Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Callaway
My parents have people for everything.
They outsource problems the way normal families outsource lawn care. Money, influence, a phone call to the right person—done. Crisis handled. Narrative rewritten. No fingerprints. No public sweat.
They raised me to be “resourceful,” which is a polite way of saying: Don’t let anyone drag you. Be the one doing the dragging.
They also raised me to recognize an ambush before it happens.
Harvey is the only reason I learned to survive that world without becoming it.
We met at boarding school—two kids in uniforms that cost more than most people’s rent, pretending we didn’t miss our mothers, pretending we didn’t notice that love in our families comes with terms and conditions, like a contract nobody read but everybody signed.
By college, he had connections that made my family look like amateurs. By the time he graduated, I didn’t hire him so much as cling to him like he was the rope that let me climb out of the Winthrop mausoleum and into the only thing that’s ever felt like mine.
Hockey.
Harvey makes things happen. He also makes things disappear. He makes sure my parents regret trying to fuck with my career.
Hence, I fired off a message the moment Monty said that the press following like hungry wolves was suspicious.
There is no logical reason for a media circus to care that much about my face leaving a building.
Not unless someone wants to ruin my new start.
It could’ve been the Orcas wanting a soap opera instead of a goalie. It’s not.
But after meeting Mills Aldridge in person, I know the truth: they want our skills, not our headlines.
So it’s on Harvey to figure out why today felt staged.
Training ends. I shower, get dressed, and head down the hallway. I pull out my phone, expecting an update that lets me exhale.
Instead, I get a stack of text bubbles with Harvey’s name.
The screen is bright against the dim corridor. The air smells like industrial cleaner and old rubber. Somewhere behind me, a door slams, and my shoulders jerk like I’m still on the ice.
I tap the first message.
Harvey: Vesper is at Monty’s apartment, safe.
My lungs work again for half a second.
Then the next line hits harder.
Harvey: We believe someone is following Ves too.
My body goes cold so fast it’s like the hallway loses its oxygen.
Harvey: Vesper asked to be escorted to the airport.
I don’t finish reading. I can’t. My eyes skim and my brain fills in the rest like it’s trying to protect me by stabbing me quicker.
Vesper wants to leave.
Someone is watching her.
My hands start to shake. My legs wobble. My knee threatens to give, as if gravity is suddenly negotiable and I’m losing the argument.
For one terrifying second, the world narrows to a single image: Vesper disappearing through an airport gate, without a goodbye or a sunshine grin that says, You can’t scare me, Callaway.
This time it might be forever because my parents are scaring her or . . . why the fuck does she want to leave?
That thought rips through me so fast I almost make a sound.
Then another one follows, nastier.
They’re watching her.
My vision blurs. Heat builds behind my eyes—hot, bright, brutal—like my body is trying to become something violent. I clamp my jaw so hard my teeth ache. I refuse to let my face crack in a hallway where staff and cameras exist and everyone loves a story about a golden boy losing it.
“Winthrop.”
Monty’s voice hooks into me and pulls, like it always does.
I glance up.
He’s watching me. His gaze is precise, unreadable. He has that goalie stare, the one that makes you forget how to breathe. It’s not anger. It’s focus. Like he already knows where this is going and he’s just waiting to see if I’ll follow.
I shouldn’t notice how good he looks. But I do.
The suit is fitted in a way that’s unfair, the fabric stretched across his shoulders like it was made to punish. He’s everything the world wants him to be—controlled, clean-lined, expensive. Polished until nothing raw shows.
His hair’s combed back, dry now, not a single strand out of place. But I remember what he looks like with it wet—dripping onto his collarbones while he swore my name. I remember what it feels like in my hands, when he grabs my wrist and begs me not to stop.
And I wish I didn’t want him.
Not right now.
Not when I’m supposed to be focused on what might happen to Ves, my career—or him—if we’re not careful.
But desire doesn’t wait for good timing. It comes dressed like regret, humming beneath my skin, daring me to touch. To speak. To need.
