Chapter 58

Millie

“How are you, darling?”

I turned around to see Mum had come over. The party was in full swing, friends of my brothers or Jamie’s streaming in through the door, and yet I couldn’t have felt more alone.

“Did parties always suck this much?” I grumbled. “Like people just stand around talking shit.” I gestured to all of my brother’s friends, who’d come piling in through their front gate to celebrate the new house. “Or doing dumb shit.” Clinton was shotgunning a beer, then shouting out something inane as he belched. “Did I do dumb things like that?”

“All the time.” My mother was merciless. “Remember that time you went stumbling into the toilet to vomit and the seat was down?”

“OK, fine?—”

“And then when you passed out in the bathtub, using my good towels as blankets.”

“Mum—”

“Of course, there was the time we found you and Jamie asleep in my rose bushes.” I groaned, it all coming back now. “Like little fairies at the bottom of the garden.” She just grinned as I glowered at her. “Then your father turned the sprinklers on.”

“I remember.”

“You’ll be able to do the same one day, with your not-so-little one.” My mother nodded to my stomach, then handed over a brightly coloured mocktail. I’d made sure to mix some up. If I had to endure a party sans alcohol, I wanted something cute and fruity to drink. “So how’s things? Are the boys coming tonight?”

She was trying to ask oh-so casually but failed terribly.

“No.” I’d asked them not to, so why was I so cranky about it? Must be more hormonal bullshit. “And it’s fine. Everything is fine.”

“Fine, hmm…”

Mum took a sip of her own drink, her focus ostensibly on the garden, not me, but I knew.

“Oh my god, stop pumping me for information, woman,” I spluttered. “I went out on a date with each one of them, and they were amazing. Some douche at work tried to assault me?—”

“Millie!”

“But I sorted him out with a quick knee to the nuts. Then Charlie came in and dragged the guy out by the collar, making his face go this really weird shade of purple. Charlie punched the douche, made it clear he needs to keep the hell away from me.”

“Oh, well, that’s good, though perhaps this isn’t the right job?—”

“Knox took me baby shopping.” I frowned. “Not shopping to buy a baby. Baby stuff, y’know.”

“I do know.”

My mother’s eyes twinkled with amusement.

“He bought up half the shop and then started talking nursery colours with me.”

“You’ve sorted out your spare room already?” she asked. “Thank goodness. That was a rat’s nest in there.”

“No.” I went quiet, gripping my glass way too hard. The condensation made it feel like it would slip free. “At his place. We talked about it, my dream of what the nursery would look like, and it was nice, y’know? Dreams always are. Then douche guy tried to trick me into thinking the guys were sending me flowers when they weren’t. I had to sneak away from work drinks to go on a date with Charlie. We were supposed to do this tree climbing thing, but then he remembered he had promised to take his nephews, so we went and picked them up.”

I glanced her way.

“They were… full on, but Charlie managed the situation really well. They had me climbing through this bloody obstacle metres up in the air.”

“Is that safe?” Mum asked.

“And then after we filled the kids full of junk food, he took me back to Knox’s.” I went quiet, expecting Mum to interject, but she just waited me out. “They’d gone and transformed the room for me, the nursery. It was perfect, just as I visualised it, except maybe for some curtains and a mosquito net.”

“Important details,” Mum said with a nod.

I shot her a dark look, well aware of what she was doing. Just wait me out, let all the poison leach out of me, and then she’d swoop in and make it all better.

Like I would when my child was old enough to come and complain to me.

My hand slid down and her eyes followed it as I continued my story much more calmly.

“They’re all being so damn perfect. Not only are they hot firefighters that rescue people, they aren’t scared of commitment or the baby. Instead, they’re jumping in, boots and all, like I’m a fire to put out or something.” I gestured vaguely at my body. “And I’m…”

What was I? Freaked the fuck out, that was clear when Knox dropped his little proposal on me. Like a few weeks from now, when I knew him, knew Noah and Charlie, and had discovered all their icks and they’d discovered mine, and we’d worked out if we were actually compatible beyond being drunk and horny… I’d have jumped at his offer to move in, because his sprawling house in the suburbs that was still close to the beach, was looking better and better.

“Scared of letting other people take control,” Mum filled in for me helpfully. “Always wanting to do everything by yourself.”

“You raised me to be a strong, independent woman that doesn’t need no man,” I told her.

“No, I raised you to be someone who loves with her whole heart and allows herself to be loved.” Mum held my gaze for several seconds before smiling. “It’s your father who became a fierce proponent for feminism. That happened the moment his little baby girl was put into his arms.”

