Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Callaway
The first time my mother threatened me, I was seven.
A manicured hand resting lightly on my shoulder in the foyer of our penthouse, her diamond ring catching the morning light like a halo. Her voice a hush meant for bedtime stories. The doorman pretended not to listen as she leaned in, her nails pressing just enough to make me flinch.
“You don’t embarrass this family,” she said. “Because if you do . . . we’ll handle it, but you’ll regret it.”
Handle it.
That phrase clung to me like cologne I couldn’t scrub off—always there, polite, expensive, and absolutely rotting underneath.
So when my phone buzzes at 5:12 a.m., screen lit up with WHITMORE & KLINE—PRIVATE, I don’t feel surprise. I feel rehearsed. Like a kid standing at the top of a stage he didn’t audition for, knowing every line by heart because he’s been living them since birth.
I don’t answer.
Not yet.
Instead, I stay in the kitchen, barefoot on the stone floor that’s still warm from the heating system we splurged on before we moved in. The mug in my hand is filled with coffee I’m not drinking. The smell turns my stomach. Which is ridiculous. I’m not the one who’s pregnant.
Vesper’s upstairs, still asleep. Probably tangled in too many blankets, wearing one of my old t-shirts that slips off her shoulder every damn time I tuck her in.
Even when she’s dead asleep, she makes it impossible not to touch her.
She mumbles when I kiss her hair. She pulls my hand under the covers when I try to leave.
And Monty is already in the home gym, headphones on, body drenched in morning sweat, lifting like it’s therapy and punishment wrapped in iron. I missed him today. Missed us.
Which might be for the best.
Because yesterday?
Yesterday we barely made it through warm-up.
I walked into the gym, still rubbing sleep from my eyes, and he looked up from the bench press like I was prey.
No shirt, no patience. Just a bite already forming in the line of his jaw.
He nodded at the bar like we weren’t seconds away from defiling it.
I straddled the bench to spot him, and he arched up into my space on purpose, breath coming faster—not from the weight, but from the way I said, “Come on, big guy, lift for me.” His arms shook. His cock twitched. I noticed.
He muttered something about form.
I said something dirtier about position.
We didn’t last. He dropped the bar, shoved me against the rack, and we were on our knees before the next rep.
I sucked him off with his hand buried in my hair, sweat dripping down his abs, his mouth open but silent.
The way he always is when he’s about to lose control.
That man fights pleasure like it owes him something, like surrender might split him open in ways he won’t survive.
I didn’t mind. I like wrecking him.
God, I love wrecking him.
And when it was my turn, he kissed my hipbone like an apology before taking me into his mouth—no hesitation, pure need.
We never finished the set.
I exhale, remembering how he looked up at me afterward, eyes wild, chest rising fast. His hands gripping my thighs like he hadn’t realized they were still there.
I don’t know how not to love him.
I sip the coffee.
Immediate regret.
My stomach turns like it has opinions about my life choices, and if it could talk, it would probably say, “Sir, this is not the moment for caffeine.”
Vesper called it sympathy nausea last night, smiling like she’d invented the concept just to mess with me. She called the baby “our miracle parasite” with that bright, wicked grin—like she’s already brainstorming names that would make my mother clutch pearls, and my father combust.
It shouldn’t make me want to marry her on the spot.
It absolutely does.
Because she’s terrified and still funny. Because she’s walking into a house that looks like money and control and expectations, and she’s still choosing sarcasm like it’s a weapon and a life raft at the same time. Because she makes the fear in my body feel survivable.
I look up the stairs, toward our bedroom, and the word hits with a strange sweetness I don’t deserve. Our. Like I didn’t spend years treating intimacy like something I could schedule between practices and flights. She’s going to wreck us both.
And I’m so fucking happy to let her.
My phone buzzes against the counter. Once. Twice. Like a stubborn insect that refuses to die.
I swipe it into voicemail.
If the world is on fire, it can wait until she wakes up. Until I hear her voice. Until my brain remembers I’m not twelve years old in a too-quiet house, waiting for my father’s footsteps to decide what kind of day I’m allowed to have.
The buzzing stops.
Then the phone rings again.
Of course it does.
I stare at the screen like it personally betrayed me, and maybe it did, because my body already knows. My body always knows when the past is about to reach out and grab my throat.
I answer anyway. “Hello.”
