10. Millie
MILLIE
“Cole, wait!” I call after him as he strides to the door, but he’s already gone by the time I get the words out.
I groan and put my head in my hands, heart thumping in my chest. What the fuck am I going to do now?
I can’t believe it happened like this. I mean, I don’t know what I was thinking, deluding myself into believing that nothing would come of such a gigantic fucking secret.
But I had this idea that I would tell them when the pregnancy was confirmed, when they could get excited about the idea of having their own children, only for me to be able to reveal that they already have a child.
It was about as close to perfect as I could imagine for a situation like this one—and what’s happening now is a far cry from anything I imagined.
I hardly have time to gather my thoughts before Cole returns, this time with James and Ross in tow. James is the first to close the distance between us, his eyes narrowed as he barks out his question.
“Is it true?”
“You have to listen to me—”
“Oh, fuck, it is,” Ross mutters, as he closes the door behind them. “It’s true, isn’t it? You got pregnant from that night and you didn’t tell any of us?”
I close my eyes, my head swimming. Today has already been high-stress as it is, and being hit with this cavalcade of questions is hardly helping me get myself back in hand.
“Jesus Christ,” James mutters, as he looks over my files on the computer. “It’s here. No wonder she didn’t want us to look at her files. You thought we would find out that you had been hiding this from us…”
Ross is pacing, while Cole just stands there. James leans his head back into his hands and stares at the ceiling, and for a moment, a horrible silence rests over the entire place.
Ross is the first one to speak. “They couldn’t belong to anyone else, could they?”
I look up, lips parted. “You think I was just hooking up with anyone?”
“So that baby—it belongs to one of us?” James asks.
I look between them. For the first time, the father of my child is standing in front of me—I just don’t know exactly who he is. The only thing I know for sure is how pissed he is at me, and how I have nothing to defend myself against whatever accusations they might have to throw at me.
“Lewis,” I whisper. “That’s his name, Lewis.”
“How old is he now?” James asks. “Five?”
“He just started school last year,” I reply, nodding. “He’s…”
I don’t know how to describe him. I don’t want to downplay everything he’s been through, but at the same time, I feel like it will come off like I’m fishing for sympathy if I try to tell the entire truth.
“Why didn’t you tell us when you got pregnant?” Cole demands. “You know you could have gotten in touch with us any time you wanted.”
“I didn’t want to bother you guys with it,” I admit. “I knew you had this clinic, you were just getting it off the ground when I found out, and I thought…”
“You thought we didn’t even deserve a chance to know?” James adds. “I just don’t get it, Millie. Were you ever going to tell us?”
“I was going to talk to him about it eventually,” I reply, defensive. “But I—it’s not easy to explain that kind of thing to a child, you know?”
“Does Matt know?” Ross asks.
“That it’s one of you? Of course not.” I shake my head. “He would have kicked your ass six ways to Sunday if he had found out about it.”
“But he knows about Lewis?”
I nod. “Yeah,” I murmur, looking down briefly. “The two of them are really close, actually.”
“Fucking hell,” James mutters. “He’s been part of Matt’s life all this time…”
“Matt never mentioned him to you?”
“I guess I never put the pieces together,” James admits. “I heard him saying he was going to spend time with you and Lewis, but I never thought…”
My heart skips a beat at the notion, of them knowing about their son without even really knowing about him. I know it’s wrong for me to be so excited by the idea, but after all this distance between them and their boy for so long, there’s nothing I want more than to close it.
“What did you think you were going to get out of this?” Ross asks, turning the conversation back around to me. “You were going to tell us, what, when your son came to see you at the hospital?”
“I was going to tell you when the pregnancy took,” I reply, shaking my head.
“I thought…I had this idea of telling you when you had just seen the babies for the first time. Just really understood that you were going to be fathers. And then I was going to—going to bring out the one I had ready-made, you know?”
The way I put it now sounds stupid, even to me, and I can tell by the way they’re looking at me that they don’t exactly disagree.
I wish I could take it all back, but I know it’s far too late for that.
Better to let it out now and be honest about everything that has happened, and we can move forward without any more secrets between us.
“We can’t do this,” James announces. “That’s it. We can’t go through with this. We have a son we need to figure out the father of first, and—”
“The embryos are already implanted,” Cole tells him.
James turns to him, eyebrows raising so far they look as though they might shoot off his face. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“They’re already implanted,” Cole repeats. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. They’re in.”
“Jesus.” Ross sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.
I can’t tell where he’s at. Angry? They all seem angry. I hate feeling like people are pissed at me, but if ever there has been a time when I well and truly deserved it, it was this.
“So…there’s nothing we can do about it?” I ask, chewing my lip slightly.
I hardly even dare to admit it out loud, because it makes it seem as though I’ve trapped them in this, and that’s the very last thing that I want.
But I guess, to them, that’s what it must seem like—as though I’ve done my very best to make sure that I’ve backed them into a corner, so they can’t walk away from me now that they know I have their son.
“Did you plan it like this?” Cole asks me quietly. “You thought we wouldn’t stick around for your boy if we didn’t have another good reason for it?”
The blood drains from my face. I hate that they’ve even thought about it like that, but God, I can’t blame them.
After all, I’ve hidden this from them for years, only to reveal it when I know there’s another reason to keep them around?