I blinked, my stupid eyes leaking yet again, as I could see it clearly. My daddy holding me when I was all red and squishy looking, the way all newborns seemed to look.

“Thanks.” I coughed, trying to hide my croaky voice, then wash away the emotion with a long swallow of mocktail. “I know I don’t say it often enough, but…” I sidled closer, just wanting to be a little girl with her mum by her side for just a second. “I’m glad you’re my parents.”

“Oh, darling…”

Her arm went around my shoulders and she gave them a squeeze.

“I just want to be a good mum too, y’know? What if I fu—” I flushed. “Screw this up? Turn my child into some kind of Veruca Salt-esque monster? What if the guys are terrible dads? We haven’t even talked about how they want to parent yet. They might be into crying it out or smacking our kid whenever they’re naughty.”

“They wouldn’t want to.” All of a sudden Heather had left the building and Mumma Bear was in the house. She shook her head and then smiled. “These are all valid questions and ones you need an answer to, but… Do you think your father and I had all the answers when I worked out I was pregnant with Brock?”

I stared at her, seeing two Mums right now but was unable to reconcile them. One was the all knowing, all seeing earth mother who had raised me.

And the other was much younger, much less certain. It wasn’t the natural hair colour or the lack of wrinkles that made her a complete stranger. It was the fact that this much younger Mum looked a lot like me.

“Your grandmother was horrified. The shame of it all,” Mum said, slapping her hands to her face in a fair approximation of my grandmother’s more dramatic expressions. “And your father? We were miserable when we broke up, but we’d gone into the summer knowing he was here for a good time, not a long time. How do you think I felt, ringing him in Sydney to give him the news?”

“Scared…?” I squeaked out.

“Terrified.” She nodded and forged on. “I was sure he was going to hang up on me. The silence down the other end of the phone line was deafening. I understand the need to protect yourself, to believe anticipating the blow will somehow make it hurt less. I did the exact same. But…”

I followed her gaze across the crowded garden. The people splashing in the pool, the others standing around and talking shit didn’t catch our eyes. No, it was Dad and Brock, standing at the barbeque grilling meat and placing it onto platters that Hayden carried over to the table.

“Right when I thought he would tell me to piss off, or at best, offer to help me to get rid of your brother, he told me the one thing I needed to hear.” My lips moved, saying the same words in a whisper, because I’d heard this story before. It was all part of the mythology of our family. “I’ve got this, Heather. I’ve got this.” With a slow smile, she continued. “And he has, every day since. When we weren’t sure how we were going to keep a roof over our heads or the lights on. When we were struggling with the twins, because they were the hardest babies, always wanting to be fed at the exact same moment. It’s not the obstacles or lack thereof that determine a relationship or its likelihood of succeeding, but…”

She let out a long breath.

“How you get past them. Lust, desire, need, they all burn bright but not for long.” That got me a nod. “So keep that in mind when making your decision. It’s what endures after the fires have died down. Something real, something strong. Trust, commitment, respect, and something people don’t talk about enough.”

“What?”

“Friendship.” It was her eyes that twinkled too brightly now, tears marring them. “You can get through anything with your best friend by your side.”

Was that what the guys were? No, my mind instantly rejected that, putting Jamie first, but… Could they become equal first? I saw then a rapid flicker of all the things that had happened, all the ways the guys had showed up for me. Yeah, that was definitely a possibility. Framing it that way, of becoming friends, of banding together against a shitty world that would never understand what we had made it so much easier to see it. Me walking into that freshly painted nursery like it was mine.

Ours.

I took a long drink from my glass, emptying it before looking at Mum.

“Good talk.”

“You know I’m always here for you, sweetheart, always. Just be open to the fact that others might want to do the same.”

I didn’t get to reply to that. A masculine voice called my name and my head whipped around, hope flaring to life.

Only to find one of Brock’s mechanics coming running towards me.

“Clinton…” I growled in warning, but he grabbed me around the waist and threw me over his shoulder. “Clinton!”

“You’re looking too hot, Mills. Time to cool you down!”

I saw Jamie’s pool coming into focus, the people already swimming yelling out encouragement to Clint, telling him to dunk me into the pool.

Only for him to be stopped by a wall of muscle.

“Um… hey, fellas,” Clinton stammered out.

I craned my neck to see Knox step up to the mechanic, towering over him, over six feet of protective, pissed off firefighter.

“How about you put the mother of our child down right fucking now.”