Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Gage
The next two weeks passed the way good weeks do—fast and full, so you don't notice anything changing until it’s already the new normal.
The ranch ran the same as it always had. Up before five, cattle, fence line, whatever Neto needed, the property's thousand small demands met one at a time in the dark and the heat. That didn't change.
Everything else did.
I couldn't keep my hands off her.
That was the plain truth of it. I'd spent thirty-eight years being a man who kept his hands to himself and then Millie Calloway moved into my cottage and something in my brain simply stopped working the way it used to.
If she was in a room I wanted her out of her clothes.
If she was close I wanted her closer. If we were alone—in the cottage, in the barn, in the shower at six in the morning when she'd wandered in half-asleep and I'd been standing under the hot water thinking about her—I had her.
Every time.
She didn't object. That was the thing. She'd look at me and her eyes would go dark and she'd reach for me and I'd think: good. Good. Like some ancient, wordless part of me recognized something it had been looking for and had finally stopped looking.
Monday I had her against the kitchen counter before coffee was finished brewing.
She'd been standing there in one of my shirts, nothing else, her hair loose, and I'd come in from the early check and found her like that and lasted approximately forty-five seconds before I had her up on the counter with her legs around my waist.
Tuesday she came to find me at the stable in the afternoon. I saw her coming across the property from fifty yards out and I put down what I was doing before she'd even reached the door.
Wednesday Neto needed the fence line finished on the north boundary and I got it done in record time because Millie had texted me a single word—done?—at noon and I'd read it three times and worked like a man with somewhere to be.
She'd been waiting on the porch when I came back.
We didn't make it inside.
Thursday I pulled her into the utility room off the kitchen when my mother and father were having lunch twenty feet away, her face tipped up to mine, laughing and then not laughing, her hands twisted in my shirt while I worked her over quiet and thorough and felt her try to stay silent and fail.
Felt her bite my shoulder when she came.
Stood there afterward straightening her dress and then walked back out to the kitchen table and ate lunch like a man who had his whole life in order.
My father had looked at me over his sandwich.
I had looked back.
He'd said nothing. Gone back to talking about limestone.
Friday she came into the barn while I was doing the evening check and I looked at her and she looked at me and neither one of us said anything, and afterward we sat in the hay in the long evening light and she leaned against my shoulder and I kept my hand flat on her stomach and thought: it's already done.
I can feel it. She's already mine and she's already carrying it and everything that comes after this is just the world catching up.
I knew that was irrational.
I didn't particularly care.
The thing was—I'd started this with a reason.
A clear, practical, documented reason, the kind I could explain to a lawyer or a judge or my own skeptical brother.
The land. The inheritance. Arlo's claim and the clock ticking and the arithmetic of it all.
I'd thought about it in those terms for months before I'd walked into that clinic, had it laid out clean and logical in my mind.
That was gone now.
I couldn't locate it. It was like trying to remember why you'd gone into a room and finding you didn't care anymore because something better was happening in the room.
Every time I reached for the original reason—the land, the heir, the arrangement—I found Millie instead.
Her laugh. The way she felt in my hands.
The way she'd looked at the creek and said you can feel how old it is like she'd always known that and was just now saying it out loud.
The breeding wasn't about the land anymore.
The breeding was about her.
It was about mine in a way that had nothing to do with inheritance and everything to do with the fact that I wanted to watch her belly grow.
I wanted to be the reason she glowed. I wanted to put a hand on her stomach in six months and feel something move and know I did that, I made that, she let me.
I wanted it with a ferocity that would have scared me a month ago.
Now it just felt like information about myself. True and settled and not going anywhere.
Then a delivery truck showed up on the property.
I had no idea what they were up to, but it sidled up to the cottage and through the goats. I was halfway there on horseback when I saw Millie come out to greet them—clearly, she’d expected them—and go back inside.
And I couldn’t resist.
I went in.
