Chapter 26

Millie

Pacing back and forth across your childhood bedroom floor as your family lost their minds was kinda embarrassing at school. As a twenty eight year old, it felt like a moral failing, yet here I was, unable to stop until there was a gentle knock at the door. The rhythmic pattern one I recognised because it was Jamie and my secret knock from when we were little. I jerked open the door and saw her there, shook my head, and then held out the door for her to come in. It was shut and locked as soon as I heard shouts from down the hall.

“Hey,” she said, rubbing her hands on her shorts.

“Hey.” I swallowed hard, then shook my head. “How bad is it out there?”

She shrugged.

“They’re processing. We’re all processing, but you…” She moved closer and put a hand on my arm. “You’re the one who’s processing the most. How are you holding up?”

“What, apart from being treated like some kind of virgin that’s been despoiled? Dandy.” That came out way too abrupt. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She shook her head. “I knew your brothers were caught up in that whole protective he-man bullshit, but damn… We had an argument, and somehow that devolved into a feminist diatribe that women aren’t property as well as some uncomfortable truths about the fact that they are perfectly happy to have orgies with my brothers’ sister, but you doing the same is somehow beyond the pale.”

Her lips curved into a wicked smile.

“Three fucking firefighters?”

Someone finally got it.

“I know.”

“I mean, three hot ones.” She pointed to the old calendar hanging up on my wall. “Like Aussie firefighter calendar ones?”

“Hotter.”

I blushed and felt proud all at the same time because Jamie got it. I wasn’t her sister or daughter or someone to be protected. It was just us, and we always celebrated when one of us got the good dick.

“Oh my god.” She flumped down on my bed. “I half want to break up with your brothers and see if they have hot single friends.”

“God, don’t do that.” I sat down beside her. “Brock’s break up poetry would be worse than mine.”

She nodded slowly, then shot me a sidelong look.

“So… Noah Taylor?”

My bestie remembered the whole damn debacle, because she was the only one I could confess even half of what I was going through to.

“He came out of the smoke having just put out the fire and my eyes nearly fell out of my head.” Her grin widened. “That was after his big, gruff teammate picked me up and carried me away from danger.”

“Ohhkay, let's back things up a bit. Everyone’s focussed on the end game.” She looked down at my stomach. “But I want all the deets. Start with the fire.”

So I did. As my family worked through their feelings, we worked through ours. I told her about the fire and the party. She laughed at the tour, then went wide eyed at the drinking game.

“So you told him that you always thought he’d be your first kiss? You just told him.”

Jamie had been at me back then to try and have a private conversation with Noah, but after that very public rejection, I wasn’t up for it.

“I told him. He couldn’t exactly shame me in front of the whole school again, could he? I didn’t know anyone there and I was drunk, so truth bombs were dropped.”

“And then you…?”

For a woman taking three dicks on the regular, she was curiously coy.

“And then the sleazy guy had to go home because his girlfriend turned up. No!” It was coming back in fits and starts. “I kissed Knox first.”

“In front of Noah!” She punched me in the arm and apologised immediately. “Shit, pregnant woman.”

“Pretty sure that just applies to my stomach,” I said. “Yeah, in front of Noah. I figured that he’d made clear he didn’t want me, so I just went for it.”

“And was Knox any good?”

I sighed, almost able to feel that kiss again. Probably because he left my lips almost bruised afterwards. From kissing him, from sucking that massive dick… I shook my head. It was almost a pity he wasn’t up for something more serious, because coming home to that every night would be no chore at all.

“But how do you know that he’s not interested?” Jamie asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Dude.”

“Did he say something?”

“He doesn’t have to. Just because you’re all loved up now doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten that guys hate commitment. Going out on an actual date rather than just ‘meeting for coffee’ i.e. checking out if you’re an uggo or not is hard enough to get, let alone a husband and a father…”

“OK, so what about Noah or Charlie, was it?”

I saw Charlie’s cocky smile right then, clear as day, but I shook my head in the face of it.

“Pretty sure Charlie was just there for a bit of fun and we had that, and Noah…?” I looked down at the card I’d pulled from the flowers, but when Jamie did the same, I shoved it into my pocket. “I mean, how do you do that? Have a relationship with someone after you just banged his teammates.”

“With him.” She looked at me hard. “He was there. He jumped in head first, or was it dick first?” Jamie made a show of considering that before I gave her a sharp nudge. “He was into it. Some guys, y’know, even your brothers.”

But I wasn’t Jamie.

There was no jealousy in me. She and I had kissed a lot of toads before she found her harem HEA, but unfortunately, most of her brothers were either one, married, or two, really repellent. Frankie was OK, but his now-wife was amazing.

“I’m just being realistic,” I told her.

“Trying to anticipate being hurt by not even allowing for the possibility,” she countered.

“Potato, potahto,” I grumbled before looking at the door. “So, how bad is it really?”

