26. Ross
ROSS
“You think he’s going to let us in?” James mutters, as we stand outside Matt’s apartment.
James is shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot as he stares at the door before us.
“No idea,” Cole replies grimly, running a hand through his hair as he tries to ground himself.
I know how they feel—it’s impossible not to get the feeling that we’re making some kind of mistake here, that at any moment, all of this might blow up in our faces and turn this little fantasy we’ve been living in to something we can never go back to again.
It might seem strange, that we’re meeting with Matt first instead of his sister, but I know that Millie won’t even entertain something with us if she thinks it’s going to ruin the relationship she has with her brother.
And shit, who could blame her? She adores him, and it’s clear the two of them have been a huge support system for one another in the years since they lost their parents.
No matter what might be taking shape between Millie and the three of us, her sibling connection is the most important thing to her, and I will not be the one who makes her choose between him and us.
So, we have made it our mission to get to him, turning up at his apartment with no warning.
If we had called ahead, no doubt he would have done everything in his power to make sure that he wasn’t in, and we can’t let that happen.
We have to do this face-to-face, no matter how difficult it might be, no matter how painful it feels to put ourselves in the firing line of a man who seems to loathe us so much.
After a few moments, the door opens—and when Matt sees us standing on the other side, he goes to close it again right in our faces.
“Hey, wait,” James protests, sticking his foot in the door so he can’t slam it quite yet. “We need to talk to you—”
“I’ve said everything I want to say to you,” Matt snarls, his voice laced with a venom that warns me he’s far from over what went down the other day.
He looks between us, disgust etched in every feature, and he shakes his head.
“You guys have some fucking nerve turning up here after what you did to my sister,” he snaps. “Get out. I don’t want to see you—”
“This is important, Matt,” I implore him. “It’s about Millie. And Lewis. And the babies. And we need you to be a part of it.”
He stands there for a moment, eyes narrowing as he looks between us, and it’s clear he doesn’t trust a word that’s coming out of my mouth right now.
Shit, can’t say I blame him, after everything we’ve hidden from him.
If I were him, I would never want to hear from us again.
But if we are going to be family—and the fact that Millie is pregnant with our children means that there’s no way to avoid it—then we need to get all this out in the open before it burns us to the ground.
“A part of what?” Matt asks.
I look over at Cole and James, both of whom seem willing to let me take the lead on this. Shit. I’ve never been good at the talking part, but if this is what it takes, then I have to be ready to do whatever I can.
I lift my chin, indicating that we want to come in. “Inside. I don’t want your neighbors hearing this.”
For a second, I think he’s going to tell me to get fucked and come clean about everything before I enter the room, but then he steps aside, jerking his head sharply to indicate that we should enter.
The three of us file in, and a heavy silence hangs in the air.
It stings, knowing that we’ve hurt Matt as much as we have.
He’s been our friend for years, and though all of us want Millie more than we can make sense of, the knowledge that we have hurt him so badly in the process of going after her doesn’t sit right with me.
“What the fuck is it?” he asks, voice still laced with an anger he makes no effort to contain.
James nudges me, indicating that I should start talking, and I do as I’m told, filling Matt in on the details that have been running round my head all this time.
“I know that we should have been honest about what happened with Millie back when we first met her,” I explain.
“And I know that we shouldn’t have gone behind your back to get in touch with her again, so we could make something happen with the surrogacy.
But…but we’ve really gotten to know Millie and Lewis these last few months.
And…we want to be with her. Really be with her. ”
There it is, out there now, no dodging or denying it.
Matt stands there for a second, nonplussed, and then lets out a mirthless bark of laughter.
“I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?” he says. “All of you want to be with her?”
James nods. “I know how it sounds,” he promises him. “But it’s not just—I mean, it’s not just a physical thing—”
“Jesus, don’t talk to me about what physical things you’ve been doing with my sister,” Matt protests, hand flying up to silence us before we can delve into any more detail.
“Sorry,” James concedes, lowering his chin slightly. “What I meant was—we’ve talked about it, and the three of us, we have real feelings for her.”
“I think I always have,” Cole admits. “That might be why we chose her for the surrogacy. Because somewhere at the back of our minds…she was always the one we wanted to be the mother to our children.”
Matt shakes his head as he looks at us, clearly far from convinced. “And you think that’s going to get me to forget everything else?” he replies, incredulous. “Listen to yourselves. You’re talking about my sister like she’s some kind of—”
“We’re talking about her like we want to spend the rest of our lives with her,” Cole replies sharply. “Because we do.”