“Mr. Winthrop.” A man’s voice—neutral, polished. The tone you use when you’re confirming a dentist appointment. Not when you’re calling to detonate someone’s life. “This is Daniel Kline.”
Daniel Kline.
My parents’ preferred mouthpiece. The man who can make a threat sound like a calendar reminder. The man who bills by the minute and has never once sounded like he’s apologized for anything, even by accident.
“Daniel,” I say, and I put brightness in my voice because I learned early that tone can be armor. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
There’s a pause that feels rehearsed. Like he’s holding a script he’s read so many times he could recite it in his sleep.
“I’m calling on behalf of your parents.”
“And here I thought you were going to quit working for the oppressors and join my side,” I say, because humor is my reflex and my last line of defense. “What do you want?”
“Your father would like to discuss your recent . . . choices.”
The word lands wrong. Choices. Like I’m twelve and I bought the wrong cereal—too sugary, not enough chocolate, or something like that.
As if I’m a teenager who stayed out past curfew.
Like I’m not a thirty-four-year-old man with a career, a house, and two people who are turning into my whole fucking heart.
“As I told him before,” I say, keeping my voice light even as my pulse starts climbing, “I don’t plan on quitting hockey to work for him.”
“It’s best if you do this willingly,” Daniel replies, and there’s something under his politeness—something that says he’s already counted the ways I can be forced.
“Why doesn’t he call me?”
“He asked me to do it for him.”
Translation: he wants it documented. Witnessed. Framed. Something he can point to later and claim I refused so he had to wreck my life.
I lean my hip against the counter and stare out at the lake through the glass, because I need something in front of me that doesn’t demand anything. The water doesn’t care who I love. The lake doesn’t have rules for my body.
“They’ll pay any bonus you might lose,” Daniel continues, “plus they have a few women lined up so you can meet them.”
I go still.
It’s almost funny, how quickly my insides go quiet. How fast my mind starts sorting exits.
“Women lined up?” I whistle, like this is a game. Like I’m entertained. “That’s . . . new. What kind of women are we talking about? Assistants, CEOs . . . image managers?”
“Potential brides,” he says, like the word “bride” is a business term. “Early twenties. Willing to marry a hockey thug.”
My hand tightens around the phone.
I laugh, because if I don’t laugh, I’ll throw something, and I can’t break this kitchen when it’s finally the way Vesper likes it. “They’re too young for me. And we should probably verify none of them have been fucked by my father—or my brother.”
“Don’t be crass, Callaway.”
Crass.
As if my father hasn’t made a sport out of ruining people with a smile. As if my mother hasn’t watched and called it tradition.
“Like you don’t know my father likes them young and innocent,” I snap, and my voice cracks into something real before I can stop it. “It makes me wonder if Mother knows and she just has her little indiscretions on the side. Dear Dad . . . well, he’s a fucking asshole who should—”
“Stop,” Daniel orders.
That one word hits like every command I’ve heard in my life. Not shouted.
I swallow. My stomach flips again, this time with anger.
“That’s not all,” he adds, smooth as oil.
“Oh, there’s more.” I make myself sound eager. Bright. Curious. The version of me they prefer. “What else is happening in the land of Winthrop?”
“Your choices,” he repeats, carefully enunciated, like I’m slow.
“Do you mean hockey?” I ask. “Because I’m still very good at that. Number one, baby.”
Okay, I’m not number one, but I’m one of the top players.
“This is not just about your performance on ice.”
“Right,” I murmur, staring at my own reflection in the window. I look like a man in control. I look like a man who can handle a phone call. “It’s about my performance everywhere else.”
“Your father believes you’ve breached your obligations.”
Obligations?
The word shouldn’t be able to do that to me anymore, but it does, because obligations were how they kept me obedient when I was younger. Obligations were how they turned love into leverage. Obligations were how they taught me that my body didn’t belong to me—only the version of it they could use.
“Which obligations?” I ask, and I hate that my voice goes quieter. I hate that part of me still wants to bargain.
“You know which,” Daniel says, soft and certain.
I do.
And suddenly I’m eighteen again, standing in my parents’ office with my hands curled into fists so I won’t shake.
I’m telling them I’m bisexual like it’s a grenade I’m tired of holding.
I’m saying it because they’re furious I chose hockey over their planned path, and I’m angry enough to burn down the bridge myself.
Their faces back then weren’t shocked.
They were offended.
As if my truth was a personal inconvenience.