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“Hang on.” I took out my phone and googled it.

Pages and pages of pregnancy advice appeared on my screen.

What to eat, what not to eat. When to drink, what to drink.

There was so much and I’d only asked one simple question.

When I focused back on Millie I really hoped that I didn’t look panicked.

“It says here you can have one to two cups a day. But not too strong. You also have to avoid anything raw or unpasteurized.”

Millie sighed. “Oh man. Every time I think I’ve come to terms with what’s going to change, something new is added.”

Placing my hands on either side of her shoulders, I turned her to face me. “It’s going to be fine, you’re not doing this alone and we’ll learn together. Come on, let’s go and get one of your allocated two medium-to-weak coffees for the day.”

I might have oofed as she nudged an elbow into my side, but it did have me grinning until we found the nearest coffee place. I spotted Millie eyeing up a chocolate brownie and ordered her one of those, too, while she found a quiet table for us to sit.

“Okay,” I started, picking up the top leaflet entitled Your Baby, Your Cervix and putting it down again.

Too early in the morning for that . The next one looked safer— Your Twelve-Week Ultrasound, and started flicking through the list of things she should expect.

I was about to tell her it said she should have a full bladder when my eyes dropped to the next line.

You will be able to see how many babies you’re carrying.

Babies. Plural.

I was a twin, and twins were hereditary. We had barely come around to the idea of having one baby, but two ? A glance at Millie reading the cervix leaflet and finding her face slightly paler, I decided against bringing up the subject of twins.

I’d save it for another time. Maybe the doctor could deliver the news instead .

I sipped my coffee. “There’s a lot to think about, huh?”

“There’s so much. I don’t know how anyone does it. Do you think when you’re planning for a baby you already know all this stuff? Who tells you what to do?” She spread out all the leaflets on the table. “This isn’t even a full instruction manual.”

“Maybe they come with instructions.” I laughed, hoping to raise a smile through the panic on her face. It worked a tiny bit.

“I wish.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. “I started a list.”

It didn’t take long to read. “It just says ‘school’ on it.”

She sipped her coffee, savoring it as one would when they know they can’t have any more. “I’m deferring my studies a year, but I have to figure out how to do it. There’s more to add, but when I was thinking about what to write it became so overwhelming that I put it away.”

I tried to think about all the guys in the club who had kids and how they managed. I was fairly certain none of their wives or girlfriends were still in school, but maybe I could ask them for advice.

“And then,” she continued, “I guess I need to figure out where I’m going to live.”

“Where you live?”

“Yeah, I’m in school housing, and I can’t live there with a baby. Plus, Radley isn’t going to want to live there with a baby, either, especially if she’s studying. You’ve seen our dorm, it’s not big?—”

“I guess?—”

“I was going to start apartment hunting this week, but I need to figure out what I can afford that’s not far from school and get it before the graduate students come back.

And maybe I’ll get a part-time job, though my mom said she’ll help me…

” she rambled. “I’ll have to buy all the baby stuff, and then… ”

I stopped listening.

It hadn’t even occurred to me about her school or where she’d live.

I’d only seen her place that one time, and she was right—you couldn’t have a baby in it.

On the other hand, it was safe and secure, not to mention when Radley was there Millie also had the additional Secret Service protection.

This entire situation might only be a week old to me, and the certainty of my future in it even less than that, but it was enough time to know that I didn’t want her to end up miles away from me in the city because it was cheaper.

“Millie.” I halted her mid-sentence. “You don’t need to worry about money, and you don’t need to worry about an apartment. I can organize all that. Or you find what you like and tell me, or we can go together. If you want to be near school, we will get the perfect space.”

The way her eyes unglazed as she heard my voice told me she’d been mostly talking to herself. “I don’t want your money, Tanner.”

I frowned at her. “I know, but that’s still my baby, too, and I can’t help you carry it, but I can help you do everything else.

