Chapter 24 #2
“You should move in with us,” Cally repeats, like that’s a normal sentence, like he didn’t just suggest a complete emotional demolition of everything I’ve been trying to keep contained. “We’re buying a house—together. For you and the baby, and also us.”
Okay. Someone replaced their brains with cotton candy. That’s the only explanation.
“You don’t just offer someone to move in,” I say, because logic is all I have left. “Not when that would wreck your routines. Not when I—”
“It’s fine,” Cally interrupts, trying to soothe me.
“Monty wouldn’t survive a day with a baby,” I add, pointing at the most obvious argument in the room. “Babies wake up every minute of the night. I heard rumors they turn into goblins after dark.”
Cally laughs. Monty lets out a low sound that might be amusing if he weren’t Monty.
“You think it’s funny,” I say, “but the answer is no. I won’t be moving with you.”
“Why not?” Cally asks, and his voice drops.
I gape at him. “Why not?”
He lifts a brow. “That’s not an answer.”
I throw my arms out. “It’s not what you signed up for when you decided to become my friend all those years ago.”
Cally scoffs, like I’m adorable and exhausting. “There are a lot of things I didn’t sign up for when I arrived at that camp. It was supposed to be one of the best. There was some guarantee I’d end up in the show.”
He grins, cocky and bright, the version of him that made me fall for him before I knew better.
“I did,” he says. “But I never thought it would also include falling in love, getting my heart broken, and still having the chance to have you in my life.”
When he says “heart broken,” he looks from me to Monty and sighs, and something in me twists.
Because somehow, I don’t think I’m the only one who broke him. And I’ve always wondered if what happened between them that night is what actually shattered the three of us.
Was Cally in love with Monty too?
Did Monty push him away?
Did we ruin each other in ways I’ve never fully understood?
My stomach turns, and not from the pregnancy.
From the possibility that I’ve been standing in the middle of a love story I never had the courage to read all the way to the end.
This isn’t a good time to be discussing that. Not now. Not when my life is already spinning. I need to make sure they’re aware that this won’t work in the long run.
I square my shoulders like that’s a personality trait and not a coping mechanism. “That’s not—” I stop, because my voice wobbles and I hate it. I try again. “That’s not a reason for me to move in with you.”
“It’s the perfect reason.” Cally crosses his arms, expression maddeningly sane. Like we’re discussing furniture placement and not my entire life. “You need stability. Comfort. A place that actually feels like home.”
I let out a laugh that’s all teeth and zero joy. “Oh, sure. And that place should be your house? What’s next, you pick my prenatal vitamins too?”
Maybe I should remind him that he’s living in a hotel and this apartment is temporary. Neither he nor Monty have a house.
“No.” Cally’s grin flashes, quick and bright. “John already did.”
I glare at him, because he thinks he’s hilarious and I hate that my mouth twitches like it agrees.
“You should move in with us,” Monty says, and he doesn’t argue like a man trying to convince me. He states it like a man claiming something that’s already his.
The air shifts around his words. My skin notices.
“No.”
“Give us a good, logical reason,” Cally challenges, because he’s infuriating and loving and built to chase me when I run.
“Because—because—” I gesture wildly at .
. . everything. Me. Them. My belly. The fact that my nervous system is currently doing cartwheels.
“Because that’s not my life. I don’t have a home.
My studio apartment is basically a closet with commitment issues.
It’s a place to crash between projects. I don’t do homes.
” I swallow. “Homes are permanent and for people who . . . are not me, okay?”
Monty’s eyes do that thing where they narrow slightly, like he’s seeing straight through the joke and into the scared part of me. He doesn’t look away.
“Maybe it’s time you did,” he says.
I hate how quiet that is. How careful.
Like he’s not trying to trap me. Like he’s offering me a door and asking if I’d like to stop living in the hallway.
“Well, yeah.” My laugh comes out smaller, more honest. “I have to be responsible now.”
The word responsible tastes strange in my mouth, like it belongs to someone else.
“I’m supposed to lease an apartment with two bedrooms and—” I wave a hand again, because my thoughts are sprinting. “And do you know when I’ll be able to work again? I travel. I bounce. I take jobs wherever the universe drops them. I don’t do routine. I don’t do . . . staying.”
“When the baby is old enough,” Monty says, like it’s obvious, “you can go back and finish your Ph.D. Or change your mind. Or do something else. The possibilities are endless.”
My heart stutters.
Because he remembers.
He remembers my stupid dream that I only talk about when I’m half-asleep and feeling brave. He remembers the part of me that wants to teach someday, wants roots even if I pretend I don’t, wants a life that doesn’t involve constantly proving I can survive.
How does he always remember the soft parts I try to hide?
