Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vesper
This isn’t what I expected to do this weekend.
A few weeks ago, my biggest problem was whether I could finish a project without starting five more and forgetting where I put my keys. Now I’m sitting in a clinic that smells like vanilla and lies, waiting for someone to show me proof that my body has decided to build a whole new human.
Cally and Monty have been on the road for a stretch of games—one of those brutal trips where the days blur into airports, hotels, and adrenaline.
They got back late last night, still carrying that rink smell in their clothes, eyes rimmed with exhaustion, mouths full of questions they tried to pretend were casual.
How are you feeling?
Did you eat?
Any nausea?
Any bleeding?
Any weird pain?
As if they could talk me out of reality by interrogating it.
Cally slept on the couch. He said it like it was no big deal, like he wasn’t doing it because the idea of leaving me with Monty in the apartment felt impossible to him. His excuse was that we had a lot to do today, and technically he wasn’t wrong.
He and Monty have a couple of days before the team’s back on the ice. This morning started with houses. Not “cute apartments with decent lighting” houses—real houses. Gates. Cameras. Panic buttons.
Two properties. Both “safe.” Both “ideal.” Both making me feel like I’m being packed into a life I didn’t order.
I’m still not sold on the whole “let’s live together, the three of us,” while those two are still circling each other like they might bite.
Sometimes it’s ice-cold silence. Sometimes it’s clipped politeness that’s even worse because I can feel everything they’re not saying.
But I’m also me, which means my brain can hold two truths at once: terror and sarcasm.
So when we toured the place with an indoor pool and an outdoor pool, I pointed at it and said, “This one. Obviously. If I’m going to ruin my life, I’d like to do it with aquatic options.”
Cally mumbled, “Knew it,” like he’s had me memorized since we were teenagers and I hate that it’s comforting.
Then we flew to Seattle, because there’s a discreet doctor here who can do the sonogram without asking questions that end up on some gossip site by dinner—courtesy of the Winthrop family.
And yeah, Cally is handling his parents—whatever that means when your parents have money, lawyers, and a talent for turning love into leverage—but he wants my location locked down for now.
When I leave the apartment, John goes first. He checks corners. He checks cars. He checks reflections in windows like we’re in a spy movie and I’m the idiot who wandered into the plot without reading the script.
Apparently, there’s even a decoy—a lookalike—walking around New York so anyone watching thinks they’re tracking me. Which would be flattering if it weren’t horrifying.
I didn’t know Cally’s parents wanted him to quit and take over the business. I didn’t know they were willing to yank strings hard enough to snap his life in half. I keep wondering why his older brother can’t do it. Or literally anyone else who isn’t Cally, who built a whole career around hockey.
But I’m not in their world, so I wouldn’t understand.
I’m in this one, and I’m still failing at figuring it out.
In the one where I’m in a waiting room that’s suspiciously comfortable. Plush chairs. Soft lighting. Pale walls. Framed pictures of sleeping woodland animals that look like they were chosen by someone who’s never been pregnant a day in their life.
On my right, Cally sits with a brochure about 3D sonograms, his knee bouncing like his body can’t fully relax. On my left, Monty reads on his tablet, posture controlled, expression blank in that way that makes him look calm until you’ve known him long enough to recognize it as restraint.
Across from me, another pregnant woman flips through a magazine like she belongs here. Like she has a birth plan and a nursery theme and a name picked out in a font that comes with a matching monogrammed diaper bag.
I stare at her and try not to feel like a stray dog that accidentally wandered into a luxury spa.
Cally’s gaze drifts over the pastel walls. “They’re really committed to the whole ‘peaceful, magical experience’ thing, huh?”
I inhale slowly. “They have to be. Otherwise, people might ask why pregnancy books leave out the part where your organs play musical chairs and you lose control of your bladder.”
His mouth quirks. “You want some light reading?” He points to the laminated pamphlets stacked on a side table. Stages of Labor. Breastfeeding Basics. They sit there like a threat.
“I could read them to you in a dramatic voice,” he offers. “Make it fun.”
I lift a brow. “Inspirational sports documentary or psychological thriller?”
Monty doesn’t look up from his tablet, but his voice drops into that deep, movie-trailer tone that makes it sound like he’s narrating doom in a tux.
“In a world where nothing will ever be the same . . . one woman faces the ultimate test. Sleep deprivation. Cravings. And a tiny human who will one day demand boobs at two in the morning.”
