This Love (This Boy Book 3)
Page 25
“That’s great,” I say. “Maybe you guys will start getting along better?”
“We’ll see about that,” he says. “But so yeah. I figured I should use some of the money in my trust to set down roots. Get a place that could be more permanent than another apartment. And since Karleigh and Harrison needed a fresh start, and I wanted my brother close, I invited them to move in. We all live here now.”
That still doesn’t totally explain why he brought me here, but I’m too excited to be with Harrison and Hunter for Christmas to worry about it.
Karleigh motions us all toward the dining room and says, “Come on, everyone. Sit. You can help yourselves to the sides, and I’ll bring out the turkey.”
“I’ll get the gravy!” Harrison offers, following behind her.
As I walk up to the table, I notice there are four place settings laid out, like my being here was not just a last-minute decision, but planned in advance.
Hunter sees me hesitating and moves to stand beside me, close but not touching. “Is this okay? You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I can drive you back if it’s too much.”
He’s giving me a choice. Waiting for my answer. But as I think about the possibility of going back and spending Christmas by myself, the idea has zero appeal compared to this table. To him.
“I want to stay.”
I turn and step into his arms, unable to hold back any longer.
Hunter wraps me in a hug, holding me close, his fingers brushing the hair at the back of my head. All of me wants to kiss him, but the smell of turkey wafts into the room and I pull away, blushing furiously.
We all take our seats, Hunter at the head, Karleigh and me on either side, and Harrison at the other end. Once our plates are full of food, Karleigh asks Hunter, “Since it’s your house, do you want to do the honors and say a few words?”
He takes a look at Harry, at Karleigh, and then at me, his knee brushing mine under the table. “All right,” he says, clearing his throat to buy himself a couple more seconds. I can tell he’s nervous, and, unthinkingly, I reach over and take his hand.
“Right. So. My entire life, I always thought you could never get away from your family. You got what you got, and that was it. But I’ve come to realize that…we get to choose our families. And my family is here. All of you.” Hunter squeezes my hand. “You are welcome to be here with us, Milla. Whenever you want.”
I’m momentarily stunned into silence.
Smiling, my heart warm and full, I say, “Thank you.”
While we eat, Harrison recounts his adventures at his new school, and Karleigh tells us about the new design clients she recently took on. Ever since she shifted her Instagram brand to be more family-focused (and Harrison-focused), her interior design business has been blowing up. She has a nine-month waiting list, and knowing that she was afraid she’d have to rely on child support from Mr. Beck to make ends meet, I’m glad for her. Former bitchiness or not, Karleigh always had great taste.
It’s the happiest Christmas I’ve ever been a part of. Before, there was just me and my mom, eating TV dinners or canned goods from the food pantry, with her drunk on eggnog and me trying to prevent her from having a meltdown. We never had holiday movie marathons on the couch, or cookies to decorate, or bulging stockings hanging from the mantel. All of that is here now.
None of us are related by blood. Karleigh was never Hunter’s mother, and as it turns out, Harrison isn’t Hunter’s brother, either. But they will always be family, and Hunter and Harry will never be anything but brothers.
And I want to be a part of this. I want them—I want Hunter—to be my family, too. I’ve thought about it so many times, tried to ignore it, brush it off as something for later, and probably unlikely at best. But after today, I don’t think I can do that anymore.
After dessert, all of us help clean up, and then we pile onto the couch to watch Home Alone. All of us are laughing at the Wet Bandits, even Karleigh. When it’s over, Harrison demands I play Mario Kart with him. Hunter joins in, and this time, I make every effort to demonstrate how I crushed the competition during arcade night.
Harrison wins all our matches, but I end up coming in second, and give Hunter a triumphant smile. “See?” I say, putting down the controller. “I am good at this game. When I try, at least.”
“Great,” Hunter groans. “One more thing you’re better at than me.”
“It must be so hard for you.” I pinch his cheek with affection. “Poor Hunter. Should I go get the world’s smallest violin?”
“Yes.” He gets up from the couch and holds out a hand to me. “In fact, it’s in my bedroom.”
I give him a look but hold out my hand and let him guide me to the door at the end of the hall. The second we walk through the door, my heart starts to hammer for some unknown reason. I’ve been in Hunter’s bedrooms plenty of times. But today, it feels different. When the click of the lock sounds behind us, my entire body is on edge.
The room is nice, if sparsely furnished, with a large bed, his desk, and the dresser all dark, shiny wood. Hunter gets something out of the closet and holds it out for me. A red and white stocking, with my name stitched on it. I tear up when I see it, my fingers shaking on the soft fabric, afraid it’ll vanish if I dare touch it.
