Page 71 of Wild Card (The Trident Trilogy 3)

Mason, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 2020

“Hey. I cleared Millie back.” Butch looks at me like what he said should make sense. “She doesn’t have her agency credentials anymore, so she’s in the visitor’s area.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Millie. I’m talking about Millie. You remember her—blonde hair, sassy attitude.”

I shake my head, hoping that it will jump-start my brain. “Millie’s here? On the base?”

“Yeah. Like I just said. In the visitor’s area. Were you not expecting her?”

“No. She’s supposed to be in the Outer Banks. What’s she doing here?”

“Do I know? I just cleared her back.” He takes a few steps toward me and lowers his voice. “Are y’all have problems or something?”

“Not that I know of.” I turn my head to the outside door. Suddenly I’m nervous.

“Maybe she’s finally come to her senses and is here to break up with you.”

I whip my head around and glare at him. “Shut up, Butch.”

“I’m kidding, Mase. Damn. Don’t kill the messenger.” He steps back a few feet and points toward the door. “You know who would probably know why she’s here? Millie. And as I mentioned several times, she’s here, right now, two hundred yards from you.”

He chuckles as he walks away. I’m not finding any of this funny. A million things are running through my mind right now and none of them are good. I open the door and see Millie sitting on a picnic table. An overwhelming feeling of déjà vu crashes into me. I feel like I’ve seen her sitting on that exact table before. I’m trying to get my brain to focus, but the memory feels far away.

As she looks over at me, I shake my head to try to get my mind back in the present. She waves and tries to smile. I can tell she’s upset. I run over to her—covering the distance between us in a few seconds.

“Millie?” As I close in on her, I see her eyes are brimming with water. I can tell she’s about to break down. I grab her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong, baby?”

She rubs her eyes, causing a few tears to escape. “I’m fine. I just need to talk to you in person. I messed up, Mase.”

I take a step back and inhale a long, slow breath. “Okay. Just tell me. Whatever it is. I don’t care how bad it is. We’re going to figure it out.”

She looks up at me and nods slightly. “Do you remember in Pakistan—the night you got out of the hospital—when we had sex?”

“Uh, yeah. I remember that very fondly,” I say, laughing. “And if I remember correctly—and I think I do—you didn’t mess up that night. In fact, you did a lot of things very right.”

“Mase, no, I mean with everything happening there—finding dad, you getting shot. It was a lot,” she says, wringing her hands. She looks down, “and I think I might have forgotten to take my pill for a few days.”

I stop breathing for a second. “Wait. What?” I say, tilting her chin up as she bites her lip. “Are you pregnant?”

Before she can answer me, I lift her off the table and squeeze her tightly to me. Her legs dangle back and forth in the air as she wraps her arms around my neck.

“I messed up,” she says softly.

“You didn’t mess up,” I whisper. “Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

I put her down and wipe the tears off her cheeks. She looks up at me and smiles faintly.

“Do you know for sure?” I help her back onto the table. “Like how? I mean, not how. But, how do you know? Are you late?”

“Yeah.” She nods and looks up at me. “By a little more than a week. I’m rarely late. And I’ve been getting sick in the mornings. Remember when I threw up and you blamed the burrito? And Dad and I went surfing this morning. I got dizzy and fell off. I never fall off—”

“Mills,” I say, pulling her against my chest tightly. “That’s really dangerous. Are you okay? Did you hit your head? You could have drowned.”

“I’m fine. Dad was with me.”

“Wait, does Mack know you might be pregnant?”

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