I turn away before they can see what that does to me. I press my fingers to my forehead, as if I can shove my panic back behind my eyes.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say quietly. “Neither one of you has to . . . take care of me.”
Cally doesn’t hesitate. “I know.”
My eyes close. A breath shudders out of me. “Then why are you doing it?”
“Because I want to,” Cally says, like it’s the simplest truth in the world.
And Monty—Monty takes a step closer, close enough that I feel the heat of him without him touching me. Close enough that my body reacts like it recognizes him as safety and danger in the same breath.
“We love you,” he says.
My throat tries to betray me. My eyes burn.
He doesn’t stop. “That means we want to be part of your life. This baby is part of you.” His voice drops, rougher on the edges. “I already love the baby.”
Oh my God.
I shake my head, because if I nod, I might collapse.
“You don’t have time,” I say, and my voice tries for sarcasm and comes out pleading. “You don’t have time to play babysitter to a woman who can’t sit still and is about to have a baby.”
Cally’s mouth tilts like he’s fighting a smile. “I think we can handle you.”
“It might require two men,” Monty murmurs, like he’s evaluating a mission, “to handle you.”
My face heats. My stomach flips—again, not pregnancy. Not only pregnancy.
He’s looking at me like that line has a second meaning, and my body is annoyingly fluent in that language.
He shrugs, like he’s not fully aware he’s undoing me. “We’re up to the challenge.”
I groan and drag a hand down my face. “You’re impossible.”
“Accurate,” Cally says cheerfully. “We’ve been told.”
But then his expression changes—softening, not into pity, but into something that makes my throat sting.
“Look,” he says, leaning against the wall, arms crossed like he needs something to do with them. “I get it.”
I glance back, wary.
“You think you don’t deserve good things,” he continues, voice low. “Your parents made that clear when they cheered for your brothers and treated your needs like an inconvenience.” His eyes hold mine, steady but not cold. “I’ve told you more than once that you need fucking therapy.”
I let out a pathetic sound that might be a laugh. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he says easily. “Right now, you believe you’re not worthy of love, or a home, or . . .” He pauses, and it feels like he’s choosing how to say this without breaking me. “I’d bet you don’t even think you deserve a family.”
My breath catches, small and humiliating.
Cally’s voice softens even more. “But you do. You deserve that and more.”
And that’s it.
That’s the line that gets me. Because it’s true in a way I don’t know how to live with. Because Cally says it like he’s been carrying my hurt in his pocket for years and waiting for the moment I finally stop pretending it isn’t there.
Cue all the tears. My eyes fill and I hate myself for it. I hate that I’m crying.
Cally steps closer. “You’re my best friend, Ves,” he says, voice gentle. “And that means I’m always in your corner.”
Monty’s gaze doesn’t leave my face. His voice drops lower, rougher. “Especially when you don’t want anyone there.”
Something inside me gives.
It’s not pretty. It’s not graceful. It’s just . . . a crack, opening wider, letting everything I’ve been holding back rush out.
I wipe at my face, furious at my own tears. “Ugh. Why do you have to be so . . .” I gesture vaguely at both of them. “Like this? I can’t with you two.”
Cally’s grin returns, softer now, like he’s trying to give me something to hold onto. “This is perfect. We’re still looking for a house, but for now you’re safe in this apartment.”
“Safe?” I frown, because my brain finally catches up to the other alarming part. “Right. You need to tell me why I have a bodyguard—and why someone was tailing me.”
Monty’s eyes cut to Cally, a glare that says, your turn.
And Cally—my sweet, ridiculous, golden retriever Cally—sighs like he’s about to confess to stealing cookies, not to a family power play.
He tells me.
The way his parents want to yank him back into their control by ruining what he built without them. By the time he’s done, my hands are curled into fists at my sides.
I hate them. I hate the way they neglected him. I hate the way they’re trying to punish him for choosing his own life.
And I hate—most of all—that their reach has extended to me.
Because I can handle people hurting me.
But Cally?
Cally is joy wrapped in stubborn loyalty, and if his family thinks they can use me as leverage . . . he will destroy them.
I lift my chin, swallowing hard. “Okay,” I whisper, voice shaking but firm. “So that’s what this is.”
Cally studies me. Monty moves closer, like he expects me to bolt again.
I don’t.
I look at both of them—these two men who have ruined me in the most beautiful ways—and I realize something that scares me more than pregnancy, more than being watched, more than moving into an apartment that smells like Monty’s cologne and Cally’s laughter.
If they’re offering me a home . . . in spite of their rivalry and whatever it is that they have going between them.
They’re not just offering a roof, but a place to belong.
And I have no idea how to accept that without believing I’ll lose it—or lose them.