This list”—I waved the piece of paper at her—“it’s going to get long, and until November I won’t be able to dedicate a lot of time, so I need to be able to help in other ways.

And you need to let me, because it won’t be an argument that you’ll win. ”

Her face softened a little, and I could see the edges of a smile as she held my stare. Not that we’d ever argued per se, but whatever we had had I knew I’d not won. There was always a first time for everything, however, and I wasn’t budging on this.

She would never need to worry about money.

“Okay, thank you.” She picked up the brownie and bit into it. I made a mental note to keep her stocked up on chocolate as a bare minimum. It made her nicer.

“What are your plans today?” I asked.

“Aside from apartment hunting, Radley and I have a gym date, then”—she tapped the pile of leaflets—“I have some light reading.”

“I’ll read these.” I picked up half of them. “Do you want to come to the game tonight?”

Millie took another small, slow sip of her coffee. “I don’t know, I’ll see how I feel. If Radley’s going I might.”

Millie hadn’t been to many games this year, mostly because of school, and every time she had, she’d been wearing a generic Lions tee.

I couldn’t count how many times I’d wanted to see her wearing a shirt with my name on it.

I wasn’t about to ask her whether she’d wear one tonight because I already knew the answer.

But the flicker of hope I’d been carrying inside me since the day we met, burned a little brighter.

Because the next time she came to a game, she’d be watching with my baby growing inside her.

And that was better than any shirt—no matter how much we were still panicked about it.

Which led me to the other thing I’d been thinking about almost nonstop the past seven weeks; the sex we’d had, and the parting shot she’d left me with. This was a mistake .

It probably wasn’t the smartest move right now to bring the subject up, but I also wasn’t the smartest guy.

“So while we’re talking about things, I have a question.”

Her mouth pulled in a big smile as she picked up a leaflet and waved it at me. “Is the answer to be found in here?”

I huffed a laugh as I took it. “No.”

“Then what can I help you with?”

I paused, questioning whether this was the right time. Probably not, but while Millie had spent nearly two months ignoring me, I’d been working on what I would say the next time I saw her, which hadn’t exactly gone to plan. But nothing about this was going to plan.

I’d been with enough girls to know when they were lying, plus I had a sister who won awards for it—okay, technically, that was acting , but same difference.

And Millie had been stone-faced lying, she’d thought it was a mistake as much as I did.

Which is to say I absolutely did not. And I didn’t want to go another day without getting it off my chest.

“I want to talk about us.”

Her head crooked to the left. “Us?”

“Yeah, you and me.”

“As in you and me together?”

“As in you and me, and how we made that.” I pointed to her belly. Her mouth opened to interrupt, but I wasn’t done. “Let me speak. Please.” Millie closed her mouth. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought over the last couple of months, and what you said to me?—”

“Tanner, I apologized?—”

“I know . It’s not about that. ”

“Then what’s it about?”

I scrubbed a hand through my hair, trying to stop my tongue from tying itself in knots. “I have never made any secret of my feelings for you. I’ve liked you since the first day I laid eyes on you, but I realize that you might not have thought I was sincere.”

I paused. Waiting to see if she was about to say something because, let’s face it, she was Millie. But this time she stayed silent.

“If you need me to prove myself worthy of being with you, then I will spend as long as it takes doing so. But I don’t believe you think us having sex was a mistake.

Even now you’re pregnant. There was something between us that day, there’s been something between us since the day we met.

If you need time getting used to the idea, then I’ll give it to you. But make no mistake, we are an us .”

“Tanner—”

“You don’t need to say anything right now, but just know that I’m not giving up on you. I will never give up on you.”

I picked up my coffee and drained it while she stared at me with her big, chocolatey eyes. I’d said all that needed to be said.

My perseverance with Millie had got me to this point, but now I was way out of my depth.

Having a baby hadn’t been on my bingo card for this year, but having one with Millie was a whole different story, and if I played my cards straight, by the time our baby was born, we would become a family.

I had a lot of work to do.

I was definitely going to need help.