That seems to catch Matt off guard, and he starts slightly at those words, as if they’re the last thing he expected. He looks to me, and I nod, affirming that we all feel that way.
“You hardly know her—”
“I know enough to see that her life has been way harder than it needed to be, without all the support she deserved raising Lewis,” I point out.
“And that she’s been lonely taking care of him with so little family to help her out.
And that she loves you, but she wants something more—that’s why she took the surrogacy contract in the first place, because she knew it would give her the opportunity to provide Lewis the kind of life she would never have been able to access for him otherwise. ”
That silences him for a second. He knows I’m right.
Millie’s been living from paycheck to paycheck for so long, struggling to find appropriate treatment for her son while she tries to keep her head above water.
Now that we’re in their lives, we can plug some of the gaps, allow her to catch her breath and take stock for a moment.
Matt might not like it, but he knows better than anyone how hard it’s been for her, raising her kid alone for so long.
“You’ve seen yourself how much better Lewis has been doing since we were able to get him into treatment,” James reminds him.
“And it’s only going to improve the more time we spend with him, the more help we can offer him.
Plus, when the babies come along, this way Lewis gets to grow up alongside them—with his siblings, as a big brother. Just like you.”
Matt’s face softens for a moment, and though I can only guess, for a moment it looks like he’s recalling moments of their childhood—him and Millie, all the years they grew up together, all the ways they’ve been there for each other in the time since their parents’ death.
He prides himself on being a good sibling for her, and if we can appeal to that part of him, we might just be able to make something of this.
“She deserves everything,” Cole tells him, his voice laced with an emotion that I’m not used to hearing from him.
The two of us have been friends for years, but he’s normally reserved, enough so that when he was the one who broke the news about actually having real feelings for her, it caught me off guard.
But Millie seems to bring out a side in him that nobody else does, and it’s clear that there’s nothing he won’t do to make sure that she’s provided for in all the ways he sees fit.
“She does,” James agrees. “And we can give it to her, Matt. Not just as part of a contract, but for the rest of her life. The rest of our children’s lives too.”
Matt stands there before us for a moment, and in that second, I think we’ve failed.
I think he’s going to turn us around and tell us to get the hell out of his apartment, that he never wants to lay eyes on us again and he meant it when he said that he would never be able to move past what happened.
But then, as though he’s finally freeing himself from some of the tension that has been clinging to him all this time, his shoulders sag, and he looks down.
“She’s…you wouldn’t believe how hard a time she’s had with Lewis,” he confesses, at last. “I’ve done as much as I can, but even still…
shit, I always feel like I’m leaving her with stuff to handle that she should never have to take on by herself.
I have to travel so much for work, and even then, the money I make isn’t enough to get him the treatment he really needs.
Even if it was, I don’t think she’d take it from me.
She doesn’t want to have to rely on anyone else to get what she needs, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. ”
He manages a small smile, though it’s clearly strained.
“But…but she seems to accept it from you guys,” he says.
“And you’re right. Lewis has never been better, not since he got diagnosed.
I don’t think he’s ever had a period like this before, where he was actually able to keep up with his friends at school.
Millie thought she would have to transfer him to somewhere specifically made for kids like him, but you made it so that he could actually keep up. I…” He trails off.
No matter what good reason he might have to hate us, it’s clear that he adores that little boy, and I don’t blame him. Lewis is a sweet kid, one who deserves as much of a chance at life as anyone else, and if Millie gives us the opportunity, I want to help provide that for him.
“I don’t know what the hell the four of you have going on,” Matt admits, holding his hand up. “But…shit, if you make her that happy, if you make Lewis’s life that much better, then maybe it’s not my job to stand in the way of it.”
James, Cole, and I exchange a look. Is that…is that agreement? It sounds a whole hell of a lot like it, that’s for sure. Might not be a thundering endorsement of our relationship with her, but it’s the closest thing we’re going to get right now, and I’ll take whatever I can lay my hands on.
“That means…?”
“That means if you want her, then you go after her,” Matt says, holding his hands up. “Not saying it’s going to be easy for me to wrap my head around my three best friends getting with my sister, but…” He looks between us. “At least it’s going to make my Christmas card list a little shorter, huh?”
We all laugh, his joke enough to ease some of the tension between us. It’s not much, but Jesus, after everything that has happened, it’s something. And I’ll take whatever I can get right now.
“Have you spoken to her about this?” Matt asks curiously, and I shake my head.
“We wanted to talk to you about it first. We knew that’s what she would care about when it came down to it. She doesn’t want to lose you, not for anything.”
Matt grins slightly. “Well, you’ve got my permission,” he tells us, lifting a hand. “So go get her, guys.”