Chapter 5 Millie
FIVE
Millie
The next six hours passed in a blur.
I texted Daniela, like I'd promised. I texted my parents, because I knew they would panic if I didn't. I tried to put things away, but I kept getting distracted and forgetting where I was.
My heart was pounding.
Tonight that man was going to come in here and fuck me.
And he was going to fuck me every night until I was pregnant.
I put a stack of books in the refrigerator. I found them twenty minutes later when I went to get water. I stared at them for a long moment and then put them on the shelf where they belonged and stood in the kitchen and pressed my cold water glass to my forehead.
Okay, I told myself. Get it together.
I had wanted this. I had negotiated this. I had sat on a tailgate in a parking lot in June and said I want you to knock me up to a man I'd known for three hours and meant every word of it, and I did not get to be surprised now that it was actually happening.
I was a little surprised.
I was also—and this was the part I was having trouble filing—not scared.
Not exactly. What I was, if I was being honest, was anticipatory in a way that had nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with the man who had stood in this bedroom an hour ago with his hand on the doorframe and his voice gone hoarse.
It had been three and a half years.
Three and a half years of nothing, of eighty-hour weeks and spreadsheets and putting everything into a plan, and my body had apparently been keeping a running tally of that deprivation and was now presenting the bill all at once.
I’d barely even touched myself for the past three years, and now it was like my body was waking up and she was hungry.
I showered. Twice, technically, because I got out the first time and stood in the bathroom mirror and thought about Gage Holt's hands and got back in.
I changed my outfit four times.
I settled on a sundress—yellow, soft, the kind of thing you wear when you want to look like you didn't try.
I tried on the backup option twice more before putting the yellow dress back on and staying in it through sheer force of will.
Was I even supposed to be wearing anything?
Should I just…lounge around in a robe and wait?
Would it be romantic? Would the sex be good?
Or would it be functional and rough and…
I texted Daniela:
Millie
tonight's the night
She responded in approximately four seconds
Daniela
MILLIE
how are you feeling
are you excited????!?!??
you have to give me all the details after
I put my phone face down on the kitchen counter.
Outside, through the window, the Hill Country was doing its evening thing—the light going gold off the limestone, the cedar going dark, the goats settling. Dolly had reclaimed the porch swing at some point during my spiral, and she sat there now, swaying gently.
I turned around and looked at the bed.
It looked…way too cozy for the absolutely filthy things I was imagining happening in it. This whole place felt pastoral and cute and not…dirty. But wasn’t it dirty to move into a house just so a man could fuck you? So a stranger could get you pregnant?
What was I even doing here?
I was still standing in the kitchen looking at the bed through the open bedroom door when the knock came.
My heart did something dramatic.
I crossed the cottage in five steps, which was all the steps it took, smoothed my dress, took one breath, and opened the door.
Gage Holt was standing on my porch in a clean shirt and jeans with a paper bag in one hand labeled The Creekside Diner (est. 1953).
His dark eyes found mine immediately and I understood in that moment with complete clarity that I was in some amount of trouble that had nothing to do with the contract.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," I said.
A beat.
His eyes moved over me—not slow, not obvious, just a flicker, down and back up—and something shifted in his jaw.
"You look nice," he said.
Three words. Completely even. And yet.
"Thanks," I said. "Come in."
He came in.
I stepped aside, and he moved close enough to brush past me.
It made every single nerve in my body light up; for god’s sake, I could feel my thighs tense, my pussy clench.
I bit my lip hard, trying to calm myself down, wondering if I should even be calm or if it was better to get excited, let myself give into it.
He set the food down on the kitchen table, focused intently on that paper bag.
“Marlena makes a mean burger,” he said. “Figured you might want one and some fries…didn’t know what you liked, but I should have asked—sorry about that.”
He wasn’t looking at me. And for me…my fingers were on the buttons of my dress, popping them open one by one like a crazy lady. I was anxious. I was thrilled. I needed to get naked before I lost my nerve, and—
The dress dropped to the floor just as he turned to look over his shoulder.
His eyes went wide.
His jaw dropped.
He turned to face me fully.
“You…” he started.
I felt ridiculous. Like I should cover up.
It suddenly occurred to me that it was stupid for me to have put on nice lingerie when this was just a legal arrangement, not a honeymoon.
Did he think I was stupid for being like this?
That I was too fat to wear something like this?
The pink floral had been Daniela’s idea, and Daniela was athletic and perfect and—
I crossed my arms over my chest.
Gage took a step toward me, extending his hand.
“Don’t do that,” he rasped, voice low.
Confirmation.
Shit.
I closed my eyes. “Sorry—I guess…it was stupid—” I started to put the dress back on.
Gage crossed the room and caught my chin in his hands, lifting my face.
“Don’t you dare cover up,” he growled.
I froze.
His hands were warm on my face and he was close—really close, close enough that I could smell him, cedar and something underneath it, and his eyes were on me in a way that made my brain go completely offline.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked at him.
"You are not stupid," he said. "And you are not covering up." His thumb brushed my jaw, just once. "You understand me?"
I nodded, barely.
His eyes dropped.
I watched him look at me—really look, the way he'd looked in the parking lot but without the parking lot in the way, without the mask, without any of it—and whatever he saw made something happen in his face that he didn't try to hide.
His jaw tightened. His chest rose and fell once, slow and deliberate, like a man steadying himself.
"Christ," he said, low. Not to me. Just out loud.
My crossed arms dropped.
He noticed.
His eyes came back up to mine and they were darker than they'd been thirty seconds ago and my thighs were doing something completely involuntary.
"Dinner—" I started.
"Dinner can wait."
He said it the way he said everything, flat and certain, like it was just a fact about the world, and then he closed the last foot of distance between us and his hands slid from my jaw to my waist and I felt the full size of him up close for the first time and my brain produced the word oh and nothing else.
He was looking down at me. I was looking up at him. His hands were on my waist and they were big and warm and he held me like something he intended to keep.
“You really don’t know how perfect you are, do you?” he said.
I swallowed hard. “It’s been um…it’s been a really long time since anyone’s had the chance to see so—”
“How long?”
“Three and a half years,” I whispered.
"That's a long time."
"I know."
"I'm gonna take care of that," he said.
It was the most understated sentence anyone had ever said to me and it hit me like a freight train.
"Okay," I breathed.
His hands tightened.
"I need you to know something first," he said.
"What?"
"This isn't—" He stopped. Started again. "The contract says we try. That's what it says." His eyes were steady on mine. "But when I'm in that bed with you, Millie, I'm not thinkin’ about the contract."
My heart was doing something genuinely concerning.
"What…what are you thinking about?" I said. It came out smaller than I meant it to.
His hand moved from my waist to the small of my back, pulling me flush against him, and I felt exactly what I'd clocked in the waiting room at eye level in those jeans and my brain shorted out completely.
"I'm thinkin’ about gettin’ you pregnant," he said, low and even and absolutely devastating.
"About putting a baby in you and watching you carry it.
About taking care of you while you do." His other hand came up and pushed my hair back from my face, slow.
"I've been thinkin’ about it since the parking lot. "
“Me too,” I admitted.
He smiled this downright wicked smile. His hips rolled just slightly…and he was so, so hard on the other side of that zipper.
“Can I touch you, Millie?” he asked.
I let out a long whoosh of breath.
“I think I’m gonna pass out if you don’t,” I said.
Then he dropped to his knees.
And I knew this was way more than just a contract.