My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 160

MILO'S P.O.V.

"What do you mean that wasn't actually the best part?" Josh tries to resist as I pull him back towards the house, we've been laying on that beach for fucking hours, it's freezing but he still doesn't want to leave.

If I didn't think he'd kill me on sight I would have thrown him in the fucking sea just for the fun of it, there's still plenty of time for that. We've got this place until tomorrow and like it or not he's going in that fucking ocean.

"Will you just trust me?" I laugh at his clear impatience. He stops trying to pull me back finally, chuckling again and stepping behind me to wrap those giant arms of his around my waist.

Everything's always better when I'm in his arms.

He hasn't stopped fucking smiling since we got here, it's made all the stress of the last week disappear for him just like I wanted it to. He deserves this, all I want is to see him this fucking happy forever.

I know it's not a lot, if I could have I would have flown him out to a fucking island somewhere or thrown him the biggest birthday party anyone in Westbrooke has ever seen, but I know he isn't the type of guy that would actually enjoy big grand gestures like that.

He's more subtle, he likes things intimate and he's not the kind of person that likes to be the centre of attention either. I wanted to give him everything but I also want him to be comfortable, so this felt like a good compromise; a tiny escape into the middle of nowhere where I can make him feel like the only man in the world.

Because to me, he is the only man in the world.

The fire has burned itself out now but the warmth that it's been giving off into the room still hits us when we walk through the doors, I dump the basket with all the stuff from the beach too the floor and continue to walk across towards the staircase with him still wrapped around me, I'll get the rest of it in the morning.

My night tonight belongs to him.

He pauses when we reach the staircase, pulling back slightly and turning to my side so I can face him.

"Your big surprise is that you're taking me to bed?" He smirks, with one brow raise so high it's practically joining his fucking hairline before the widest grin spreads out across his face. "Oh God, was Brie right? Are you just going to wrap yourself up in a big bow and-"

I learned pretty early on in our relationship that if you want Josh to stop talking, then you just have to fucking kiss him. I know exactly what Brie told him because she shoved enough ribbon into my suitcase for me to turn myself into a shiny red fucking ribbon-mummy, but that's not exactly what I want to show him... first.

Jesus Christ, I really love kissing him. Have you tried it yet? You should, it's fucking amazing.

There's something so unnaturally perfect about the way that he fits into my body, like my hands were formed with the idea of holding his own in the making of their creation. My hips carved so that his would slot in against them like a fucking jigsaw puzzle's last piece to create the lasting final image. My lips crafted from a moulding of his own so that I was his exact counterpart.

I was made for him, he was destined to me.

The only thing I hate about kissing Josh, is that I have to stop kissing Josh.

It's ridiculous, in a perfect world there would never be any reason for my lips to not be on his, but right now I really want to show him something.

I eventually pull away reluctantly, taking hold of his hand to drag him with me upstairs before he has time to protest. He was eyeing up the pool outside when we were walking back from the beach but I already promised little man we could go in there in the morning when he gets here. So right now I just want to show Josh one of the other reasons I chose this place.

This house is incredible, when I called Brie about maybe getting a night down at the lake house again for Josh's birthday she just started sending me all her clients second houses instead, like she was a free Airbnb for the rich and fucking famous.

There were a lot of really huge fancy ones but then I saw this, a getaway built just for two.

I wish I could have made it so everybody would get along just for his birthday, got them all together to celebrate him the way he deserves, but I know given the circumstances that was too much to ask so instead I decided I'd give him the only other thing I know he'd want.

Me.

He's had so much fucking stress over the last few weeks; taking on Liam and dealing with Chrissy, not to mention everything that happened with Heather and all the usual stresses that come with his high power fucking job. I can't give him a night with everyone but I can give him a night free of it all, a night where he just gets to have my attention without anything guiding either of us away from each other.

The bedroom here is kind of fucking insane, Brie almost refused to leave when she saw it earlier. There's only one for this entire fucking place and we come to a complete halt when we step up to it, Josh's eyes running all over the room like he can't quite believe what he's seeing.

Got you again.

He's not even all the way in yet so he can't see the best part but his eyes grow wide just at the vision of the deep bowl shaped bath sitting at the edge of the room and the giant bed covered in an abundance of furry pillows and fluffy blankets. Even though this whole house has so much space, it's still really cosy and comfy everywhere you look.

I watch him mentally logging all the ideas he plans to replicate in our self build one day, he's been watching too much property brothers again.

He's eyeing up the bath right now but they are going to fall out of his fucking head entirely when he sees the shower. It's bigger than my fucking bedroom, definitely more than enough room for both of us.

