Seth: 72+8
Seth: I’m choosing to assume 8 because you deserve it
Eight…?
Oh.Oh.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket like the incriminating evidence it was and tried not to think about Milo’s dick, however many inches of it there were.
“You wanna hold him?” I asked, finally getting Orion out of my pocket.
“I’d consider it an honor,” Milo said. He was just as gentle this time as he had been all the other times, and I couldn’t help thinking, again, about how gorgeous his hands were.
Was that weird? That was weird, right? But they were all I’d had of him for months. It made sense that I thought about them a lot.
That was my excuse, anyway.
“So, are you having fun?” I asked, trying to distract myself from how close I had to stand to Milo so I could feed Orion, how good he still smelled. “I guess this is like work for you, I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”
“It’s not like work,” Milo said softly. “It’s a lot of people, but they’re all great.”
“Sorry I couldn’t introduce you to Hayden before he was married,” I joked. “He likes you.”
“Apparently. He offered to hire me to do a photoshoot for the new summer menu, for the parlor’s Instagram.”
“Wow,” I looked up. “Really?”
Milo nodded, smiling the shiest little smile. “I told him a friend of yours was a friend of mine and it wasn’t as if I was any kind of professional, but I was happy to do it for him. I talked him down to trading me two pints of ice cream. My pick and yours,” he said. “But you can have mine, too.”
“We could share,” I suggested. “You’re still here another week, right?”
“Ten days, even,” Milo said. “Anything could happen.”
I glanced up at him, still carefully feeding Orion.
My breath caught at the look in his eyes. Dante was the one with the skill for reading people, but I wasn’t so bad at it that I could miss this. I didn’t even think Milo was doing it on purpose.
It was just that he was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world. Even with a tiny kitten in his hands.
He gasped, too, and I swallowed.
I thought maybe I was looking at him the same way.
I thought maybe I could kiss him.
Carefully, this time. Slow and gentle, like everything else that’d been good between us, from the first tentative messages right up to now, when Milo was standing out here in the cold. With me. Feeding my rescue kitten. Because he’d come here with me, and that meant he wouldn’t leave me to do it alone.
I wanted this. I wanted it so bad my hand was trembling and when I took a breath to—to tell him, or maybe just to kiss him again—I could barely fill my lungs.
The bell above the door to the ice cream parlor tinkled, and the moment broke.
“I’m not interrupting, am I?” Andre asked, head poking out of the gap between the door and the frame.
“Just finishing up,” I managed, shuffling a couple of inches away from Milo, so Andre could see the kitten. His face softened, too, when he looked at the tiny fuzzball I was going to so much trouble for.
But it wasn’t like the way Milo’s did.
“Seth sent me to make sure you were okay,” he said. “I would’ve left you to it, but…”
