Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Alberto
Outside, Portland hits me with damp air and a low gray sky that hangs like it’s listening. Tires hiss over wet pavement. The city smells clean—pine and rain and money—and it feels like a lie I don’t have the energy to unpack.
A team SUV waits at the curb, which seems normal. But, there’s a second vehicle across the street—dark, idling, window down just enough for someone to watch without being obvious about it. It seems out of place.
We didn’t even make it to the sidewalk before the first camera appears. Then another. Then three more, as if they were camping and hoping to see us.
Someone calls my name.
Someone calls Cally’s.
A reporter lunges forward, phone up, voice bright with hunger. “Montoya! Winthrop! How does it feel to be traded to Portland? Are you excited to finally be on the same side?”
“How the fuck did they know where to find us?” I mutter, low enough that only Cally catches it.
Cally’s smile snaps into place like he flips a switch. Charming, all warm and even happy to be here. It’s the face he sells when he needs the world to like him. “We’re thrilled.”
I don’t look at him. I keep moving, because stopping is what gets you surrounded.
Another voice, louder. “Is the rivalry over? Or are we going to see fireworks in the locker room?”
A third voice cuts in, sharper with gossip. “Any truth to the rumors that you two don’t get along? Did the Orcas trade for talent—or drama?”
Cally’s jaw ticks once, still smiling. “We’re professionals.”
I stop at the SUV door and turn just enough to give them my face.
My public face.
“The only thing I care about,” I say, voice flat, “is stopping pucks and winning games.”
Someone laughs. Someone mutters, “Classic Montoya,” like they’ve already decided who I am.
Cally leans closer, like we’re sharing a private joke. Like we’re friends. Like we’re not two men trying to stand in the same space without ripping open old wounds and making Vesper pay for it.
Under his breath, so only I can hear: “Smile, big guy. They’ll eat you alive if you don’t.”
I look at him then.
Really look.
And there’s something in his eyes that isn’t part of his performance.
It’s fear.
Not of the media.
Of what we left upstairs.
The driver opens the door. We get in. The world narrows—leather seats, muted city noise, my pulse loud in my ears like a drum that won’t stop.
As the SUV pulls away, the cameras fade behind us, but my mind stays in that apartment—the couch, the blanket, her promise, the way she said it like it cost her something.
Tomorrow, we have a game.
Today, I have to act like my world didn’t just tilt.
And I have to do it beside the one man who might be the only person alive who understands exactly why my lungs keep refusing to fill.
“How the fuck did they find us?” I ask again once we’re moving, because the question doesn’t leave my mouth until it finds an answer.
Cally huffs like he’s annoyed at the universe. “Earlier today, I found some reporters outside the hotel when I went to get my things.” He shrugs, too casual. “They probably followed me.”
My stare burns into the side of his face. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Not my fault,” he shoots back quickly. Defensive. His knee starts bouncing again, barely controlled.
“We have to do something to protect Ves,” I remind him.
“Like I said yesterday, we need a house outside of Portland,” he states.
“But no one should know about her. You understand what happens if they find her, right?” I glare at him, hoping that he does.
His smile is gone now. Good.
“Harvey’s working on it,” he says. “He’s got a couple of properties. One has indoor and outdoor pools.”
He looks satisfied, and I have to fight the urge to put him through a wall for reasons that have nothing to do with pools.
“You have to know that I would never put her in danger,” he adds, and this time it sounds real.
“Do you think I’m happy they tracked me?
She’s—” He stops, like the word pregnant is a blade he doesn’t want to touch.
Like saying it makes it permanent. “She’s already one bad day away from disappearing. And you know it.”
I do.
That’s what scares me most.
Vesper doesn’t leave with her feet first. She leaves in silence. With jokes. With a smile that says, “I’m fine” while she packs her pain into a suitcase and checks it at the gate. Then ignores our calls and leaves us in limbo until she’s ready to reappear.
“Well, show it a little more. You’re just on your phone,” I say, because I don’t know how to stop pushing when I’m scared. “Doesn’t seem like it bothers you.”
His head snaps toward me. The anger in his eyes is hot and immediate, but there’s something under it. Something bruised.
“I’m texting Harvey,” he says through his teeth.
“What happened is unacceptable. Never once in my life have I had reporters waiting for me like I’m some Hollywood toy.
They’re putting my girl at risk.” His voice drops, rough.
“And she’s fragile right now. One fuck up, and she’s gone.
