Page 55 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

“By the time you answer them, I’ll have a hundred thousand questions.”

“And I’ll be fully recharged and able to answer a million.” Milo yawned, genuine exhaustion weighing on him. Or he’d done it to manipulate and guilt me since he already knew I was hovering nearby in my extended telepathy form. “We’ll talk soon, I promise. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork first and then some case files to check in on with my acolytes, and I just need a few days to decompress. Don’t worry, though.”

I wouldn’t worry. Or I’d do my best not to worry. At the very least, I was grateful to have Milo home, close to me.

Chapter Fifteen

Milo was back in the city. Milo had defeated The True Witch. Milo had invited me to his place. Fuck. Only one of those things seemed real. Milo’s return. No way would a witch of that caliber simply surrender. Sure, Gladiatrix was an indomitable force, but The True Witch possessed an arcane branch that could shatter a psyche. Had she really not accounted for the Global Guild retaliating?

And Milo invited me to his place. He’d missed me so much that he decided I should come see him. That was truly startling because he never invited me to his place. If anything suggested the world was about to come to an end, it was Milo hosting for a change.

I arrived at Cyrus Bay Estates, the most elegant building in downtown Chicago with marble coated wards to keep out uninvited guests and enchanted windows that promised the best views because they removed anything unwanted when peering outside. The opulence of this building made me quake. Even the door attendants dressed more sharply than I did, wearing fine suits.

I lingered outside, smoking a cigarette and contemplating ditching Milo’s invitation and telling him to just meet me at my place. I’d never been to his home. For good reason, too. Lookat this elegant fucking monstrosity. It was modern, magical, historical, and expensive. So fucking expensive. I was pretty sure I’d have to pay a fee just to stand here loitering with a smoke.

It’d already been a few days since Milo had returned to the city, and I was only just now getting an invitation. He might’ve been too busy to fly over to my house. Or he had to stay home, stay close to his guild, to the MDC, to the Global Guild members likely staying in some equally fancy hotel in the heart of downtown.

One of the door attendants eyed me up, head to toe, definitely with a scrutinizing gaze.

“I’m ah, um, er, hmmm.” I backstepped, realizing I still had a cigarette in my hand that felt oddly out of place, like the mere audacity tarnished this pristine place.

“Mr. Frost, correct?” The attendant tilted their head knowingly while the other opened the door. “Enchanter Evergreen told us to expect you.”

A quick scan of their surface thoughts revealed Milo had described me in an annoyingly unflattering yet completely accurate manner. “Keep an eye out for the grouchy guy with heavy eyeliner, wrinkled clothes, likely a smoke in hand and a frown on his face.”

Every layer of this building was met with more attendants, more expensive tastes. I went to the elevator and took it to the top floor where Milo stayed in the penthouse.

When the elevator stopped, I tried to absorb the corridor leading to Milo’s door. It took him all of three seconds to whip open the door and greet me with a goofy grin. “You’re late.”

“Traffic.” I shrugged, shaking off the out-of-place feeling of this building.

Milo, Enchanter Evergreen, The Inevitable Future, acted like such an everyman, average guy that it was sort of easy to forget he was also one of the wealthiest people in the city. I mean, foran enchanter. He had nothing on guild masters or those who sat on the boards of guilds, but as the number one enchanter in the state, a recent member of the Global Guilds, and a huge fucking celebrity icon—Milo’s take-home income towered over my humble teacher salary.

“Get out of your head.” Milo had this knowing smirk, the kind where he studied each worry line on my face and had to remind me that it didn’t matter if I fit in this world; I fit in his world, his life, and everything else was just background noise.

“I’ve missed you.” I tried to take in the splendor of the penthouse foyer, imagining even more captivating things further inside, but truthfully, I couldn’t take my eyes off Milo.

I was drawn to him. He wore a violet silk dress shirt and light brown slacks that matched his suit jacket. The pants were tight and left little to the imagination, especially since mine currently ran wild with ideas of everything I wanted to do with that hot body. There were certainly discussions to be had, but right now, I wanted to taste Milo’s skin, feel his body pressed against mine, sync our minds and sensations into pure primal passion.

I stepped close, removing the distance between us so I could kiss him. Hell, it’d be hard not to mount him here and now, strip off that sexy suit and—

“Hold on.” Milo braced with his hands up, pressing against my chest and keeping my lips from meeting his.

“Someone’s playing hard to get,” I teased him, sending suggestive images when uttering the word ‘hard’ and grazing his crotch with the back of my hand.

“Dorian, I actually need to tell you something.”

I quirked a brow.

“Why hello there, Mister Dorian, sir.” The blue-haired kid Whatshisname walked into the foyer, taking a gentleman’s bow that he’d worked on with Milo. The steps played in his surfacethoughts, like a game of some sort they panned out. “May I take your coat?”

“I’m not wearing a coat.”

The kid’s eyes widened, mind buzzing through a thousand contingencies and completely incapable of figuring out what to do next. He’d studied or prepared or assumed, for whatever reason, that he would greet the person at the door and take their coat.

As the anxious confusion bubbled in the suddenly cramped foyer, I found myself feeling bad. Like I’d caused this trepidation.

The fuck?

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