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“I’d chase you down and drag you home before you left town,” I chuckle.
“Don’t I know it,” she mutters.
Keeping her safe is my biggest concern going forward, right now, I’m not sure I’ll let her out of my sight, let alone Saints Cross.
“I’m going to the bathroom, you have ten minutes to do whatever you need to do in here.” Without looking back for fear of seeing something she shouldn’t, Millie clambers out of bed and stumbles sleepily toward the bathroom.
“Stop worrying about her, she’s going to be fine,” Raine muses as I stare at the closed bathroom door.
“I hope so. What if I fuck all this up?” I ask, hating the vulnerability in my voice.
“You won’t,” she promises me, her stare burning into the side of my face.
Ripping my gaze from the door, I look down at her.“Fuck, Raine. You’re everything,” I blurt before claiming her lips in a filthy kiss, making the most of these few minutes of alone time Millie has allowed us before the serious shit starts.
I don’t hear the bathroom door open but I sure as shit hear my sister clearing her throat.
“Should I go or…”
“No,” I blurt, missing the softness of Raine’s lips instantly. “We’re good.” Pushing myself up against the headboard, I keep the covers over my bottom half as my boner sinks.
An awkward silence falls over the three of us.
I hate it.
“I’m just going to…” Raine trails off as she hops out of the bed and makes a beeline for the bathroom.She squeezes Millie’s hand in support as she goes but she doesn’t say anything.
“Do you want a coffee?” I ask. “Hungry? I should feed you. I should—”
“Theo,” Millie says softly, halting my verbal diarrhoea. “Stop. I’m okay.”
“Right now, you are. But what about tomorrow? What about next week, next month, next year? All of that, it’s—”
“Theo,” she says, again crawling onto the bed beside me and slipping her hand into mine.The warmth of her touch calms me, and when I look into her eyes, my panic ebbs away.“Did he really do that?” she asks quietly. “Did he really kill M—” She swallows, cutting herself off.
Millie barely remembers Mum, but that doesn’t mean this revelation doesn’t hurt her as much as it has me.
“Yeah, Mills. He did,” I say, pain slicing through my chest as tears fill her eyes.
She nods, accepting my words as the truth.“I don’t want the details. Not yet,” she says thoughtfully. “I want to process this before I have anything else to think about.”
I squeeze her hand, accepting her request.
“What happens now?” she asks quietly as the sound of the shower turning on in my bathroom fills the air.
I get what Raine is doing, she’s giving us some time to find our feet with our new reality. I understand why she might feel she needs to leave us, but honestly, I want her to be a part of this.
She is a part of this.
“I waited until yesterday so I could officially be your guardian,” I confess.
Her eyes drop from mine in favour of the bed.“No,” she whispers. “You can’t do that.”
If I weren’t so close, I wouldn’t hear her words.
“Yes, Millie.” Reaching out, I tuck my fingers under her chin and force her to meet my eyes again. “I’ve done all of this for us. For you. To enable us to have the future we want. One without fear, without worrying about him making demands of us or his actions when we disobey him. It’s just us now. Us and whatever we want.”
“But you’re eighteen, Theo. You’re about to do your exams, go to uni. You don’t need to be dealing with me.”