So no, Alberto Montoya Navarro Wade, I didn’t do this, and yes, I’m making sure it never happens again. ”
My chest tightens at how he says my girl, like it’s instinct, like it’s a prayer. Like he doesn’t realize he’s giving me something I can’t afford to want.
“Glad we can agree on something,” I mutter.
He leans closer, just enough that I feel him in my space. It’s not friendly. It’s not joking. It’s Cally showing teeth without smiling.
“You think I like seeing the people I love in danger?” he asks, voice low.
“I don’t know you well enough to trust you,” I shoot back, because my mouth has never been smart when my heart is involved. “Isn’t that what your parents do? Fuck with people’s lives so they get what they want?”
The silence in the SUV turns dense.
Cally goes still. Not calm. Controlled. Like he’s gripping a railing inside himself.
“What did you just say?” His voice has an edge I don’t like.
“Your parents would do something like that,” I repeat, slower, because I want it to sink in. Because part of me wants to see if he’ll crack and tell me he’s the one who just pulled that stupid stunt.
“Fuck,” he breathes, and his gaze drops to his phone like it just turned into a weapon.
“Fuck?” I arch a brow. “You want to share with the class?”
His throat works. He swallows once. “My parents have been pushing for me to retire. Take over the family business. Go back to Greenwich. Marry into the life they picked for me—before I rebelled and chose to play hockey for a living, like a thug.” He laughs once, humorless.
“They’ve been losing their minds over this trade. ”
“You think this was them?” I ask, even though I already feel the answer crawling up my spine.
He lifts a shoulder. “When have you ever seen reporters waiting for hockey players outside a fucking apartment building?”
I stare out the window at the rain-slick streets, at the city sliding past like it doesn’t care. “Unlike you, I’ve never dated a model or an actress. So I wouldn’t know.”
His mouth tilts, because he can’t help himself. Because Cally uses flirtation like a knife and a shield.
“You keeping tabs on me, Monty?” he murmurs.
The nickname is soft. Almost sweet.
A trap dressed in velvet.
Then quieter, slithering under my skin like a memory I never buried deep enough, “You jealous, sweetheart?”
I should ignore him.
God, I should.
But everything in me tightens—core to throat, muscle to memory. Because my body doesn’t know how to lie where he’s concerned.
Not after those nights.
Not after Vesper—her head on my chest, his breath on my neck, her laughter between us like a spell.
Not after the first time he kissed me like he hated me for wanting it too.
Not after he groaned into my mouth like we could burn the world down together if we just kept going.
And I know what he’s doing now.
I know the way he weaponizes want.
But the worst part is how badly I want him to.
Because what we had—what we were—was never just about her.
It was about us.
Callaway and I—and our Vesper.
We were two boys who didn’t know how to love anything without ruining it. And we ruined each other’s best.
So no.
This isn’t fear.
This is the ache that’s lived in my spine since we met, when I was sixteen. Then, when we were nineteen and he touched me like I was a sin he was willing to commit.
It’s him, looking at me now with that stupid, cruel, beautiful mouth—and I’m back at camp again, gasping while he licks my name into my neck like a promise we both knew he wouldn’t keep.
“It’s not jealousy,” I rasp, eyes locked on his. “It’s grief.”
His breath stutters. Just barely.
But I see it.
I feel it.
Because he knows.
He knows exactly what we lost.
Not just her.
Not just innocence.
But the idea that we could’ve been something if the world had been a little softer and the hockey world—our world—a little kinder.
If we hadn’t learned that boys like us only get to fuck in shadows and never speak of it in the light.
“Fuck you,” I say, because it’s safer than begging him to not look at me like that or saying Don’t remember us or I still wake up hard with your name in my mouth.
He smiles anyway.
Slow. Knowing.
Like I just handed him my throat and asked him to press.
He shifts in his seat, just enough that his thigh brushes mine. There’s no space in this car. Nowhere to hide. His voice drops, and it’s suddenly intimate—too intimate.
“Sometimes I do,” he says, eyes locked on the windshield, like he can’t look at me when he whispers in my ear.
“Sometimes I fuck myself thinking I’m inside her.
Her cunt tight and slick, her nails digging into my back.
” His breath hitches. “And you. Behind me. Holding me open. Spitting filthy things into my ear while you fill me so deep I forget my own name.”
My breath punches out of me.
Because I remember. Not the fantasies I punish myself for having some nights. No. I remember him and me. How he tasted.
How his voice broke when I slid inside him for the first time.