She was standing at the kitchen counter unpacking a massive box, and she glanced over her shoulder at me with a smile that had something sheepish underneath it.
"Don't say anything," she said.
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to."
I came to stand next to her and looked into the box.
There was a wedge-shaped pillow with a diagram on the packaging that I looked at for a moment before I understood what I was looking at.
A small box of something called preseed.
A soft little silicone cup in a drawstring pouch.
A black box with a picture on it that made the contents fairly self-evident.
And at the bottom, still mostly wrapped in packing paper, something larger.
I lifted the packing paper.
It was a padded bench. Low, compact, with two soft cuffs on straps on either side.
I picked it up and turned it over in my hands.
"What is this," I said.
"A positioning aid," she said.
I looked at the cuffs.
"For."
She took it out of my hands and set it on the counter. "For optimizing the angle. After." She cleared her throat. "Tilts the pelvis. Keeps everything—" she made a vague gesture downward "—where it needs to be."
I stared at it.
"And these." I touched one of the cuffs.
"Keep your legs in the right position without having to—" She stopped. Started again. "So you don't have to hold them up yourself. It's ergonomic."
I picked up the small silicone cup next, turned it over. Had no idea what I was looking at. "And this one."
She took it from me, her cheeks going pink. "That goes in after. It's a cervical cap. It keeps everything—" Another vague gesture. "In place. While gravity does its thing."
I looked at her.
"There's a specific amount of time you're supposed to lie with your hips elevated after," she said, a little defensively. "I read the research."
"How long."
"Twenty to thirty minutes."
I picked up the black box. Looked at the picture on it. "And this is for the twenty to thirty minutes."
She made a sound that was not quite a word.
"Millie."
"There's research," she said, "about cervical—about muscle contractions during—" She stopped. "It helps move things in the right direction. Theoretically."
I looked at the box. Looked at the bench. Looked at the little silicone cup. Looked at her, standing there with her arms crossed and her chin up and her ears absolutely red.
Something occurred to me.
"You bought all of this," I said slowly, "to get pregnant."
"To optimize our chances, yes—"
"You bought a bench."
"It's a positioning—"
"Millie." I picked the bench back up. Turned it over again. Ran my thumb over one of the padded cuffs. "You want me to put you on this."
She pressed her lips together. "That's the general idea."
I looked at the cuffs again. At the angle of the thing. At the way the padding was shaped to tilt a person's hips up and keep them there, open, exactly where you'd want them.
Something very focused happened in my brain.
Then I set the bench down.
She blinked. "What—"
"You in a hurry?" I said.
"I—what?"
"To get pregnant." I leaned back against the counter and looked at her. “Don’t get me wrong, darlin’; I’m happy to truss you up and breed you whenever your little heart desires…but are you in a hurry for it to be done?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. "I'm not—I'm trying to optimize—"
"I know what you're trying to do." I crossed my arms. "I'm asking why you're trying to do it faster."
She looked at the bench. Looked at me. Something shifted in her expression—the defensive thing dropping away, something more honest underneath it.
"I'm not trying to do it faster," she said, carefully. "I just—I want to make sure we're being thorough."
"We've been thorough every day this week."
"I know that."
"Five times on Wednesday."
She went pink. "I'm aware."
"So what's the rush."
She didn't answer right away. Picked up the silicone cup and turned it in her hands, not looking at me.
"What happens after?" she said finally.
There it was.
She kept going.
"When it works." She set the cup down. "The arrangement was—get pregnant, stay through the pregnancy, you get your heir, Arlo loses his claim.
That's what we agreed to." She looked up.
"We didn't talk about after. And now it's been ten days and I've had breakfast with your mother every morning and your dad told me yesterday that the creek light at dusk is my color, whatever that means—"
"It means he's adopted you," I said.
"Gage."
"I know," I said. "Keep going."
She was quiet for a moment. Outside I could hear Loretta making her feelings known about something. The afternoon light was coming through the kitchen window thick and gold.
