Chapter 6 Milo
milo
For about ten seconds after I open my eyes, I'm fully convinced I'm dreaming.
Which, to be fair, is a reasonable conclusion when you wake up in a nest that smells like vanilla and your face is pressed against the shoulder of the most beautiful woman you've ever met.
My arm is draped across Iris' waist. My leg is tangled with hers.
Her braids are fanned across the pillow beside me, beads caught in the blankets, and one of her hands is resting on my hip like she reached for me in her sleep and just decided to stay there.
This is either real or my subconscious has gotten significantly more creative, and honestly I'm not sure which option terrifies me more.
On Iris' other side, my brother is lying on his back with one arm bent behind his head, and I can tell he's not fully awake yet because his face is doing that slack, open thing it only does when his brain hasn't booted up.
His hand is resting on Iris' other hip, mirroring mine without knowing it.
The two of us bookending her like some kind of instinct kicked in overnight and arranged us into position.
The nest smells like all three of us. Honey and pine and vanilla, layered into the blankets and pillows, soaked in overnight until the whole space has become something new.
Something that didn't exist yesterday. My Omega brain is having a field day with this information, sending up signal after signal that translates roughly to stay here forever, never leave, this is home now, you live here.
Very helpful. Very chill. Not at all overwhelming.
Then Quentin shifts, his head turning on the pillow, and mumbles something that sounds distinctly like "scapula" into Iris' hair.
Not a dream. My subconscious could never be that boring.
I should extract myself carefully and go to the bathroom and splash water on my face and have a private moment of existential reckoning about the fact that I just spent the night with the coach's daughter and my brother was right there the whole time, which is a sentence I never expected to think and will be processing for approximately the rest of my life.
Shit, Milo. Breathe. I should do any number of responsible, mature things.
Instead, I lie here. Just for a minute. Just this ridiculous, warm, impossible moment where Iris' breathing is slow against my collarbone and nobody has to know about this yet. It's just us, and the nest, and Quentin's unconscious commitment to his anatomy coursework.
Iris stirs first, her eyes opening slowly. When they land on me, an unguarded smile spreads across her face, my heart beating a little faster beneath her attention. "Hi," she says, her voice rough with sleep.
"Hi." I'm grinning like an idiot. I can feel it happening and I can't stop it. "So that wasn't a fever dream."
"Mm." She stretches, her body arching against the blankets, the motion pressing her closer to me. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I need to send a thank-you card to whoever invented charity auctions." I pause, considering. "Also slightly like I pulled a muscle in my hip, but that's a secondary concern. A noble injury. A war wound, if you will."
A laugh escapes her, the sound running through me so fast my scent spikes before I can catch it. On her other side, Quentin makes a noise into his pillow that roughly translates to "stop being loud or I will end you."
"Your brother is charming before noon," Iris murmurs.
"You should see him before coffee. He once threatened to disown me for chewing toast too aggressively. Toast, Iris. The quietest food."
“Milo, toast is not quiet and I bet you were chewing it aggressively.” Her hand comes up to my face, her thumb tracing along my jaw, the gentleness catching me off guard.
Which is embarrassing. We literally had sex last night, multiple times, enthusiastically, with very little dignity on my part and somehow her thumb on my jaw is the thing that's going to make me cry. My emotional priorities are a disaster.
She lets her hand drop back to the pillow, her head settling deeper into it, the motion sending her braids shifting between us.
"Who does your braids?" I ask.
"I do them myself."
"Yourself? All of them?"
Iris snorts. "Yes, Milo. All of them. It takes about nine hours."
"Nine hours. Iris, that's longer than any of my exams. That's like longer than the director's cut of Lord of the Rings. Right? I mean… wait. I think. That's longer than—"
"I like the process." She cuts off my spiral with a smile, her eyes half-closed. "It's meditative. Like math but with my hands. Besides, my mother taught me and it’s just always been something I do myself."
Like math but with her hands. This woman is going to be the death of me.
I am going to die right here in this nest, surrounded by fairy lights and gold beads, and my obituary is going to say "cause of death: everything about Iris Delacroix.
" They'll find my body in this exact position, still staring at her braids, and nobody will be surprised.
On Iris's other side, Quentin's breathing changes.
I know the exact second he's actually awake because the slack, unconscious quality of his body disappears and he's suddenly alert, his dark eyes open and tracking everything about him.
His attention then falls on Iris as he sits up, his gaze firmly focused on her like he's already memorizing something he's afraid he'll lose.
Iris twists a little to meet his gaze and the smile she gives him is nothing like the one she gave me.
Mine was soft and unguarded and made me feel like the only person in the room.
His has teeth in it, a challenge, even first thing in the morning.
These two are going to be absolutely exhausting, and I cannot wait.