“You didn’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I did.” Gently, he takes my chin and tilts it up. “You were right when you said that the person I was that day wasn’t me. You were right to send me away until I got better.”
“Are you?” My feet shuffle closer to him, barely a millimeter, but it makes all the difference. “Better, I mean?”
He nods. “I still have a long way to go, but I’m getting better every day. I wanted to talk to you sooner, but I had to get things set up with Karleigh and Harrison first. I had to get my life straight before I could try to bring you here and tell you that I…I choose you, Milla.” He pauses to hold my gaze for a moment, my breath trapped in my lungs until he says, “You’re my family. If you still want to be.”
His words make me feel like I’m floating, warming me from head to toe, and I can’t hold back anymore. I close my eyes and rise to my tiptoes to kiss him, tears rolling down my cheeks. His response is immediate, crushing me to him, our lips molding together as if they were made to fit, and I’m starting to think they just might have been.
“I love you,” I say, pulling back to look him in the eyes. I missed him so much that now that we’re doing this, I can’t get enough. I will never be able to get enough. “And I want to be your family. I want you to be my family.”
His fingers slip under my shirt to fan the small of my back. “I love you, too. More than anything.”
Hunter
Epilogue
It’s springtime, everything green and blooming and alive again, and Milla and I are together in bed. She hasn’t moved into the house yet—she insists on finishing out the year in her dorm with Olivia—but she does spend a lot of nights here. To the point where I consider this our house, with everything inside being hers as well as mine. Ever since Milla and I got back together for real, I’ve been focusing on what really matters. Life finally feels like it’s getting on track. I feel like I have a path.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from my mom since that night I walked out on her at my old apartment. But I couldn’t leave things the way they were. So with Milla’s help, I wrote Mom a long letter and told her to call me when she gets clean. I’m hoping at some point she’ll figure her life out and try again to reconnect with me.
As for my dad, I did make it to his ridiculously extravagant wedding with Annette, which was held at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in Pasadena. Camilla came as my date, and provided much-needed emotional support. Dad and I are still working on our relationship, but I’m shocked to admit that ever since he got together with Annette, he’s seemed happier. More mellow. Almost like the dad I remember from back when I was a kid. So who knows? Maybe this woman really is the One for him. At any rate,
she’s great with Harrison, and she’s made sure that Dad never misses a weekend visit with Harry, so I’ve decided to give her a chance.
Things between Milla and her mom, on the other hand…I guess they’ve stayed pretty much status quo. Mrs. Hanson found a job with a housekeeping company that serves a bunch of legal and professional office buildings, which seems to be going okay, and she’s even made some new work friends. I don’t know if she and Milla are ever going to truly be a happy family together, but they do talk on the phone once a week now and they mostly manage to stay civil. Milla hopes things will get better, but we’ll see. I try to keep her spirits up when she and her mom do fight, and remind her that my mom is on a tough journey as well. We all are. That’s how life works.
I’ve also been working hard to prove myself as a decent human to Emmett and Isabel. They’re part of Milla’s family, too, and that means their acceptance of me (and my relationship with Milla) isn’t optional. At the end of the day, I just want Milla to be happy, to feel loved and supported. I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Speaking of which, the two of us stayed up way too late making cookies and playing video games with Harrison last night, hence sleeping in so late. Milla and I volunteered to take care of him for the weekend while Karleigh’s at a designers’ retreat down in Malibu. We’ve had a good time playing house. Except it’s past ten a.m. now, and I promised my brother I’d make pancakes and bacon for breakfast, so I need to get on that. But I’ll give it a little longer. So far, the house has been silent all morning. Harry must be sleeping in, too.
Milla lets out a soft, sleepy moan and rolls over, so I slide closer and spoon her just the way she likes. My plan is to behave myself and simply hold her until she wakes up. However, it doesn’t take long for my hands to start wandering down her body and sneaking under her pajamas.
“Mmm, Hunter,” Milla murmurs, pressing herself against me, arching her back so her ass rubs against my cock. I kiss the side of her neck while my fingers find that sweet spot between her legs, only to discover that she’s already wet.
Without moving us, I keep my thumb on her clit and slide a finger into her, reveling in the sharp gasp that parts her lips. Curling her arm behind her, Milla finds the waistband of my boxers and slips her hand down around my dick.
“Gimme,” she whispers, grinding back against me.
She’s definitely wet enough, soft enough, that I could tug her pants down and pump into her from behind. But there’s nothing better than watching her squirm under my touch while I work her pussy, no better sight than seeing her come for me.
