Page 105 of Set Me On Fire

“Right, right…”

I was up and out of the car and around to her door, pulling it open for her to step out. Buster’s barks were muffled by the house but got louder as I unlocked the front door.

“Buster…” I growled, hoping to get him on his best behaviour. When the door swung open, he caught sight of her and went into a sit.

“Oh, look at you.”

I thought I needed to buy out a baby store for Millie to impress her, when apparently all I needed was a cute dog. She rushed forward, crouching down, and he was so very good. He didn’t jump up for a second, tail wagging furiously, as he stayed in a sit. Those brown eyes met mine as she gave his chest ascratch. He was just a dog, but right then, I imagined he knew. This was someone important to me, important to us, and I needed him to like her.

“Oh my god…” she spluttered as he gave her a big lick.

“Shit, sorry!” I said, leaping forward, ready to get between them. The idiot could get over excited sometimes.

“Don’t be.” Millie wiped her cheek on her sleeve. “He was just giving me a kiss hello.”

“So that’s what it takes to get you smiling?” I moved closer, no longer caring about showing her the skylight I put in or the kitchen, not when she was here. Her smile faded as my hand slid into her hair, but there was a residual twinkle in her eye.

“You guys seem to get me smiling way too easily,” she said in a low voice, turning her cheek into my palm, but something stopped her. “Though that’s not why I’m here. You said you had something to show me?”

I wish I had gone to the baby store today, that I’d filled the room with a million different things she might want. I could take back what she didn’t, but instead, all I could do was show her the empty room. Clean, smelling slightly of bleach, the breeze had the filmy curtains shifting.

“This is where you want my baby growing up?”

She moved slowly, carefully, hand raised, but to touch what, I didn’t know. Millie seemed to, though. She wasn’t seeing the empty room, that one cobweb I’d missed, or even Buster, who had to come rushing in to see what was happening. No, when she turned towards me, I knew she was seeing something else. A future, I got that from her slow smile, my own lips forming the same expression because I was determined to make sure she got the one of her dreams.

Chapter 48

Millie

Why is this the thing that made it all feel real? Not the doctor and her clinical office, with the diagrams of human anatomy on the wall. Not even when I was forced to lie down on her examination table and she felt my belly. No, it was this room, recently scrubbed clean and empty that had me seeing it. A white-painted crib with a mosquito net suspended above it. A big comfy arm chair in the corner for me to sit in and feed my baby. I hadn’t even bothered looking in my spare room, the junk piled in there too depressing to consider tackling, but this room. The way the natural light spilled in through the windows, the view of the garden beyond. It was…

“Perfect,” I told him, grinning because I couldn’t help it.

My family was all over me, wanting only the best, but in their mind, it was me holed up in their house. A child with a child, and that’s not how I wanted this to go. I loved my apartment. The views of the sea were the main selling point. I could lie on my couch and watch the storms roll in, the surfers below tiny points of colour in the surging sea, but could I see a baby, a toddler, growing up there? My neighbour, the grumpy Mrs.Smith, got cranky if anyone walked on the floor ‘too hard,’ blaming her dog’s incessant barking on us, so how would she cope with the antics of a small child? Buster wagged his tail furiously, as if he could follow my train of thought and might possibly eat Jonesy for me.

“So you want?—”

“Whatever you want,” Knox said, forcing me to laugh, but he remained deadly serious.

“Knox, we need to talk about this. I can’t just move in here.”

“Why can’t you?” He was so damn intense, something that only became more apparent as he stepped closer. “Why can’t you, Millie?”

“Because…” I didn’t want to talk about this in here. I felt weirdly protective of the space. Once I was out in the hallway, I could unburden myself. “Because last night Noah stayed over.”

“Any reason you’re whispering that?” he asked with a smirk. “We guessed that was probably gonna happen.”

I had a terrible thought.

“Do you guys have a private chat? Do you discuss what happens?”

“We might.”

His arms crossed his chest as his grin widened.

“So what do you do, give me a mark out of ten for services rendered or something? Write Yelp reviews?” I mimicked tapping my fingers on a keyboard. “‘Millie’s head jobs have an excellent slobber-to-tongue ratio, but she needs to watch her teeth.’”

“No.” He stepped closer and Buster let out a little whine. “Charlie does his best to pretend he’s not completely jealous by cracking stupid jokes.” Another step closer. “I check in and make sure everyone’s OK.”

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