If we do this again.
"Morning," she says.
"Morning." His voice is rough, scraped raw from sleep and everything that came before it.
A phone buzzes somewhere on the floor, vibrating against the hardwood.
Iris reaches over the edge of the nest, fishing through the pile of clothes we left scattered last night until she finds it.
The screen lights up her face and the shift is immediate, like watching a door close.
Her jaw tightens, her shoulders pull inward, all that easy warmth draining out of her body in a second.
"My dad." Her voice goes carefully neutral. "He texted last night asking if I was okay. I didn't respond."
She types something quick and then sets the phone face-down on the floor.
The crack in the morning is instant, reality seeping through, and I hate it.
I want to pick up that phone and throw it out the window and build a blanket fort around the three of us and never deal with the outside world again.
But I'm twenty-one years old and that's not how anything works, no matter how much I wish it were.
"So." Iris sits up, pulling one of the blankets around her shoulders like armor. "What is this?"
The question takes up all the space in the nest. Quentin pushes himself up against the wall, his expression settling into an unreadable mask.
I stay lying on my side, because I think better horizontally and also because sitting up feels like admitting the morning is over and I'm not ready for that yet.
"I don't want this to be one night." The words come out of me before I've fully decided to say them, which is on brand.
Someone has to go first, and it's always going to be me, because that's how we work.
Quentin thinks, I talk, and somewhere in the middle we usually land on the truth.
"I know that's a lot. And I know it's complicated.
Your dad, the team, the fact that Chad and Kevin definitely saw us leave together—"
"I don't want one night either," Iris pushes out, my heart doing a little flip. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if my scent didn’t also respond, letting both her and my brother know how I feel about that.
"But I need to understand what this is before other people get to have opinions about it.
" She pulls the blanket tighter around her.
"My father is... he's all I have. If he finds out from someone else, from Chad or a teammate, that's different than hearing it from me.
I want to tell him on my terms. When I'm ready. "
"So we keep it quiet," Quentin says from her other side.
"For now." She looks between us. "Is that okay?"
I glance past Iris to Quentin. He gives me a single nod, barely there. "Yeah," I say. "That's okay."
As long as I get to have Iris, I’m okay.
The tension eases enough that breathing feels normal again.
Iris unfolds from the nest first, padding barefoot to the bathroom, the water running a moment later.
Quentin and I get dressed, pulling on last night's clothes, navigating around each other without talking.
The silence feels too heavy for words and anything I say will just cheapen the moment.
I scramble around for my shoes, grumbling when I find one tucked underneath the dresser. Quentin delivers a soft kick to my side and then groans when I jab at his ankle. “Fuck, I haven’t done the walk of shame since Freshman year.”
Iris pops out of the bathroom in just a large shirt, my eyes immediately dipping to her legs and then back to her face.
The smile that spreads across her lips makes me blush as she just gestures to the front door.
I scurry toward it, wanting to bury myself back into my room but I barely make it down the hall before Iris catches my wrist.
An embarrassing squeak falls from my lips as she twists me around and presses her mouth to mine one more time, her lips curving into a smile before she pulls away. "Bye, Milo."
My brain short-circuits for a solid two seconds. "Bye. Yep. Goodbye. Leaving now."
She turns to Quentin, the energy shifting from the playful moment with me to something a bit darker.
He doesn't wait for her to lean in. His hand finds her waist, pulling her forward, and he kisses her the way he does everything, completely in control.
When he pulls back, his thumb drags across her bottom lip, and Iris raises a brow in jest.
"I'll see you at practice," he muses.
"You will."
He holds her gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then turns and walks out.
I scramble after him because apparently I've lost all motor function and basic social skills in the span of twelve hours.
I make it approximately four steps down the sidewalk before my fist shoots into the air and a sound comes out of me that I can only describe as a triumphant Omega shrieking.
"Milo." Quentin doesn't break stride. "You know what secret means, right?"
"Obviously, I know what secret means."
"It means you can't tell anybody."
"I'm not going to tell anybody."
"It also means you can't make it obvious." He glances at me sideways. "No staring. No touching. No whispered conversations. No fist-pumping on public sidewalks."
"I wasn't—" My scent chooses that exact moment to spike, going honey-sweet and lovesick, broadcasting my feelings to the entire street like a neon billboard. Quentin stops walking, looks at me, and laughs, the real kind that changes his whole face.
"I think it's time you start taking those scent blockers again," he says.
"Fuck." I tip my head back and groan. "I hate those things. They make everything taste like cardboard."
"Better than announcing to the entire team that you're in love every time she walks by."
"I'm not in—" My scent spikes again. Quentin raises an eyebrow. "Okay, fine. Blockers. Cardboard taste. Worth it."