Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Alberto
Dr. Ruiz leaves my apartment the same way she arrived—calm, competent, like she didn’t just toss a grenade into my living room and walk back into the hallway with a polite smile and a hefty bill.
The door clicks.
Silence rushes in behind it, thick and ugly. It’s worse than rotors. Worse than cameras. Worse than the sound of Vesper losing everything she had left into the porcelain while pretending she was fine.
This whole I’m sick with a weird Nordic virus thing is more like she brought back a souvenir from . . . who the fuck knows about the father. Is she dating someone?
That thought stalks the edges of my mind, snarling. Did she have a thing? A night? A mistake? A choice?
What was it?
I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk about it. We have an entire relationship built on brutal honesty . . . and one bright, dangerous blind spot we refuse to touch.
She tosses out names sometimes—Patrick, Charlie, Devin—like they’re weather updates. People who pass through her life for a season or two, then disappear. She never gives me details. I never ask.
Because asking would mean admitting defeat, letting her go. I still have some weird hope that Callaway will find a wife and then Ves and I will finally be together.
Yet, the asshole might have that whole womanizer fame, but during all these years, there hasn’t been a girlfriend.
Vesper is in the guest room now, taking a shower. Dr. Ruiz insisted she lie down after the last round. She tried to joke her way out of it, like she always does—sarcasm as a weapon, self-deprecation as camouflage.
She did agree to shower, muttering something about washing off the airplane stink and the puke-adjacent misery, and I didn’t argue. I just nodded like I was normal and not one wrong breath away from ripping the world apart.
Cally paces near the terrace doors like a caged animal trying to cosplay as a man.
He can sell charm for a living, but fear makes him twitchy.
He runs a hand through his hair again—tenth time in the past couple of minutes, maybe more—then looks at me like he’s about to start a fight just to feel like he’s doing something.
“She’s pregnant,” he says.
Like saying it again will make it less real. Like repetition can turn a cliff into a curb.
I keep my gaze on the kitchen island. The test strip is gone—Dr. Ruiz took it—but I still see it as if it’s burned into the marble. Two lines. Two lines that just rearranged every orbit in this room.
“That’s what the test said,” I reply, voice low. “We still have to confirm. There’s the bloodwork. Then an ultrasound . . .” The words tastes wrong in my mouth. So fucking clinical. “We need to make sure everything’s where it needs to be.”
Cally blows out a breath, harsh. “And she’s acting like it’s a parking ticket.”
“Because she’s terrified,” I say flatly. “She’s good at jokes. She’s not good at letting anyone see her scared.”
His jaw works. “This is . . . this is going to change everything.”
“Yes.” I don’t soften it. I can’t. “And we don’t know what’s going on with the father. Are they together?”
“She’s not dating anyone,” Cally mumbles as if it’s not important.
My head turns before I can stop it. The look I give him is pure question and pure warning.
How the fuck do you know that?
Did she choose him and forget to tell me? Did she decide I’m optional? Did she . . .?
Jealousy isn’t a good look on me. It never has been. It makes me mean. It makes me stupid.
I keep my voice even anyway. “Are you—”
He reads the sentence before I finish it. “The father?” His eyes roll. “Come on.”
“Then how the fuck do you know she’s not dating anyone?” I bite out.
He huffs like I’m the slow one. “New Year’s Eve. I was drunk. Called her before midnight.” His gaze drops for a second, like the memory still hurts. “It was already morning where she was. I said a bunch of idiotic shit. Told her I needed her.”
His throat bobs. He swallows hard and keeps going because Cally has never been able to stop once he starts bleeding.
“Told her I loved her, just like I do when I’m losing my shit.”
I stay still, because if I move, I might do something I can’t undo.
“She said she hated herself,” he continues, voice rougher now, “for not being able to stop loving us. For keeping us stuck. For not letting herself live.” He laughs once, humorless. “It gave me hope and broke me in half at the same time.”
Hope.
That word makes me want to smash something.
Because hope is the thing that gets men like me killed.
“We have to figure this out,” I say. “It’s not just her anymore. We can’t keep doing this to her—or ourselves.”
“Right now it has to be an us, Alberto,” Cally replies instantly, fiercely. Possessive in a way he doesn’t even try to hide. “She’s not alone. Unless you want to walk away.”
I let out a short breath that might’ve been a laugh if I had any humor left in me. “Wouldn’t you love that?”
His gaze cuts to mine, eyes hot with something that looks a lot like hate—except hate is too easy. Hate doesn’t shake like this. Hate doesn’t look like it’s holding on by fingernails.
“You have no fucking idea what I wanted then,” he says, each word tight, controlled, “or what I want now. You decided what you wanted from the beginning. And then you made her choose, fucker.”
My jaw clenches. “I didn’t make her do anything.”
“You cornered her,” he snaps. “You made it a war and called it protecting her.”
I take a step closer, because my body responds to threats the way it always has—with forward movement. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“Make me, asshole,” Cally says, and his grin flashes for a second—too much like a dare.
Then a voice slices through the tension like she owns the air.
“I heard the word asshole out there,” Vesper calls from her room. “Just checking—are we naming the team after you two, or is this a limited series?”
I turn my head toward her door, relief and dread hitting at the same time.
“You showered already?” I ask, because it’s safer to ask about water than about babies and fathers and feelings that can ruin us.
