Lovely Hues | Fillie AU

Chapter Six

After Noah died, Millie made three promises to herself. The first was that she would get her and her family back to England. She wouldn't live the rest of her life in East Plains, Wisconsin. It wasn't her place or her people and one way or another, she'd get home.

The second promise was that she would never enter into another romantic relationship for as long as she lived. She obviously was not destined to be a wife and she never wanted to be one again anyway. She couldn't think about going through another loss like the two she'd already experienced and a small part of her even thought she was cursed. A relationship wasn't worth the risk.

The third and probably most important promise was that, besides herself, she'd never let anyone promise her anything again. Louis had promised her that they would move back to England after he got the business set up and running smoothly but he didn't keep that promise. Not that it was his fault, but he died before he had the chance to make good on his word.

Likewise, Noah promised her that he wouldn't die. But just minutes later, he did.

Promises to Millie were more like prison sentences or death wishes and she couldn't take any more of them.

It wasn't that any of these promises came into question when she met the very intriguing man in front of her house—crashed into him was more accurate. It was that he made her question everything.

In those first few seconds, she wouldn't have been able to say where she was. Who she was, for that matter. It was like a spell had fallen upon her. A spell that suppressed every thought in her brain except the image of the stranger's face.

The only thing she could remember thinking was where she knew this man from because it had to be somewhere and somehow she felt she knew him well.

It wasn't until she was upright again that her mind came back to her and she remembered who she was, where she was, and that she was trying to get home because she sensed her kids were probably making their aunt and future uncle a bit insane.

Nevertheless she talked to him.

To Finn.

She talked to him because she felt she needed to. And—not that she tried—but she didn't think she'd have been able to just walk away without that conversation. Her talking to him was something somehow integral to her life. She couldn't explain it.

When she did eventually make it back inside, she was in a sort of daze. Her mind turned over the conversation, again and again until Chloe reminded her of her other responsibilities.

"He's doing it again!" Her sister-in-law yelled, hurrying to the kitchen where her fiancé was attempting to put the cookie jar on the fridge with a toddler doing his best to shimmy up his leg like it was a tree.

"Phillip, No." Millie said sternly, "We don't climb people, now do we?"

Two little brown eyes turned up at her and she repeated more slowly, "Do we?"

He shook his head, then dropped it as if plagued by guilt. He started to cry in little whimpers and Millie sighed. Her son was such a sensitive little soul. Any sort of reprimand sent him straight to tears but she couldn't very well give in to him at every juncture. What would that teach him? But as he began to waddle over to her with his arms raised for her to pick him up, she softened.

She scooped him up and he clung to her, burrowing his crying face in her neck until the whimpers came to a stop. She rocked her weight between her feet and smoothed out his wispy golden hair, "shh." She muttered, "Mummy just wants you to be safe, okay? I'm not mad."

He lifted his head and looked her in the eye, "Mama?" he said, then pulled a cookie from his pants and gave it to her.

She laughed, "Thank you, Phillie."