Mouth to her ear, I whisper, “Nope.”
She whimpers, rolling onto her back to give my hand better access. “Why not?” Her thumb caresses the head of my cock, smearing precum over it. “You want it.”
“Yeah, I do.” I press my lips over hers, drinking in her moans, ignoring the throbbing of my cock when her pussy tightens around my finger. “But first, I want you to come.”
“Yeah?”
Thrusting deeper, I stroke her depths, her hips following the rhythm I set.
“I want you to come so hard you’re begging me to stop. And then, and only then, will I slam this cock into you and make you come even harder.”
She’s breathing hard, grinding back and forth on my finger, and I know she’s close. I flick her clit, curling my finger inside her until I feel the soft pad of her G-spot, and just like that she comes apart in my hands, moaning helplessly as she rides out her orgasm. Without giving her rest, I keep moving my hand, kissing her as I start to draw another climax out of her. She bites my lip, licks my tongue, tells me I can stop, that it’s enough, but I can feel her pussy contracting again, and I don’t let go. I was made for this. Made for her.
She comes again, harder this time, but it’s over faster. There are tears in her eyes and her breathing is out of control. As soon as I take my hand back, she rolls into my chest, clinging to me as she gasps for air. I give her a minute to relax before I move her onto all fours, spreading her ass and positioning the tip of my cock right at her entrance before doing exactly as I promised.
There’s no resistance when I thrust inside her, and it feels like everything I need, like coming home. Milla moans into the pillow, and I adjust her stance so I can sneak a hand under her to play with her clit. She groans my name, already close to coming again, her hips snapping back to deepen our connection.
Fuck me, she really is perfect. I ram her pussy, faster, harder, hissing as I try not to release yet. But she’s so wet, so tight, so—
Footsteps sound above us, along with the faint echo of Harrison’s laugh. Milla freezes, and I stop moving. “We have to be quiet,” she whispers, looking at the ceiling. “Harrison’s upstairs.”
I lean down to kiss the place where her jaw meets her ear. “We do need the practice.”
She cranes her head to look back at me. “Why?”
“Because one day we might have kids, and we’ll need to know how to have silent sex.”
Giving her hips a few slow thrusts, she draws a breathless grunt out of me. “I could get onboard with that,” she says, amusement in her voice.
I know she’s probably joking, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard today.
“Oh, really?” I pull out of her, flip her onto her back so we’re facing each other, then slide in hard. Milla bites her lip to keep herself from wailing out a moan like she usually does.
“Really,” she gasps. “I mean it.”
My hips stop, and I brush the stray hairs away from her face.
“I mean it, too.” I slowly thrust into her again, leaning over to kiss her slowly and deeply on the lips. “We should get married.”
The lust hazing her eyes fades for a moment. “We’re still in school,” she says.
“I know.” I trail kisses down her cheek, her neck, her collarbone, as I slowly rock back and forth, fucking her gently. “But we won’t be in school forever.”
“No, we won’t,” she says, her eyes shining. “And then we can do whatever we want, right?”
“Right,” I say, thrusting faster.
“And what I want—mmm,” she moans, arms coming up around my neck, “is to be with you. Always. I love you, Hunter.”
“I love you.”
It takes everything I have not to spill inside her right here and now.
She wants to be with me. For always. All I have to do is wait to pop the question. And I’ve learned how to wait. Some things are worth waiting for, and Milla’s definitely one of them.
“Let me says this.” I thread our fingers together and turn her hand so I can kiss her knuckles. “I promise I’m going to marry you, Milla. I can wait until you’re ready, but it will happen.”
A laugh breaks out of her, and even though the light coming through the curtains is dim, she shines. She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and that’s something that never stops hitting me. “Persistent, aren’t you?”
“For you, I am,” I tell her. “And I always will be.”
“I like the sound of that. Now hurry up and finish fucking me so we can get started on breakfast.”
“So this is just about breakfast for you?” I tease. “I see how it is. And here I thought you were sleeping with me because you love me.”
“I do love you.” She pulls me in for another kiss. “But breakfast definitely doesn’t hurt.”
Fuck yes, I’ll be marrying her.
Also by Jenna Scott
This Boy
This Hurt
This Love
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About the Author
After growing up in the midwest, Jenna Scott moved to Los Angeles for the endless summer. As an introvert in the city, she loves to people-watch in coffee shops, writing down the stories she makes up about the other patrons. Besides her fiction habit, Jenna also enjoys photography and her collection of houseplants.