A reason tied to a whole heap of money? Do they think I was treating my son as insurance, to make certain that they made good on their end on the deal… ?
“No, it wasn’t like that.” I breathe, trying to gather myself enough so that I can protest. “When I first saw the three of you waiting for me there, I was going to walk out. I wasn’t going to tell you.
But then…then I saw how much you wanted it.
And you said that thing, about how I’m the only woman you could all agree on, and I just… I didn’t want to let you down.”
My shoulders sag as I come out with it, and I pray they don’t think so little of me that they won’t believe the truth I’m sharing with them now. It hurts to even imagine being shot down when I’m being totally genuine, but I have to try and explain my side of things.
None of them speak for a long moment, and I look between them, searching their expressions for something, anything that will give away what’s going on inside their heads.
“So he doesn’t know anything about us,” James demands bluntly.
I shake my head. “It wasn’t the right time to tell him.”
Cole scoffs. “And when will the right time be, exactly? Have you even told your son that you’re going through with this?”
“No, of course not,” I reply. “I’m going to explain it when I’m a little further along, when things have settled down a bit. When the money—”
I stop myself dead in my tracks, aware all at once of how it will sound if I bring up the matter of cash right now. I mean, they can’t be under any illusion as to why I’m doing this, but it feels crass to even touch on that matter in the middle of such a heated conversation.
“The money will be in your account by the end of the day,” Cole tells me, his voice low. “Just to be clear. Since you held up your end of the deal…”
He gestures toward my belly, and I clamp my hands to my torso without thinking, even though I know there isn’t any way that the embryos will have attached yet.
I feel protective of them, even now, especially knowing that the men who are meant to be their fathers are pissed as hell at me.
I hope it doesn’t reach them somehow, as crazy as that sounds.
I get the feeling they can sense what’s going on out here, even now.
“Well, thank you,” I reply, trying to pull myself together. “I should—I should rest. I need to call a cab to get home, and—”
“You’re going to move in with one of us.” Ross speaks calmly, his voice leaving little room for argument.
My head snaps toward him in surprise, hardly able to take in what he has just said.
“I’m sorry, what do you—”
“You and your kid,” he replies. “My—our kid. Move into one of the apartments in my block. Cole and I both live there. We can keep an eye on the pregnancy in real time, and it would make me feel a whole lot better if I knew what you were getting up to.”
His eyes lock onto mine, and there’s a steeliness there that I don’t dare argue with.
I had hoped to take the first payment to move into a place of my own, somewhere bigger that Lewis and I could get settled into before the pregnancy advanced too much, but I get the feeling I’m not going to be allowed to get away with it.
Hell, it’s probably what I deserve, being treated like a liability—if I can keep a secret as big as a son from them, why would they trust a word that comes out of my mouth?
“I don’t know if I can—my son, he has school—”
“We’ll make sure he gets there,” Ross replies, not breaking my gaze for an instant. “I think we deserve a chance to get to know him, Millie. Especially given that you’re going to be pregnant with his siblings soon enough.”
I’ve hardly even thought about that aspect of things, but I guess it’s true. I glance down to my belly again. They’re right, as much as I don’t want to admit it—as much as I want to pretend that I’m still the one calling the shots here, that I’m the one at the center of all of this.
“I guess….I guess I could,” I reply. “If it would help the pregnancy go smoother…”
“You’ll have all the care you need right there in the building,” Cole adds. “Any time of day or night. It makes more sense than anything else.”
When he says that, something clicks into place in my mind—Lewis.
He might be able to benefit from their care too.
If they work in this industry, they must have connections, people they can reach out to when they need a helping hand here or there.
They might be able to get him into some of the trials that I’ve been looking at, and really, I can’t pass up the opportunity to make his life a little easier.
“I’ll pack up my stuff tonight,” I reply, lifting my chin, mustering as much certainty as I can.
“I’ll come over and pick you up,” James replies. “Ross, Cole—you make sure there’s an apartment ready and waiting for her and the boy when she arrives tonight, okay? Around eight?”
“Got it,” Ross responds.
Everything is happening so quickly—just like that, I’m agreeing to move in with them, agreeing to uplift my whole life just because they have asked me to. But honestly, having a place of my own, especially a place close to two of them, is going to make my life easier.
It might be hard to explain to Lewis, but it would be even harder to explain why all the money that I was so sure we had coming in had just vanished because the people involved had changed their minds.
Placating them after that huge reveal, that’s the most important thing right now, and I would do well to remember it.
I sink back down onto the bed, remembering what Marianne said to me about taking it easy now I’ve been through the implantation.
God, I doubt this falls into her idea of taking it easy.
But I’m the one who walked into this mess, when I could have just turned them down when they came to me with the idea in the first place.
I can make all the excuses in the world for it, but there’s no getting away from the fact that I did this.
“Can I just have a minute to myself?” I mutter, and I glance up between them, hoping that they’re not going to make this any harder for me than it already has been.
I need to unwind, I need to clear my head, I need something to get my brain out of the racing mode that it has been on since the second I saw Cole’s face behind the curtain.
Something that will keep me from losing it entirely.
Because, right now, it feels like I’m inching closer and closer to that conclusion. And that is the very last place I want to be.
When there’s so much resting on my shoulders.