How his body bowed, trembling, and how he begged me without a single word.
And I remember how wrong it was.
How scared we were to need it.
To like it.
I should stop, ask the driver to drop me off somewhere around here and just order my own ride. Instead, I notice when his gaze drops to my lap.
“Look at you, Alberto,” he whispers, and it’s not mocking. It’s devastating. “The big guy is hard already . . . aren’t you?”
I stay silent.
Because shame is safer than confession.
Because silence is survival, but the asshole doesn’t need me to answer.
“If I touched you right now,” he says, voice ragged, “would you let me? Would you spread your legs and let me wrap my hand around your big, meaty cock?”
He shifts again, just slightly, and now his thigh is flush to mine. Fuck, I want his mouth on me, or . . . Stop, he’s baiting you. Don’t let him do it.
“Are you hard for me, Monty?” His voice trembles, just barely. “As hard as a rock? If I reached over now, would you leak for me like you used to? Would you fuck into my fist and pretend you didn’t love it?”
I grip the edge of the seat so tightly it creaks. Because the answer is fucking yes.
But if I say it—if I let it out—I won’t come back from it.
So I stare out the windshield, jaw clenched, breath ragged, body screaming.
And beside me, Callaway doesn’t move.
Doesn’t touch.
Just watches me come undone without laying a single finger on me.
Because that’s what we are—a sin neither of us can stop craving.
A prayer neither of us is allowed to say out loud.
His thigh is still pressed to mine. And I feel him shift again, this time slower. His shoulder brushes mine. His face turns toward me.
And then, his breath. It ghosts across my jaw, soft and humid.
He’s not touching me. Not yet. But I feel him. I feel him everywhere. He breathes me in like I’m made of something holy.
Like he’s starving and I’m the last fucking sin left in the world.
“Monty . . .” he says. Barely a sound. Not even a word—just a breath shaped like my name.
My throat tightens. My body screams.
And his voice—fuck, his voice—breaks apart between want and devastation. “I don’t know what I want. I just—I want something. To touch you. To taste you. To make you shut up. To make you listen.”
His fingers twitch on the seat between us. As if he wants to reach for me. Maybe, if I so much as tilted my head, he’d kiss me.
He’d fall into me like gravity never worked any other way.
“I still dream about it,” he whispers, forehead almost touching mine now. His breath mixes with mine, and it’s dizzying. Drunk-making. “The way you moaned the first time you had your cock in me. The way you looked at me like you were afraid you’d never stop.”
I don’t move.
I can’t.
Because I’m afraid if I do, I’ll fucking beg.
I’ll drag him into my lap and kiss him until we both forget our names.
“Please,” he says.
It breaks on the way out. Just one word. Cracked open. Raw.
And I don’t know what he’s asking for.
A touch.
A kiss.
A chance to destroy each other all over again.
My hand twitches toward him—reaches without permission.
He leans in, closer. So close his lips almost graze mine, warm and trembling, like he’s going to press them to me and finally take—
Then the car lurches, the engine idles.
And the driver’s voice—flat, ordinary, fucking merciless—slices through the moment like a guillotine. “We’re here.”
Callaway doesn’t move. His breath still kisses my cheek like the kiss we didn’t get.
My hand is half-curled, empty.
My chest aching from the echo of something that almost happened.
Something we weren’t ready for—or maybe we always were.
Maybe that’s the problem.
He pulls away slowly.
Doesn’t look at me.
And I hate how badly I want him to.
How badly I want to drag him back and finish what we started so long ago—and broke—because our world doesn’t make room for a man loving a man, not out loud, not without punishment, not without someone calling it a distraction.
And Vesper . . . Vesper deserves more than being the secret we keep swallowing until it turns into poison.
That’s the cruel math of it: if I reach for him, I risk losing her. If I reach for her, I keep breaking him. And if I try to want them both the way my body already does—whole and honest—then I’m not just choosing love.
I’m choosing the fallout.
I’m asking her to carry the cost of my fear, again.
And the worst part is—if he touched me right now, if he put his mouth on mine like he meant it, I don’t think I’d stop him.
I think I’d give in so fast it would scare me.
Because wanting him isn’t the problem.
Wanting him feels easy.
It’s living with what it would do to us that makes my chest feel too tight to breathe. It’s the reason I rejected him, why I told him that he was wrong and to fuck off. It wasn’t out of cruelty, but survival. It’s so he could be the golden boy of the hockey world.