“What’s with the murder face?” he asks, mouth twitching like he’s trying for humor. “That’s my brand. Don’t steal it.”
Normally, I’d snap back, or flirt. I’d enjoy the sparring, because sparring with Monty is safer than admitting I care about anything.
Right now, my lungs keep stuttering like they’re not sure they want to keep up.
“Look at you,” I manage, aiming for light and landing on desperate. “Making jokes.”
His eyes narrow, because Monty doesn’t tolerate dodging. He steps closer, crowding my space the way he crowds a crease—claiming it, daring you to try him.
“You’re worried,” he says.
Then his gaze shifts past me, scanning. Staff. A lingering PR rep with a clipboard. A guy in a suit who looks like he gets paid to smile.
Monty drops his voice. “Did someone upset Golden Boy?”
I glare at him, because I refuse to be readable, and because the nickname feels like a slap in the face when all I want is to be a man who keeps his people safe.
I hit call.
Harvey picks up on the first ring. “Lawson, speaking.”
“I didn’t read all your texts,” I say, and my voice sounds wrong to my own ears—too rough, too thin around the edges. “What’s happening?”
“You were right,” he replies, all business, no cushion. “The reporters were sent by your parents.”
My stomach flips.
Monty watches my face like he’s reading subtitles.
“The good news,” Harvey continues, “is the apartment where Wade is staying is under the team’s name, so they don’t know who’s inside or why you’d be there.”
“And the bad news?” I ask, because there’s always a bad news with my family. Always a hook.
“As I mentioned in my text, they’re tailing Ms. Lafontaine too,” Harvey says.
My throat turns dry. I can taste metal like I bit my cheek, even though I didn’t.
“We realized it when the technician went to draw her blood,” Harvey adds. “I contacted a company that’s sending a full security team. I’m guessing Mr. Wade requires protection too.”
My eyes flick to Monty, who is still watching me like he’s deciding how much he wants to rip out of the world with his bare hands.
I nod, even though Harvey can’t see it, because my parents don’t need to know my history with Monty to use him. They’ll grab anyone close enough to get leverage.
“Cal?” Harvey’s voice sharpens. “Are we setting protection for him too?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “Of course.”
I drag a hand down my face, trying to keep myself from breaking into a thousand pieces.
“I’m just—” My breath catches. Anger surges, hot and reckless. “Fuck.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Harvey assures me. “We caught it early.”
“That’s not fine,” I bark. “That’s them getting bold. What the fuck are they doing?”
“My guess is they’re trying to get you kicked off the new team,” Harvey says, clinical. “That should send you back to them.”
“No,” I snap. “It wouldn’t.”
Harvey exhales. “Obviously. That’s why we’ve been growing the business and your investments. You don’t need them.”
My fingers curl around the phone until my knuckles ache.
“Now,” he adds, “let’s focus on the plan.”
“What’s going on with Ves?” I cut in before he can move on, before he can turn her into a bullet point. “You said she wanted to go to the airport.”
Monty starts walking again, and I move with him because standing still feels like dying. We reach the exit. A dark SUV idles at the curb, windows tinted.
Monty opens the back door and waits for me to get in first, a small courtesy that catches me off guard.
Harvey says, “She asked John—her temporary bodyguard—if he could drop her off at the airport.”
My skin goes tight. I groan, but not one word comes out.
“No worries,” Harvey continues. “She’s currently at the apartment.”
“No worries,” I repeat, and it comes out like a threat, because there are so many worries I don’t have words for.
I slide into the SUV.
Monty follows—close, unbothered, like being near me doesn’t shake his world the way it shakes mine. He shuts the door behind him, not hard, but final. It makes something shift inside me, fast and low.
He doesn’t speak or push. He just settles beside me quietly, with a calm that used to soothe me when I didn’t have words for why I was hurting. His knee barely brushes mine, and even that small contact feels like history settling back into place.
