Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Alberto
Vesper thinks if she keeps moving, nothing can catch her.
I watch her try.
She’s in her father’s kitchen like she never left—bare feet on cold tile, hair shoved into a knot that’s more surrender than style, shoulders squared like stubbornness counts as medical care.
She moves with purpose, the way she does when fear is circling.
Like if she keeps her hands busy—toast, kettle, paperwork, trash—she won’t have to feel the part where her dad isn’t indestructible.
She takes a bite of toast and grimaces like it’s a chore and not nourishment.
“This is . . . so exciting,” she mutters, voice bright and dry at once. “I love a bland carb moment and being watched like I’m going to break. Really doing big things for my brand.”
Cally huffs a laugh from the doorway. He’s trying to play it cool, but he can’t. Callaway Winthrop does not come with a chill setting when Vesper looks even slightly breakable.
“You’re adorable,” he says, soft in a way that makes me want to slam the cabinet door just to hear something snap. “Eat the whole thing.”
Vesper points the corner of her toast at him. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a rescue dog.”
“You are,” he says immediately. “A feral one, but still.”
She rolls her eyes, but her mouth twitches. Sunshine, even now. Even scared.
I keep my focus where it belongs: survival. Philippe needs food. Fluids. Someone who will take the keys from him before he decides “rest” is a suggestion.
I check the fridge. Half-empty. The leftovers look like they’ve been there long enough to start producing new leftovers. I open the pantry and find exactly what I expect—protein bars, canned soup, and a jar of peanut butter that looks like it’s been used as a meal replacement for grief.
I pull my phone out and text Conrad.
Need a physician in Portland who does house calls. Today. Also: start the home search. Privacy. Space. Extra guest rooms. It’s urgent, before someone else beats me to it.
Not sure how long I have, but I need this to be solved as soon as possible. I won’t leave this to fate—or Callaway. I don’t do “maybe” when it comes to Ves. I do plans. Routes. Exits. Backup options that don’t include pretty boy.
Behind me, paper rustles.
I turn, and there she is—Vesper’s fingers hovering over a packet on the counter. County letterhead. The words I don’t have to read to know they’ve been chewing at Philippe’s nerves for weeks.
Her hand pauses. It’s just a tiny stall that tells me everything.
I’ve seen that same stillness on her father when the ice gets quiet and a kid looks too much like someone he used to love. I’ve seen it in Vesper when she laughs a little too loud and changes the subject too fast.
She sets the packet down like it might bite.
Clears her throat. Goes breezy. “Okay. We’ll deal with that after I—”
She stops.
Her face shifts—small, fast, wrong. Like her body betrays her before she can make a joke about it.
Her swallow looks painful. Her eyes go too bright.
My stomach drops. I’m moving before she makes a sound.
“Bathroom,” I say.
She jerks her head, offended on instinct. “I’m fine.”
“No,” I cut in, low. This is just the way she looked when we were in the car. “You’re not.”
Her mouth opens to argue because that’s what she does when she’s scared—push back, make it funny, make it anything except real.
She gets one step.
Then she gags.
Her hand flies up and she turns away like she can hide it if she doesn’t let us see.
I catch her elbow and guide her to the kitchen sink with the same reflex I use on the ice when a puck kicks off my pad and I know where the rebound’s going before anyone else moves.
Cally is there in the same second, too fast, too urgent. “Ves—”
“Don’t talk,” I snap, because the last thing she needs is sympathy layered on top of nausea. She’ll swallow it and smile and pretend it doesn’t matter until she falls apart in private.
Cally’s eyes cut to me, bright with offense. “Excuse me?”
I don’t look at him. I don’t have time.
Vesper grips the counter with both hands and bends.
Her breath jerks. Her shoulders shake. And then she vomits—hard enough that it turns my blood cold. I hate that she’s trying to be strong and her body is refusing to cooperate, and I can’t fix it with a plan.
I press my hand between her shoulders and lean in, close enough that she can steal my strength if she needs it. Close enough that my body can say what my mouth won’t.
I reach for her hair with my other hand and gather it at the nape of her neck, keeping it out of her face as if I’ve done it a hundred times.
Cally grabs a glass. A paper towel. A bottle of water as if he’s taking the role of “Helpful Boyfriend,” and maybe he is, because he always performs love like it’s an act of defiance.
“Okay, okay,” Vesper wheezes between breaths, already trying to spin it. “Super sexy. Really glad you both got front-row seats.”
“Don’t,” Cally says, voice wrecked. Possessive in a way he can’t hide. “Stop joking.”
“I’m not joking,” she mutters, rinsing her mouth. “This is my new personality now. Nausea and violence.”
I keep my hand on her back until her breathing evens out. Until she stops shaking. Until she stops pretending her knees aren’t close to giving out.
She wipes her mouth with the paper towel Cally offers, furious at her own body, furious at us for witnessing it.
“I’m fine,” she says again, like if she orders it, reality will listen. “You don’t have to coddle me. You should be worried about my father.”
Cally leans in. Too close. His hand hovers near her hip like he’s one second from pulling her against him. “I always worry about you.”
Vesper huffs a laugh like she’s trying to defuse a bomb with charm. “I’m literally covered in road-trip misery. Pick a better moment.”
She’s flushed from throwing up, lips bitten raw, eyes too bright to be anything but fighting it—and somehow, she still manages to tease. Still makes me want to kiss her breathless against the kitchen counter and remind her she doesn’t have to pretend everything is fine.
I reach for the washcloth.
So does Cally.
Our hands collide over the sink. Skin on skin—brief, electric contact, the brush of knuckles and heat where it shouldn’t be. Not here. Not like this.
Not with him.
