XANDER
“Can’t believeyou sent methatphoto in the middle of dinner,” I said as Milo and I stepped out of the warmth of the Friendly Otter and into the street, sticking close to him. There was no kitten in my pocket this time, so I didn’t have the excuse of needing his body heat, but I thought maybe by now I could get away with just needing him.
Milo shrugged, face perfectly innocent except for the barest quirk of his lips. “Promised I’d send it to you,” he said. “Forgot all about it until I saw it on my camera roll.”
“Could’ve waited until I wasn’t in public,” I grumbled, but I wasn’t really mad about it. Well, maybe a little mad that I couldn’t lunge across the table and kiss Milo breathless without causing a scene.
Not mad that he trusted me so casually, though. I could never be mad about that.
Milo shrugged, grinning up at the stars.
“So many out here,” he said. “You can’t see them in Seattle, because… y’know.”
“The air,” I said. “I know.”
I didn’t want him to go back. I didn’t want to video call him tomorrow night when he was done with the restaurant opening to ask him how it went and see him exhausted again, the dark circles he’d come here with already back.
They were almost completely gone now.
It wasn’t that I wouldn’t love him exhausted or not, but I didn’t want him tobeexhausted. Because I loved him.
It wasn’t fair.
“You could stay,” I said all of a sudden, stomach swooping as soon as I realized what I’d just offered.
But then, as the words hung between us for a heartbeat, I realized I meant it. Milo could stay. He could move in with me, and I could wake up next to him every morning, ruffle his hair and kiss him and then tell him to go back to sleep. He’d be near Dawn and the twins—and she’d need all the help she could get—and he could…
Do something. Anything. Anything that wasn’t what he did now. Apprentice in floristry. Foster kittens full-time. Become a freelance photographer. He would’ve been so good at that, and Otter Bay was a wedding destination without a local who did that kind of thing.
He could have stayed. I wanted him to say he would.
“So this is why you kicked me out,” a familiar voice spoke up, stepping out of the shadow of the bakery before Milo could answer.
Brady. Great.
Just the man I wanted to see.
Milo stopped dead a half-pace in front of me, holding a protective hand out to stop me going any further.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Milo, Brady. Brady, Milo.”
“Oh,” Milo said, but he didn’t quite relax all the same.
“Milo,” Brady repeated, wrinkling his nose. “What the hell kinda name is that?”
“What the hell kinda name is Brady?” I asked. “If you’re just here to be mean to my boyfriend you can get out of the way.”
Brady let out a low whistle. “Boyfriend, huh?”
He looked Milo up and down, and Milo stood there, shoulders squared, drawn up to his full height, and he wasn’t an inch shorter than Brady right now.
Okay, he was about a foot narrower across the shoulders, but still. No more shrinking violet Milo.
Because he was waiting to leap to my defense, I realized. He might not have even known he was doing it himself. He was doing it because he cared about me.
“Yeah,” I said. “What of it?”
Brady shrugged. “I’m not allowed to care about you now?”
