Page 45 of Milo
I turn to face the field again, my brow furrowed, unable to meet his steady eyes. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “It’s taken me a bit by surprise.”
“Niall, I know you love to live up to the image of the Lord of Misrule, but this is going a bit far.”
“Didn’t the Lord of Misrule only reign over Christmas?”
“Don’t distract me.” He pauses. “But you are right.” He shakes his head. “No. Stick to the subject, Silas.” I smile but it dies with his next words. “Niall, this is serious. You were fucking his brother last month and now suddenly you’re with him. Does Gideon know?”
“No,” I say sharply. “It’s none of his business.”
“Says you. Gideon might say otherwise.”
“Gideon can,” I say firmly. “But we have no ties and we’ve never made any promises.”
“Niall, I’m pretty sure that covenant didn’t include fucking his brother. I know Gideon is relaxed but that’s ridiculous.” He stares at me. “And what about Milo? What’s he going to do when this collapses around you like a paper card house?”
“Perhaps you’d be better off being more concerned about me,” I say curtly. “Milo is just experimenting and getting his feet wet.” I look at Silas. “You know what Thomas did to him.” His face clouds with anger and I nod. “Well, those scars go deep, and Milo hasn’t got the experience to know that what he had with that wanker is very far from a healthy sexual relationship.” He winces, and I nod. Anything else is Milo’s secret, not mine. Ishrug and turn back to the field. “He’s just trying things out with someone familiar. Someone he trusts enough not to belittle or hurt him.”
“Why does he trust you?”
The question is gentle, but it stings me like he’s taken a blade to my flesh. “I may be carefree, Silas, but I’m not fucking cruel. I would do anything for him.Anything,”I repeat fervently.
There’s a short – and I just know that it’s shocked – silence. Then he taps me on the arm until I turn to him. He has a wondering expression on his face. “Oh my God,” he says quietly. “You care for him.”
“Of course I do. He’s my oldest friend’s brother and he’s my friend too.” The latter is said a little too hard to be convincing. He shakes his head. He’ll allow me to get away with this now, but I know we’ll return to it later. Silas is big on friendship and taking care of people.
“Even so, please be careful, Niall. I’m even more worried now.”
“Why?”
“Because Milo, despite being shy, has an ability to bounce back from things. He’s not aware of it but it’s always there. It’s like he’s made of a very quiet and unassuming India rubber. Butyou.”
He pauses, and I turn. “What?”
“You are very different,” he says softly. “For all your flippancy, you’re still the boy I first met who was loyal and honest and believed in true love. Wasn’t it you who told me that it would come?”
I feel a flush on my cheeks. “Silas, we were ten. I still thought Father Christmas was real, albeit rather creepy with all that letting himself into strangers’ houses and helping himself to food. Obviously, I didn’t know a lot.”
“Or maybe you were the one who really did.”
I shake my head. “Silas, I hate to tell you this, but he doesn’t live in the North Pole and elves did not organise your Christmas presents.”
“That certainly accounts for the year I got a bottle of gin for Christmas. I always thought Santa had been having a bad day. My mother obviously forgot to go to the shops.”
I laugh but sober quickly. “I don’t believe in true love and that’s patently obvious. I’ve had too many partners to count, unless we’re using your fingers and mine and the villagers after that.”
“You haven’t had partners. You’ve had hook-ups,” he says sternly. “A partner is someone you trust and someone who trusts you. Someone to make you laugh and someone who can make you so mad you want to leave, but at the same time so happy that you know you’ll never go. A partner is someone who is there for you in good and bad times and all the in-between stuff.”
“Well, that’s lovely. Excuse me for not wanting to sign up for all that. It sounds positively exhausting.”
“You’ve never signed up for it because you’ve never met anyone worth doing that for.” He pauses. “Or maybe you’ve just been waiting for Milo. Waiting for him to get well and for your time to come.”
“Ugh! You should give up veterinary medicine and take up writing romance. You’ve got appallingly and embarrassingly Mills and Boon since you met that small Irishman.”
He shakes his head, an arrested expression on his face. “That’s it, isn’t it. I’ve always thought you were almost in suspended animation, and the way you hovered over him and got him better, he couldn’t have had a better or more caring nurse.” I grimace at him and he bites his lip. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think for a second that you did it with any forethought. That would be like Scooby Doo writing a criminology handbook.” He laughs, and I glare at him until hecoughs and returns to his ridiculous subject matter. “I just think you were waiting for him and you didn’t know it. You’ve been biding your time, waiting for him to see you properly.”
“I’m sure you’ve taken that plot from a book that probably had the words billionaire and love-child in it,” I say sourly.
He laughs. “Hmm, I think that’s probably one of your old ones. Didn’t I catch you reading your mother’s Mills and Boon once?”
