Chapter 38

Charlie

Millie was pregnant…

My mind stuttered, threatened to stop altogether, on that statement, needing to explore the ramifications of what that meant, but of course, dickhead Dave started to squirm in my grip. I twisted the back of his collar viciously, cutting enough of his air off to stop him fighting me. I knew what he was doing in there the moment I walked in. He figured he’d go bravely where the three of us had gone before, whether Millie was up for it or not. That reality had me twisting harder, but unless I was happy with a homicide charge on my rap sheet, I needed to back off. I dropped him to the floor, watching him gasp.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” I snarled, a strange kind of fury taking over me. I could be a hothead, but right now, I was ice cold. Nothing short of dismemberment would placate me.

“Pregnant…” He flopped back onto the floor, gasping in breaths as I prowled closer. “So who’s the father?” The stupid prick rolled up, his smile faltering for a second as he rubbed the red spot on his neck, but it returned when he looked at me. “Do you even know?”

I knew nothing, I wanted to snap. One minute I was in heaven, and the next Millie had slunk away, as if what we’d done was somehow shameful. I’d come back to the possible reasons why over and over like a sore tooth. She wasn’t that into us. She had a boyfriend. She just made a habit of finding three guys who were into her and banging them. None of those scenarios felt right, so I was still waiting for answers.

But right now, I needed to focus on this.

“I know this.” I crossed my arms. “You’re going down, you fucking prick. I saw everything.” I didn’t. If I had, I’d have put Dave through a wall, not dragged him out here, but this was better. Brent was just waiting for an opportunity to fire the bastard. “HR is going to have a field day.”

“Same goes for your baby mumma.”

Millie came staggering out into the hall looking way too pale. I rushed towards her, noting the limp, and went to hold her upright when she marched forward.

“What did you say?”

He licked his lip, and that had me moving into the space between them. If he was gonna leer at anyone, it’d be me.

“Seems like we’ve both got a lot to talk to HR about.” Dave tried to look past me, but I moved, making sure to stay in his line of sight. “Not sure if they’d be real keen to offer a permanent position to a woman who’s just gonna go out on mat leave.”

Was that why Millie took the job? It hadn’t made sense. Why blow me off if she was just gonna take over Judy’s position? But if I was a woman that got unexpectedly pregnant, who found herself jobless over Christmas…

Maybe that would sound like a totally reasonable thing to do.

I went still.

“You keep your mouth shut and I’ll do the same.”

“No.” What the fuck had Dave intended to do, sexually assault Millie? At what point would he have stopped? I sucked in one breath, then another, before lunging forward. I shoved him up against the wall, loving the way his mouth went slack. He knew he’d fucked up. It took serious effort not to punch his teeth down his throat most days, but now…

He was going to hurt the mother of my child.

Something snapped inside my head, a thin whining sound growing and growing as Dave tried to claw himself free. It’d never work. I was bigger, taller, stronger, better, and he was about to find out exactly what kind of mistake he’d made.

“No…” Millie’s face swam into view, cutting through the red haze when Dave’s grunts did nothing but egg me on. “Charlie, I need you to let him go.”

No, she didn’t. She just needed me. I’d look after Millie, the intensity of that feeling taking me by surprise, but I was glad for it. Sometimes in all the haze and smoke, all you could do was look for the point of light that indicated the way out and run for it. I stared into her eyes.

I was running.

Being a dad wasn’t even on my mind, but all of a sudden I could see it, a little girl with her fair hair, looking up at me like I made the world. I smiled slightly, seeing myself throwing her up onto my shoulders, listening to her giggle as I ran her around the room. I’d be the best dad, the best I could be, and?—

“I need this job,” she said.

“No.”

Her lips thinned and that fire in her eyes, it wasn’t the warm kind from that night. It burned ice cold and straight into me.

“You can drag Dave into Brent’s office, but I’m not saying anything.” She shot him a dark look when he let out a wheezy laugh. “Because you will not come within ten feet of me or any other woman that exists in this building. I have three brothers who are big bastards.” Dave’s smile faded as quickly as it formed. “They’re handy with a wrench and a nail gun. If they hear about what you tried to do to me?” I felt his Adam’s apple bob. “You’ll wish you were hauled up to deal with HR, because there won’t be enough left of you for your family to identify.”

I hated the moment he pushed me off. I hated letting him, but Dave wasn’t my focus, Millie was. He watched the moment my hands rose, flexing on air, wanting to pull her closer, but I couldn’t, not until I knew she wanted that. The dumb fuck snorted at that.

“Good luck with your cum dump?—”

I’d apologise later, but my reflexes were fast and my self-control was slow. I cracked the cunt straight in the face, forcing him back with a yelp.

“We’re getting out of here.”

I steered Millie out of the station, into the car park, and towards my truck, unlocking it before we got within ten feet of it. I hoisted her up into the driver’s seat all over again, stepping into the space between her legs. My hands moved, skimming over her arms, hands, face, looking for signs of injury like I did after any other disaster, before meeting her eyes.

“You OK?” I needed an answer to that right now. “He hurt you? You can tell me. I’ll sort it out.”