I don’t know what to do with it—this nearness, this man who some nights fell asleep next to me when we were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen during summers.
Nights where we pretended to soothe the other because life was fucking rough or we were hurting from training.
We pretended it was nothing but now . . .
I realize it was everything and ignoring it was what broke me.
I should move. But I don’t.
The engine hums. The city outside becomes a blur of light and movement, all of it too far away to matter.
Next to me, Monty exhales—slow, even. A sound meant to ground us. Me, maybe.
And I feel it again.
That low, dangerous hum under my ribs. The one that says I’m not over him. That I still want him to lean closer and ask me what’s wrong. That I want his fingers at the inside of my wrist, or at my jaw, tilting me toward something we never finished.
But I also want to be okay.
I want to believe this season won’t end with one—or both—of us destroyed.
And I don’t know how to want both of them.
For now, I have to concentrate on getting Vesper out of my parents’ radar. That should be our main priority. Then, figure out her current status. We need to discuss the baby. Not sure what she’s planning but I will support her one hundred percent. I know Monty will too.
That reminds me that we have to move her out of that apartment soon. “How’s the hunt for a house going?”
“There are a few properties available. One of them fits your specifications,” Harvey keeps going. “It might need repairs.”
“I don’t care about the price,” I say. “I care about speed. I care about getting her behind a door nobody can find.”
Monty goes still beside me at the word her.
“Working on it,” Harvey replies.
“Do you have a plan?”
“I’m building one with the team I hired,” he says. “This time I can’t do it alone because I’m also helping with the camp. The people I’m working with came highly recommended. We’re talking high-tech security. They also referred me to a concierge service if we need to furnish the new house fast.”
“They know we’re buying?” I ask.
“Yes,” Harvey answers. “They’re also the ones checking the properties. They have to confirm they’re secure. You’ll be assigned a bodyguard by the end of the day.”
I let out a laugh that isn’t a laugh. It’s a broken sound. “You know hockey players don’t usually need bodyguards.”
Harvey scoffs. “You’re not a normal hockey player. Never have been, never will be.”
Monty’s gaze cuts to me, sharp and assessing. His hand rests on his thigh, fingers flexing once like he’s ready to do something stupid and righteous.
“Your family has money. Power. They play dirty. Your siblings are socialites who appear in newspapers and social feeds all the time.” He pauses, like he’s choosing his next line carefully.
“They think it’s time for you to come home,” Harvey says.
“Which means they’ll use any means necessary to lure you back—even if it hurts your career or the people you love. ”
The words slam into me. Not like a slow realization. Like a hit.
“You need to make sure they protect her,” I say as my stomach rolls.
My hands start shaking again, and I hate that my body is betraying me in such a human way.
Beside me, Monty’s posture changes—subtle, but I notice everything. His shoulders square. His attention fixes. He’s turning into a predator, because that’s what he does when someone threatens his people, even if he’d never call it that.
I swallow hard, and it tastes like fear and fury.
“I’m not letting them touch her,” I say, voice low and raw. “Keep her safe. Even if we have to disappear her.”
Monty makes a sound under his breath, something approving and dangerous, like he’s already imagining the route.
Harvey replies, steady in the way he always is, the way I rely on, “We won’t have to. Trust me, okay? I always have your back.”
The call ends.
The SUV keeps moving.
Monty doesn’t look away from me. “What’s going on with Ves?”
I shrug. “Not sure if she wants to leave because my family is on her ass or because . . . who the fuck knows.” I sigh with frustration.
His gaze holds mine, intense and unreadable. “If someone is watching her,” he says, “they’re not leaving with all their teeth.”
That’s Monty: solitary, ruthless, demanding the world pay for its choices.
But his shoulder brushes mine for half a second and I feel it like an electric line under skin.
“We’re not letting them hurt you—or her,” he assures me.
I glance at him, and for a beat, we’re just two people who love the same woman and are terrified we’re about to lose her.