about hockey, not really.
It’s about him. His eyes behind the mask.
His mouth when it twitches. His voice when it’s low and brutal and unbothered.
I know exactly how Alberto Montoya Navarro Wade would sound in the dark—stern and restrained until he breaks.
Until I break.
I’ve woken up too many times hard and panting, his name in my mouth like a sin. I’ve hated myself for wanting the one man who’s made it his mission to act like I don’t exist unless I’m a threat. A problem. A distraction he has to shut down.
He doesn’t look at me now. Doesn’t need to. The silence between us is so thick it might as well have hands.
Ves hums from her spot between us, a smug little siren sound, as if she knows—knows she’s the sun we both orbit, the woman we’ve both burned for, and yet somehow she’s lighting the fuse that might make us all combust. Maybe it’s accidental.
Maybe it’s not. Vesper has always been fluent in drama.
She just lies and says it’s an accident when it gets too close to the truth.
Monty shifts beside me, broad shoulders moving like a threat. Like he could ruin me if he ever let himself.
And fuck, I want him to.
I want to find out what that mouth would look like wrecked, what those hands would feel like on my hips, what that voice would sound like begging. I want to know if his control goes to pieces when he’s inside someone. If he’d lose it with me.
I want it so fucking badly I almost open my mouth.
Almost.
But then I bite the inside of my cheek instead. Let the need settle back into my blood like it hasn’t been waiting years to be let out. Because saying it out loud would make it real. Would mean I have to admit there’s more to this rivalry than testosterone and team colors.
And that?
That’s not safe.
Not now. Not here.
Not with him.
Especially not with him.