It was her hand coming to rest on my cheek that had me going still, just staring up at her. I remembered that smile, sweet with just a little mocking edge, as she shook her head.

“I think we’ve done enough. You punched him out. I kneed him in the nuts and did my best to break his nose.”

“Yeah?” I was grinning like a fucking idiot as I raised my knuckles for her to bump. “Damn, my baby mumma kicks arse…”

Of course that was when all the joy was sucked out of the moment. My face fell when hers did, something much more serious, more vulnerable rising in her eyes.

“I wanted to tell you.”

“Hey, it's OK.”

Fuck, it felt good, rubbing my hands on her thighs to try and soothe her.

“I did not want to take this job, but there was nothing else, and my parents were losing their freaking minds. Things are starting to settle down.” She waved a hand. “I can find something else.”

“Don’t.” It felt like she was slipping through my fingers, right when I’d just gotten her back. “This is a good place to work, the job has great benefits. It’d be perfect…” My eyes dropped down and I shook my head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Can you walk me through this whole thing?”

“Well, when a woman and three men like each other very much, sometimes they have naked fun, forget to use condoms.” I didn’t forget. The velvet suck of her cunt was too damn good for me to even think about it. “And the woman realises too damn late that the antibiotics she was taking interfere with her birth control pill.”

“Fuck…” My hands couldn’t stop moving, tracing the shapes of her thighs. “When did you find out?”

Yet somehow I knew. This was a gift I’d never expected to get, and so when she smiled and said, “Christmas Day,” that made sense. I shook my head, counting down the days, and that had her wincing.

“You’ve been going through this all by yourself? Babe…”

She said she was pregnant, not that she wanted anything else from me, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. My hand traced the curve of her cheek, up until my fingers plunged into her hair. I thought I’d imagined how soft it felt, but nope, this was even better. I was edging closer, aware that I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t seem to stop. My mouth and hers, they seemed to be magnetised, destined to lock together. Her breath was coming in faster and faster, in time with mine, but when I leaned forward, my phone started to ring.

“Shit…”

“For the love of god, tell me it's not your girlfriend,” Millie hissed.

“Girlfriend?” I tapped on the screen. “What do you want, Knox?”

Her eyes widened, her expression morphing from turned on to scared in seconds, and I quickly realised why. I was having a little moment imagining myself as the daddy, but there were actually three contenders for that title. That’s when her invitation started to make sense. Get us all together in a public place and break the news to us, relying on that to stop us from exploding. She had to have been forced to do something like that in the past. Not now, I swore, I’d take the boys aside and?—

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Good afternoon to you, Fort Knox,” I replied, winking at her.

I had this handled. If the grumpy prick was going to be difficult about this, I’d give him a little… attitude adjustment before he even got within ten feet of Millie. Stress was bad for a baby, and at that my hand moved. Her eyelids fluttered as I placed my palm on her stomach, knowing that there was nothing to feel right now, but… I wanted the little guy or girl to know Daddy was here. All the way, for the entire process, I was in. Her brows creased then smoothed, hope rose, died, and was reborn in her eyes, and I watched her every response.

“What’re you doing?” Knox snapped. “Training session started ten minutes ago.”

“I’m with Millie.”

His irritation couldn’t touch me, not when I felt her skin against mine. She was like this sweet bubble that protected me from everything.

“Right.” The way the heat went out of his voice was almost comical. “Well, I’ll cover you until you get back, but…” I could almost hear something cracking inside him with the effort of having to unbend. “Let me know what’s going on when you get back in here.”

I had every intention of doing just that.

Millie might’ve wanted to break things to us as a group, but right now, I had other plans. Those fuckers needed to get on the daddy train or leave her the hell alone. That same need to protect, to beat her enemies into the ground, that ruled me in the hallway rose in the face of imagined threats. I’d clear the way for her so that by the time the cafe date came along, only those men worthy of being part of this process attended.

“I gotta go.” People told me I was reckless all the time, but I could never find the requisite level of guilt, especially when it felt so good. I leaned in and stole that kiss, her lips so damn soft I wanted to lose myself in them, but I couldn’t. Being a parent meant being responsible, planning ahead, and I knew what I needed to do. “But I’ll see you tonight at the cafe.”

I pressed my truck keys into her hands and then turned before she could say anything. I trusted her with my car, with my everything.

Dave looked up when I walked in the door of the training room, but when he tried to sneer my way, I just wiggled my fingers in greeting. I slid into the seat at my team’s table as Noah and Knox leant forward.

“I’ve gotta take a shit,” Henry said, knowing something was going down and not wanting to get involved, leaving the table to just us.

“Alright, if I can get everyone to start the group activity,” the trainer announced.

I had another idea in mind.

“What’s going on?” Noah hissed. “Knox said you were with Millie, and Dave walked in here with a black eye.”

“Walked into a door.” I dismissed that with a wave of my hand. “I know what’s going on now, why she took this job, why she was avoiding us.” Knox stiffened, leaning back as Noah drew closer. I smiled at each one of them, pretty sure I knew how this would go. “Millie’s pregnant, and one of us is the father.”