“I did, then I thought about getting in the bathtub,” she says, tone casual like she didn’t just detonate our lives. “But I don’t know if it’s . . . safe? Are there rules? Am I going to steam myself into a medical emergency?”
Cally’s phone is out in seconds. “Water under a hundred degrees and it’s fine. Don’t stay too long.”
“Wow,” she replies. “You’re like WebMD with better shoulders. Also . . . I drowned my phone in the bathtub, and I think I might need a new one—or for someone to resuscitate it.”
Cally’s mouth twitches. “Harvey can get you one, baby.”
She mutters something that sounds like, “I hate you both,” but it’s the version of hate she uses when she’s annoyed at our antics.
The apartment exhales.
Cally looks at me again, and we’re back where we left off—two men in a borrowed space, both pretending this is about logistics when it’s always been about her.
“If we’re going to survive this,” I say, “we call a truce.”
His brows lift. “Since when do you do truces?”
“Since there’s a baby involved,” I say. “And since Ves is barely holding it together.”
Cally studies me, like he’s trying to decide if I’m lying.
“I’m not promising I won’t hit you,” I add, “but I’ll try my best.”
He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “You’re a romantic, Wade.” He keeps tapping on his phone. “Harvey found a chef. He’ll be here later for an interview.” Cally’s eyes lift. “It’s called dinner.”
“What else?” I ask, already running the list in my head—appointments, bloodwork, OB referral, travel, a schedule that isn’t going to bend just because we’re panicking.
His gaze drags around the living room. “How uncomfortable is your couch?”
I stare at him. “You can’t possibly think you’re staying here.”
“There’s no way I’m leaving her alone—with you,” he shoots back.
“This place barely fits her and me,” I say. “And you? You’ll pace holes into the floor.”
He doesn’t blink. “We’ll find a house.”
“In twenty-four hours?” I scoff.
“In as fast as it takes,” he says, and there’s that Cally thing—when he decides the universe is going to move because he wants it to. “Lake Oswego. Quiet. Space. Rooms. We put it in her name.”
My chest pulls tight, not with fear—something worse.
Something that looks like Cally building a future like he owns it.
He keeps going, voice gaining speed as if he can outrun reality by planning harder. “There might be changes in her career. If she needs to stay in New York, we’ll figure it out. I’ll retire.”
The words hit, and for a second, I just watch him.
Because he means it.
And I hate that he means it.
I hate that it makes my throat burn.
I hate that part of me wants to believe him—wants to believe someone can love her so loudly it becomes a shelter.
And I hate, most of all, that another part of me whispers: Would she choose him, if he gives her that?
Worse: Would I give her that?
I force my voice into control. “Don’t narrate her future like it belongs to you.”
Cally’s eyes narrow, like he can see straight through the armor I wear. Like he knows exactly what lives underneath it.
“Then don’t disappear,” he counters, quietly and deadly accurate, “because you’re terrified she’ll leave you behind like everyone else.”
My pulse spikes.
There it is. The truth I never give anyone. The thing I keep locked up because it makes me weak.
My fear that everyone fucking leaves.
My fear that I’ll never be enough.
I hold his stare anyway, because I’m not letting him see me crack. Not him. Not now.
From down the hall, Vesper calls out again, voice brighter than it has any right to be. “If you two are done measuring your emotional damage, I need someone to tell me if bubble baths are illegal now. Also, how old are these salts, Monty?”
Cally glances toward her door, then back at me. His expression shifts—softer, wrecked with feeling he doesn’t know how to place.
“We’re not leaving her,” he says again, like it’s a vow.
And I realize, with a cold jolt in my gut, that I’m not fighting him on that.
Because I’m already in too deep.
Because I’ve always been in too deep.
And because whatever comes next Vesper is going to look between us and try to laugh it off because she’ll be breaking without letting us know.
“Salts and bubbles came with the apartment. Not sure if they’re old, Ves,” I respond. “Why don’t we get you new stuff tomorrow and today you just try to take a nap?”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“Your body needs rest,” I tell her. “Do you want us to join you?”
Silence stretches out on the other side of the door. I hear water shift in the tub, a small slosh. Her breath, too, like she’s deciding whether she can afford to be honest with us.
When she finally speaks, her voice is light on purpose. “Nah. I’ll be on the couch in my comfy pajamas. If I leave you two unattended, you’ll kill each other, and then you won’t be useful to your new team.”
Cally answers like he’s smiling, but I hear the nerves tucked underneath.
“Thoughtful of you, Ves. I’ll grab a blanket and a pillow while Monty makes tea.
Crackers should be here soon, and we’ll have someone making you dinner.
He claims to know how to handle your symptoms and keep food in your belly. ”
“You two are overbearing,” she calls back.
“And you love us for that,” I say, aiming for easy.
The apartment hums around us—heat whispering through vents, rain ticking against the glass, the city’s distant hush living behind the windows. It’s too quiet for what just happened here.
Too much has shifted in a single day. Her father. The trade . . .
And now this.
I hate how useless I feel. I hate that I can’t reach into her body and take the fear out with my bare hands. I hate that the only thing I can do is make tea, order crackers, and pretend that planning is the same as saving her.
I look at the bedroom door like I can see through it.
Cally and I love her. That part is not in question. The problem is everything around it—our pride, our history, the way we keep turning love into a fight and calling it protection.
I swallow what I don’t say.
If she asks us to leave, I don’t know if I can.
If she asks us to stay, I don’t know if we deserve it.