“Bad.” We both laughed at that. She was my ride or die, but that didn’t mean Jamie would soft soap things. “But they’ll manage. McDonalds always do. You come together in the face of adversity, not tear each other apart. When everyone calms down, they’ll remember that.”

“So, get my bony arse out there and face the music is what you’re saying.”

We both stood up, looking at the door like it was covered with Huntsman spiders, not the old pop idol posters I’d stuck on it. I sucked in a breath, turned the door knob, and walked out.

“There you are.” Mum had obviously talked long and hard to Dad, because he was now in caretaker mode. “Come and sit down.”

He moved forward, ready to guide me to the couch like I was a senior citizen or something.

“OK.” I sat down and so did everyone else. The twins still looked vaguely homicidal, but Brock was curiously calm.

“Look, love, we’ve been talking—” Dad started to say.

“I know. I could hear you ‘talking.’” I flexed my fingers for emphasis.

“And we think it’d be best for you to move back home.”

“What?” I looked around at Jamie in outrage, but she just threw her hands up, making clear she was not a part of this betrayal. “I’m twenty-eight years old. I own my own apartment.”

“An apartment that’s four flights up,” Dad continued. “That’s not a safe place to bring up a little one, and you’re not working.”

“I’ve got savings?—”

“And how long will they last?” Mum asked. Et tu, Brute. “Children are expensive.”

“You won’t be able to work when he or she is little,” Dad kept going.

“Plenty of mums put their babies in care,” I shot back.

“But you won’t want to.” Mum was pulling out the big guns, because out of anyone here, she was the only one who knew. Who’d been through childbirth, who’d raised three kids. She was supposed to be my Yoda, teaching me the ways, without dying theatrically of course, but still. “Childbirth is… a lot. If you think you’re feeling rough now.”

Ulp. I went to get a drink for my suddenly dry throat, but Hayden handed me a bottle of water. I drank it down greedily.

“We’re having a baby.” It felt like Hayden was convincing himself, not me. “And we’re all going to have to pull together. You can move back in here. Mum can babysit.”

“Oh, I’d love that.” That’s when I saw how they’d turned my own mother against me. “I’ve got nothing to do but rattle around in this house. There was discussion of me going back to nursing, maybe doing some doula work, but looking after my own grandchild? I could mind them while you work?—”

“We?” I sucked a breath of air in. “We aren’t doing anything, unless you’re going to squeeze a watermelon out of your butthole, Haybale.”

“Loving the mental image,” Hunter snarked. “Just beautiful.”

“God…” I had a horrible thought. “Phyllis is never going to be the same after this.”

“You call your vagina Phyllis?” That, out of all the ridiculousness of today, was what Brock focussed on, but yep, he looked up at Jamie. “What do you call yours?”

“Madge.” Jamie and I said it at the same time. “Madge the vag.”

“OK, enough talking about… things like that.” Dad waved his hand in our direction. The old man could be curiously prudish about these things. “Millie, seriously, we need to find a solution here.”

“A job.” I had an idea, one I really didn’t want to consider. “A nice secure job with the government.” I saw Brent then and Judy. “One with the option of a permanent position and maternity leave.”

“Oh, that would be perfect,” Mum said, following that with a frown. “But where would you find a job like that?”

I was standing in my garden with a card in my hand, but it wasn’t the one Noah left for me. I needed to attend to that, the thought like a niggle in my brain, but avoiding moving home with my parents was the first cab off the rank. I sucked in a breath, focussing on the air filling my lungs, then leaving them, over and over as I did something I never normally would.

Ring a potential boss on Christmas bloody Day.

In my mind, I saw myself leaving a message oh-so-casually enquiring about the job he’d offered me. If he’d filled Judy’s position, maybe he’d know of something else. A voicemail, that’s all it’d be. One Brent could listen to and discard if needed.

What I didn’t expect was for him to answer the goddamn phone.

“Brent Andrews.”

“Um, hi, Merry Christmas!” Oh my god, that’s what I started with? Your name, dickhead. Your name . “This is Millie, Millie McDonald. We met?—”

“At the Christmas party! Yes, I remember you.” His big, booming voice helped alleviate a little of my anxiety. “Noah’s friend.”

“Right, we…” Had an orgy in your bunkroom. I forged on, “Are old school friends. Look, sorry to bother you on Christmas Day. I thought your phone would go to voicemail.”

“Can’t stand newfangled things like that.”

What the actual…? Even Mum and Dad had an answering machine on their landline back in the day.

“Right, right, so again, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you still had that admin position open?”

He sucked in a breath and it felt like my heart went with it, fluttering like a wounded bird. Rejection, that’s what I prepared myself for, but instead I got this.

“Can you start the day after New Year’s Day?”

“New Year’s Day…?” I was so dumbfounded I just stared blankly before the adrenaline kicked in. “Yes, of course, that would be perfect.”