Cally laughs and then he fucking high-fives Monty like they’re teammates in a sitcom instead of two men standing on either side of my heart.
I stare at them. “You two are insufferable.”
“I prefer ‘morally obligated to provide comedic relief in times of crisis,’” Monty says, finally glancing up.
He picks up a magazine and turns a page with mock seriousness.
“Okay. Groundbreaking parenting wisdom. Hmm.” His brows lift.
“Apparently you should talk to the baby in utero to promote bonding.”
He tilts his head toward Cally. “That’s your job. From now on, you deliver Shakespeare monologues. Or we can brainwash the kid into obeying us forever.”
I blink. “That’s your takeaway?”
“Science doesn’t lie,” Monty says, completely straight-faced. “Imagine if their first words are, ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it.
It’s small, but it slices through my fear like a crack of sunlight.
For a moment, my body unclenches. My shoulders drop a fraction. I hate that it takes them—these two disasters in human form—to make me feel like I can breathe.
Then the quiet sneaks back in behind my ribs, and the truth is still there, I’m pregnant. My life is changing. And the people watching me aren’t doing it out of curiosity.
“I still don’t get why you’re both so calm,” I whisper, because the calm is the scariest part. Calm feels like confidence, and confidence feels like they already decided something without me.
Cally lifts a brow, expression neutral but still annoyingly amused. “You want me to panic? Monty can get mad. That’s his specialty.”
“I want you to at least pretend this is life-altering.”
Monty tilts his head like he’s honestly considering my request. “Vesper,” he says, low and dramatic—as if he’s in one of those TV dramas where you don’t know if they’re being serious or sarcastic, “this is life-altering.”
Cally’s gaze shifts to me. “This will change me for the rest of my life,” he says, but I see the smirk on his lips.
These two are just jesting. Not the right time. “Too late. You both missed the opportunity. You already committed the crime of caring.”
Cally’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t argue. He just reaches into his pocket and holds out a stick of gum.
Of course he does.
It’s such a Cally thing—quietly considerate in a way that makes my chest ache. Like he knows my mouth tastes like nerves. Like he knows I need something to do with my hands so I don’t start picking at my nails.
I take it, staring at the wrapper. My fingers curl tight around it, and my eyes burn for reasons that make me furious.
I don’t cry.
Not often.
But lately, everything they do makes my eyes sting, and I’m starting to think my body is turning into a traitor in more ways than one.
“Vesper Lafontaine?”
I look up.
A nurse stands in the doorway, tablet in hand. “We’re ready for you.”
Cally is already on his feet.
Monty is already moving, too, sliding into place like a protective instinct given a body.
And there it is again—that terrifying, tender thing.
They don’t ask if they can come.
They just do it and what am I supposed to do with that?
My stomach flips.
I nod, because my head is trying to be polite, but my body doesn’t get the memo. My fingers twitch against my thighs as I force myself to stand, pretending my legs aren’t turning into jelly, pretending I’m not suddenly convinced the room is a thousand degrees hotter than it was five seconds ago.
Cally and Monty move beside me like it’s nothing.
Like this is a normal Tuesday.
Like they’ve done this a hundred times.
They don’t grab me. They just . . . match my pace. Close enough that I can feel them there, not so close that I feel trapped.
It should annoy me.
It doesn’t.
“This is your first?” the nurse asks, glancing back at me as she leads us down the corridor.
I nod, gripping the gum like it’s a lifeline. “Yeah.”
Her eyes soften. “You’ll be fine. Jane, our technician, is wonderful. She’ll talk you through everything.” She pauses and looks at Cally and Monty, clearly recalculating her script. “And your . . .”
I open my mouth. “Oh, they’re not—”
Cally cuts in before I can finish, “We’re staying.”
The nurse smiles like that’s completely normal. Like men routinely show up to transvaginal ultrasounds and nobody ever blinks. “Great. Right this way.”
The exam room is small but bright. A sonogram machine hums quietly in the corner. An exam table sits in the middle covered in crisp white paper, and the blue walls are clearly meant to calm people down.
They are failing.
I stare at the machine like it might grow teeth.
The nurse gestures to a counter. “You can leave your things there.”
I nod and do it on autopilot—my purse, my sweater, my dignity, my will to live. All of it.