"If I get pregnant," she said, "does this—" she gestured between us "—stop? Because there's no reason for it anymore?"
I looked at her steadily. "Do you want it to stop?"
"I asked you first."
"I know," I said. "I'm asking you anyway."
She looked at the bench. Looked at the window. Looked at her hands.
"No," she said. Quiet. "I don't want it to stop." A pause, smaller. "I don't want any of it to stop. The breakfast and the lunches and Haven and your dad and Dolly and—all of it." She stopped. "I know that's not what we agreed to."
"It's not," I said.
She nodded, something careful moving across her face, braced for the but.
"Tell me about the last few years," I said instead.
She looked up. "What?"
"Before the clinic. Before all this."
She was quiet for a moment, deciding whether this was a redirect or something real. Then she leaned back against the counter beside me, arms crossed, and let out a slow breath.
"You know about the job," she said.
"Tell me anyway."
"Four years at the Riverwalk property. Event manager.
I was—" A small pause. "I was really good at it.
I could run twelve vendors and a live band and a mother of the bride simultaneously and never drop a single thing.
" Something fond and tired moved through her expression.
"And then the hotel shut down and I lost my job and everything just… stopped."
"And then?"
"And then it was just me. In my apartment.
Watching the savings go." She picked at a thread on her sleeve.
"I have good people. My parents, Daniela.
I wasn't alone." Another pause. "But I was lonely in this specific way.
Like I'd built this whole life and it just—stopped.
And everything I'd been working toward kept getting pushed further out and further out and I ran out of patience for waiting for the version where everything was in order first." She looked at me sideways. "Hence the spreadsheet."
"Hence the spreadsheet," I said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"And now?" I said.
She looked around the kitchen. At the cottage, the afternoon light, the ridiculous bench sitting on the counter between us.
"Now I wake up and your mother has made biscuits," she said.
"And your dad is talking about limestone and Haven is pretending not to watch Wyatt and Neto is just—there, being Neto, and the goats are losing their minds about something, and I have nowhere to be and I'm not scared.
" She stopped. Her voice had gone quieter.
"I haven't felt at home anywhere in three years. And I've been here ten days."
I looked at her.
She looked back, something careful and a little braced in it.
"That scares me," she said. "How fast it is."
"I know," I said.
"You could decide—" She stopped. "Things end."
"They do," I said.
"That's not—"
"I'm not trying to reassure you," I said.
"I'm agreeing with you that things end." I turned to face her fully.
"I'm also telling you that I haven't thought about this as an arrangement in about a week.
Don't know exactly when that stopped but it did.
" I held her gaze. "What I want after is you at that table. In this house. Having my baby and staying and maybe…well, maybe havin’ another one if that's what you want, and my dad telling you things about limestone for the next thirty years. "
She stared at me.
"Gage."
"I know it's fast."
"It's extremely fast."
"I know."
"We've known each other for—"
"Ten days," I said. "I know exactly how long it's been."
She looked at me for a long moment. That careful, considering look that I was coming to understand meant she was deciding whether to let herself believe something.
"Yes," she said finally. Small and certain. "I want that."
Something settled in me. The last thing that had been waiting to settle.
I picked up the bench.
"Okay," I said. "Now show me how this works."
She laughed—that full, helpless laugh—and snatched it back from me.
"You're unbelievable," she said.
"You bought it," I said. "I'm just being thorough."
"You said that already."
"Still true." I held out my hand for the silicone cup. "Start from the beginning. Walk me through the whole thing."
She looked at my outstretched hand. Looked at my face. Shook her head slowly.
"Bedroom," she said.
"That's what I've been saying," I said.
And she grabbed the box off the counter and led the way down the hall, and I followed her, and thought about thirty years of limestone conversations and a table that always had too many people at it and felt like a man who had accidentally walked into the best thing that had ever happened to him and had the good sense to stay.