27. Millie
MILLIE
I hum to myself as I come up the stairs, my bags laden down with groceries.
It’s been a week or so since the trip to the hospital, and it finally feels like things are beginning to settle into their usual pattern—taking Lewis to school, tending the apartment, resting up for my next appointment…
It’s a quiet kind of life, but one that I’m all too happy to let myself sink into now that I have it.
I dump the bags on the floor as I push the key into the lock, feeling a little pang as I think of the silence of the apartment waiting for me.
That’s the one thing that I’ve been struggling with.
In an apartment the size of this one, having all this space to myself isn’t easy, filling the time without the guys there to keep me company.
It doesn’t seem to matter how much I try to distract myself, I always find myself craving their company in a way I just can’t deny.
So you can imagine my surprise when I push open the door and find all three of them waiting there on the other side for me.
For a second, I just stand there, too shocked to say a word. Am I imagining them? Is this part of the first trimester, hallucinating men in your home so you don’t have to live with being quite as lonely?
I gape for a second as I look between their smiling faces, wondering if it’s some sort of fantasy I’ve conjured to salve my own overthinking mind.
But then, to my total shock, my brother steps out from between them. And just like them—he’s smiling too.
“Matt?” I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth.
Now, he’s the last person I expected to see here, that’s for damn sure. He seems to have been doing his best to avoid me since it all went down with the guys, and I expected him to duck and dive my company as far as he’s able to for the coming weeks.
I’ve missed the hell out of him, but I’ve respected that he wants to be given his space, and I know my brother well enough to see that I’m not going to be able to get through to him by applying pressure where it will only be ignored.
“Hey, sis,” he greets me, stepping forward to give me a hug.
The way he pulls me into his arms tells me that he has seriously missed me. I feel a lump leap to the back of my throat, those damn pregnancy hormones making me all emotional.
As he pulls back, I look around the room, at the four most important men in my life, and try to figure out exactly what they’re doing here.
“What…what happened?” I blurt out finally. Not exactly my sharpest turn of phrase, but I just need to figure this out before something happens to shatter this newfound quiet between us.
James grins, reaching out for my hand and giving it a squeeze. I look to Matt, expecting him to be glaring at the spot where our skin touches, but he hardly seems to notice or care.
“You want to tell her?” James asks Matt.
Matt sighs playfully. “Damn, you just can’t stop involving me in this, can you?
” he replies. But then he looks up at me, and there’s a flash of the old playfulness that I recognize from the many years we’ve spent together as siblings.
“Well, Millie. Cole, James, and Ross came to me earlier today, and they told me that they…”
“That we’re in love with you,” Cole finishes up.
My eyes widen, and I look between the three guys, wondering if this is all some crazy joke. But they don’t break my gaze, not for a moment, and I realize, with a surge of excitement, that it’s true.
“Wait, you…?”
“And they came to me about it first,” Matt explains, filling in the gaps for me before I can get any more lost to the confusion.
“Which I appreciate, even if they should have done it six years ago…” He pauses, gathering himself, clearly having to remind himself not to get dragged down that path once more.
“But that doesn’t matter,” he replies. “Because…because they’ve shown me that they’re willing to provide for you.
To care for you and Lewis, the way you both deserve.
God knows I’ve tried to make it happen myself, but I can’t do it alone.
I don’t want to be your only family, the only blood relation you have, and… ”
He looks between them, a fond smile on his face. “As much as I might have hated these assholes for a hot minute there,” he concedes, “there’s nobody better in the world I could trust my sister to than them.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I have to bite down hard on my lip to keep them from leaking out. I can barely believe what I’m hearing right now.
Not only do the guys want me, really want me, but Matt is willing to take his hands off the wheel and let it happen too.
He can see how deeply they care for me and how they’ve shown themselves willing to do anything for both me and Lewis.
I might not know much about relationships, but I know that’s what love is supposed to feel like—being cared for, supported, adored in all the ways you never imagined you could be.
“You’re serious?” I whisper, half expecting all of this to be some kind of joke at my expense that will snuff out of existence just as quickly as it came in.
Matt nods. “I know I am,” he replies, and he looks to Cole, James, and Ross. “But I guess there’s plenty that these three want to say to you too. So I guess I should give you a little privacy, huh?”
My heart flutters in my chest at the thought of being alone with the three of them again.
When it’s just the four of us, a strange alchemy takes place in my body, shifting me from a mother just trying to get by to someone else entirely.
Someone sure of herself, someone passionate and wanting, someone unafraid to claim what she really wants and needs.
But first, I need my brother to know that I appreciate this.
That it means the world to me for him to accept me so completely, despite everything that has happened, despite the secrets I kept from him for so long.
It might not be easy for him to hear, but I know this is what I need, and it’s one hell of a relief to realize that he sees it too.
I step forward and pull him into a hug, squeezing him close again, silently telling him in all the ways he needs to hear that I can’t believe that he has done this for me—and that I will never forget his kindness and acceptance, his willingness to look past his own reactions and see that there’s so much more out there for me.
“Thank you,” I whisper to him. Words too small to capture the enormity of what’s going on inside my head right now, but it’s the closest I have for the time being.
He hugs me back. “Anytime, Mills.”
And with that, he steps back, clapping his hands together. “Where’s Lewis, at school? I’ll pick him up and he can stay at mine tonight.”
“Really?”
“No problem,” he replies. “Haven’t seen him in a while. And besides, he’s got to be missing his favorite uncle by now, huh?”
I laugh and nod. “Yeah, he’s been asking after you,” I reply. “And he’s at school. If you don’t mind taking him for the night—”
“Not a problem.” Matt nods his farewell to the guys and then makes for the door.
As soon as it’s shut behind him, I find myself alone with Cole, James, and Ross. The three of them have always come as a trio for me, at least in my mind. But I never imagined that it might move past the physical and into something as real as they’re making it out to be.
I bite my lip as I look between them, hardly daring to speak it out loud.
“Is it…is it true?” I ask them softly. “That you…?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Cole concedes, as he slips his arm around my waist, drawing me into him gently.
“But these last few months, having you in my life again…I realized how much I had missed you. How much I had missed having someone I could come home to, someone I actually cared about, someone I wanted to build a life with.”
“I never thought I would want something like that again, not after what happened with Caroline,” James admits. “But you—you reminded me why I craved all of that in the first place.”
“And now, you’re going to be the mother of our children,” Ross adds softly. “I can’t imagine anything more intimate than that. Or anything I want more than to make a life with you, Millie.”
I close my eyes for a moment, letting it wash through me, the sweetness of those words, of how much they truly want me.
I have never felt anything like this before, the feeling of being truly wanted—I’ve never let myself.
But with them, it’s impossible to deny. They have shown me care, affection, kindness, and support, in ways I could never have imagined, in ways that go above and beyond what I could ever have asked for from them.
And I will never forget how much it means to me.
I reach up to touch Cole’s face, and look to James and Ross, a swell of emotion threatening to get the better of me entirely.
“I love you,” I whisper, to all three of them.
Those words feel like planting a seed somewhere deep down inside of me, leaving something to blossom and bloom where it will soon break the surface and show to the rest of the world. Because I do, I love them, more than I ever thought I could love anyone in my life.
And as Cole leans down to kiss me, I know that they feel it too.
But they intend to show it instead of saying it.