His fingers pause. Curl. Like he thought about holding on.
Like he still wants to.
I don’t move—can’t.
Callaway fucking Winthrop smells like heat and woodsmoke and expensive cologne, and I hate that I know that. Hate more how fast my body clocks him. How I can feel every molecule of his attention like it’s crawling across my skin.
His gaze drags to mine—slow, assessing, dangerous.
And flirty.
Cocky bastard.
It’s a dare. One I want to fail just to watch him fall with me.
Something low and tense rolls through my gut.
Lust laced with old want. A flash of memory that isn’t safe.
His mouth, my tongue, her breathless gasp between us.
The way the three of us fit—too much, too loud, too right—until the next morning when reality hit and destroyed what could’ve been the best friendship.
Cally doesn’t step back. He doesn’t even blink.
He just stares.
Like he remembers too.
Like he’s picturing what I am.
Her, laughing. Us, younger. My hand on her thigh. His mouth on her shoulder. That night we crossed every line and tried to pretend it meant nothing. That we could go back.
I hate that I remember how he tastes.
I hate it more that sometimes—like right now—I want another sample.
I yank the cloth back and hand it to Vesper without looking at her. My fingers graze hers. She’s the reason. The center of this fucked-up gravitational pull.
But Cally’s still in my periphery, still close, still—
“Well?” she says lightly, forcing levity into the air so thick I could cut it with my fucking teeth. “Anyone want to comment on how pale I am now? Or should we just do that thing where you both pretend you’re not fighting over who gets to babysit me?”
“You’re not pale,” Cally says, voice low, eyes still on me. “You’re flushed.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
She smirks. “Am I glowing too?”
Cally shrugs, still not moving. “You always glow, sunshine.”
She rolls her eyes like it doesn’t land. But her cheeks go pinker.
And me? I finally blink.
Because if I don’t, I’ll do something reckless. Like kiss him just to make it hurt. Or kiss her because it already does.
Or worse—both.
And that?
That would fucking wreck me.
But my body doesn’t care about years.
My body fucking remembers.
Wanting more is a problem I can’t afford right now.
I turn away first. I always do.
Because if I don’t, the wanting starts to look like permission.
Cally doesn’t say anything. He never needs to. He has this infuriating way of letting silence do the work, like he knows exactly how long to let it stretch before it presses on the wrong places. He knows I’m wired to react. Knows I hate being seen when I’m cornered.
And fuck, I am cornered.
By him.
By her.
By the fact that the two people who undo me most are standing within arm’s reach, breathing the same air, acting like this is normal.
It’s not.
Nothing about this is.
I focus on Vesper instead because she’s safer. Because loving her has always been allowed, even when it hurt. Even when it cost me sleep and sanity and seasons of my life I won’t get back.
She rinses her mouth, straightens, wipes her lips like she can scrub the moment away. Like she didn’t just scare the hell out of both of us.
“You’re hovering,” she says, pointing vaguely between Cally and me. “Both of you. Stop it.”
Cally laughs softly. “You puked and almost passed out.”
“Did not.”
“You threw up on the highway,” I say gently. “And again just now. You mentioned nausea earlier, and now I’m trying to piece it together. I have a feeling ‘two days’ is you minimizing it.”
“It’s recent. You’re just making nothing into a big deal.”
It’s a big fucking deal. This is in fact, personal. It’s wearing me down, because Cally leans closer to hand her the water, and when his arm brushes mine again—barely there, barely anything—my body reacts like it’s been waiting for permission it never got.
I hate that.
Loathe that my first instinct isn’t just to move away, but to imagine.
Him pressed too close in a locker room.
His mouth low at my ear, saying something he knows will piss me off, while he tries to turn me on.
I hate that my brain goes there so fast. Like it’s been pacing behind a door for years, waiting for the lock to slip.
That’s not me.
I don’t want men.
I don’t want him. That’s the lie I tell myself most often.
Because I did once. I wanted him and her. I not only fell in love with the girl, but also the boy.
Not sure why, but I did. It was just summers. I gave myself a chance to just let everything go, including the part that controls my life in ways that I know will make everyone around me accept me. I let them in and I let myself believe.
I loved him in glances that lasted too long. In the way my pulse reacted when he stepped too close. In the awareness that bloomed low and insistent whenever his laughter turned soft, whenever his confidence cracked just enough to show the boy underneath.
I let myself believe there was room for all of it.
For us.
Until we crossed the line.
The next morning, I woke up and remembered who I am. I survive by control. I was becoming a man who needed structure, boundaries, certainty. A man who knew exactly where lines existed and kept his feet planted on the correct side because stepping over them cost too much.
I told myself that wanting them both was a phase. That desire could be trained out of me like a bad habit. That I didn’t need that version of myself—the one who ached, who softened, who wanted to be undone.
Except Cally has never respected lines.
I’m hating the now because he’s back at it.
When he looks at me now—eyes bright, knowing, unafraid—I feel it again.
That old heat. That pull that doesn’t care about my rules or my carefully built life.
The one that whispers that maybe I didn’t imagine it.
That maybe it wasn’t just a summer or a mistake or a story I tell myself when I’m lonely.
Vesper watches us with narrowed eyes, too perceptive for her own good. She probably can feel the hum between us, the tension that refuses to stay buried.
This is going to be torture. I’ll survive the way I always do. Believing in denial, reminding myself who I need to be. Telling myself I don’t want him.
By pretending I don’t still remember how his mouth felt, how his hands moved, how close I came to choosing a life that would have burned everything I was working for to the ground.
And fuck—I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending.
Because the wanting never really left.
It just learned how to wait.
My strategy for survival is denial, but for how long? Can I turn this around?