Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Millie
It had only taken four weeks…and I was pregnant.
It was all I could think about as we showed my parents and Daniela around the property…
as Gage took my hand and we walked around the goat pasture, introducing Daniela to Dolly and the whole crew.
Sawyer came over on one of the horses while we were there, and I practically felt Daniela go feral in the same way I’d watched her go feral when she saw a hot guy in high school or at the bar.
I filed that away…
…I'd deal with it later.
My mother was talking about the goats. She'd been talking about the goats for ten minutes. Dolly had her by the sleeve and she was delighted about it, laughing in that full-body way she had, and my father was taking pictures on his phone even though I knew he didn’t have social media; the goat pictures were just for him.
Gage stood beside me and watched them and I watched him watch them—the careful way he was taking all of it in, the slight softening around his eyes that he probably didn't know was there.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach under the hem of my shirt. Just for a second.
Four weeks.
Life…blooming.
"She likes you," I told my mother, nodding at Dolly.
"She's eating my cardigan."
"She really likes you."
Daniela appeared at my elbow. She'd drifted slightly away from the group—away from where Sawyer had dismounted and was talking horses with my father, who knew nothing about horses and was clearly trying to look like he did.
"Movie guy," she said, low.
"Mm."
"He looks different off a set."
"Daniela."
She was quiet for a moment. "He looks like someone drew him."
"Daniela."
"I'm just saying." She glanced sideways at me. "I'm allowed to observe. And I mean…wouldn’t it be fun to be sister-in-laws and not just besties? We could be out here together, trying to get knocked up by our—"
I looked at her pointedly. She looked back.
Then her eyes dropped to where my hand had been, against my stomach, and something shifted in her expression.
She knew me too well. She'd known me since we were nineteen and I'd known her since before I knew myself and she had always, always been able to read me faster than I could construct a cover story.
"Camila Calloway,” she said. “You aren’t."
"Not yet," I squeaked. "I just…uh, I’m just late. I haven't even—I haven't taken a test yet. I'm telling you that right now as a—as a preliminary."
Her eyes went wide. "Are you—"
"Shh." I glanced at my mother, who was still negotiating her cardigan back from Dolly. "She cannot know yet. You know how she gets."
"She's going to lose her mind."
"Which is exactly why—"
"Millie." Daniela grabbed my arm. Her voice had dropped to something that was almost not a sound. "Are you happy?"
I looked at Gage. He was watching Sawyer demonstrate something about the horse's gait to my father, and then he must have felt me looking because he glanced over. Held my eyes for a second. One corner of his mouth moved.
"Yeah," I said. "I really am."
Daniela made a small, compressed sound that meant she was going to cry and was refusing to. She squeezed my arm instead. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I'm not saying anything. I'm a vault."
"You are historically not a vault."
"I am today." She straightened up. "I'm a vault and I'm also going to need you to tell me everything about that cousin."
"Daniela—"
"After. After you tell me everything. Priorities." She let go of my arm and smoothed her hair and walked back toward the group looking almost completely normal.
My mother finally got her cardigan free. She turned to me beaming, cheeks pink, holding the slightly damp sleeve up for inspection.
"I love it here," she announced.
Across the pasture, Gage looked over at me again. I pressed my hand flat to my stomach just for a second, just one second, where nobody could see.
He saw.
His expression didn't change. But his hand came up and pressed once, brief, against his own chest. Right over his heart.
I looked away before I cried in front of my mother in a goat pasture.
She would have had so many questions.
Dinner was loud in the way that only happened when two families who didn't know each other yet were trying to decide if they liked each other.
Peggy Holt had opinions about the seating arrangement and had reorganized it twice before anyone sat down.
Adam had opened wine without being asked, which told me he'd been briefed and was taking it seriously.
Haven was helping in the kitchen because Haven helped everywhere she went, which I'd learned in the two weeks since I'd met her—and Wyatt was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, talking to Sawyer, carefully not looking at Haven at all.
Haven, for her part, was carefully not looking at him either, except for the moments she thought nobody would notice.
I noticed.
My mother had already decided she loved Peggy. It had taken approximately four minutes and a shared opinion about garlic.
"You can never use too much," my mother was saying.
"That's exactly what I tell him," Peggy said, gesturing at Adam, who raised his hands in surrender.
"I never said too much. I said a lot."
"Same thing."
My father had found Sawyer, which I'd been watching happen across the room like a slow-motion event I couldn't stop.
Robert Calloway had three modes with men: suspicious, politely suspicious, and—apparently—enthusiastically asking questions about horses.
Sawyer was answering all of them. Daniela was pretending to look at something on her phone six feet away and listening to every word.
I caught her eye. She looked back at her phone.
Gage pulled out my chair before I could reach it.
Just—there, hand at the small of my back the way he always was.
I sat. His hand stayed a second before he moved to his own seat, and I felt my mother clock it from across the table and file it away in the part of her brain that ran on hope and saint's candles.
Haven set a dish down and took the seat beside Wyatt. She said something to him, quiet, and he answered without looking at her, eyes on his plate, jaw slightly set. Haven looked at the side of his face for just a half-second longer than necessary before she reached for the bread.
I thought: that's going to be a whole thing.
"So," Adam said, settling in, looking at my father. "Robert. Millie tells us you're in insurance."
"Retired," my father said. "Thirty years and then I was done." He picked up his wine. "You ranch full time?"
"Mostly retired from that too. Gage runs it now." Adam glanced at Gage. "Runs it better than I did."
"That's not true," Gage said.
"It's a little true," Wyatt said.
Sawyer chuckled, shaking his head.
My mother leaned toward Peggy. "How long have they been like this?"
"Their whole lives," Peggy said pleasantly. "You stop noticing."
Dinner unfolded the way good dinners do—overlapping conversations, someone always talking, someone always laughing, food passing hand to hand until the table had that warm disordered look of a meal that was actually being eaten.
My father and Sawyer had migrated to adjacent seats and were deep in something I'd lost track of.
Daniela had somehow drifted two seats closer without appearing to move.
Haven was asking my mother about San Antonio with the genuine curiosity of someone who'd grown up in a small town and found cities fascinating, and my mother was answering the way she answered everything—thoroughly, with footnotes.
I ate and watched all of it and felt the thing in my chest that I didn't have a name for yet.
Under the table, Gage found my hand.
He didn't look at me. He was listening to something Adam was saying, expression even, completely present. But his fingers closed around mine and stayed there, and I felt it move through me—warm and certain and solid—and I thought: this is the table.
Not enough chairs. Both families squeezed in. Someone always talking. Someone always laughing.
This is exactly what I was making room for.
"Millie." My mother's voice, from across the table. I looked up. She was watching me with that expression—the one she got in church sometimes, or when she thought I wasn't looking at Christmas. "You look happy."
The table went briefly, coincidentally quiet.
Gage's hand tightened around mine.
"I am," I said.
My mother picked up her wine glass. Something moved across her face—relief, maybe, or the specific satisfaction of a woman who'd lit a lot of candles and watched them pay off.
She didn't say anything else. She didn't have to.