I drew the curtains earlier so he wouldn't be able to see the balcony until I show it to him. When I came up here to put all our stuff away it was around the time the sun was setting and the view looked incredible, all cast in a mix of warm oranges and deep reds. I love the sunset but I love the stars more, I can't wait to see what it looks like now.

"Are those for..." I smile as his little face lights up when he sees the vase with exactly ninety-three white roses sitting off on the table next to the bed with a silk cream bow around the front. Who else would they be for Joshua?

I know it's totally fucking cliché, but I don't give a fuck. I got him ninety-three because that's how many days it's been since I walked into his fucking office and my world turned upside down.

"Yeah, they're for you. I've got you something else as well but you can have it later." Has someone seriously never got him flowers before? Look at his beautiful fucking smile right now... "One for each day we've been... us."

If I'm perfectly honest I wasn't sure how many to get... I figured getting the fifteen-hundred odd I'd need to represent all the days from the moment at Lee's wedding when I realised I was fucking obsessed with him might have been a bit too much, only getting him enough to represent the days from when he asked me to be his at the lake house just didn't seem enough.

It's not like everything began with us on that day in his office, for me they started so much sooner and for him in many ways so much later, but that was truly the beginning of it all in starting to fall into place. It was the moment we collided, atoms hitting at a precise moment to create The Big Bang that would spiral out into our own creation of infinity.

Sometimes it's crazy to think about all the things that needed to happen for that moment to come to pass; Jayce getting injured, Dad getting a sudden new work project, me crashing the car so I couldn't go alone and Eli's dad having to cancel last minute. Almost like the world was fighting so that I'd have no choice but to walk into that room that day and see him sitting on the other side of that desk.

Causing that instant spark.

Uniting destiny with reality.

"What do you mean you got me something else? What more could you have possibly got me than this? I don't need anything else Miles, I had everything I ever wanted for my birthday when I woke up this morning to you laying in my fucking arms anyway."

He's too fucking cute.

I wrap my arms gently around his broad chest, letting my hands lightly stroke over the firm muscles of his back. He never wants anything from me, and it only makes me want to give him everything that much more.

"Technically, it's a present for you to give to other people anyway." He's giving me that look, the one that says he wants an explanation. I realise now that I shouldn't have said anything because he's definitely not going to let me wait until later to give it to him.

I'm usually pretty shit with gifts, I try my best but most of the time I just end up asking people what they want and getting them that instead, but when he was telling me about the shooting something stuck with me. Everything about what happened to him that night fucking broke me, his pain and suffering... It hurt me just to know he had to go through something so soul destroying, but there was this one part, this tiny ray of hope in such a broken time in his life.

The story that Steve told him as a kid, the one that kept him sane when he thought he was losing it and forced him to find some kind of calm in the storm that was his body in that moment.

I pull open the top drawer of the dresser, taking out the wrapped box and handing it to him. I know it's not a big expensive gift or anything but he isn't that type of person anyway, effort means so much more to him than money.

He unwraps it slowly, tearing away the paper delicately and lifting the lid of the box to find the hand drawn story book inside.

"Jayce did the illustrations, I made Lee write the words though because her handwriting is better than either of ours." I chuckle, his face lighting up as his fingers stroke over the image of the little boy smiling up at the moon from his bedroom window. "Steve said it's exactly the way he told it to you as a kid, that night when you were telling me what happened it was the only time you were able to breathe. It was something that calmed you, something that someone like Liam or Heather might need one day... I thought turning it into an actual book might help you to tell the story, that way one day you can tell it to our kids and they can tell it to there's and..."

His eyes shoot up to meet mine, a look I've never seen before in them as he stares straight through into my soul.

Oh crap, I went too far didn't I... Shit.

I shouldn't have said anything about us having fucking kids, it's way too soon for us to be having that kind of conversation out loud and now he probably thinks that I'm a child crazy person that just wants to–

Okay, apparently that kissing to shut you up thing works on me too, even in my head.

His lips press against mine but they hardly move, he's not trying to initiate anything, he's just trying to show me something without words. I love that we don't need them, how we never really ever need spoken language to express how we feel.

Everything with us is a touch, a kiss, unspoken promises that we both  agree to silently.

"Thank you..." I don't need anything more than that.

I gently take the book from his hands, placing it on top of the dresser before taking both of his palms with mine and walking towards the thick curtains that cover the entire wall at the furthest side of the room.

"You ready for your last surprise?"

"How the fuck could there possibly be anymore?" When is this man going to realise, with me there's always more.

I will never stop surprising you Josh.

I quickly peek through the curtains just to check that everything is exactly the way I left it, it's fucking perfect. Happy that I'm about to take his breath away once again, I throw open the curtains so that they trickle down the rail and exposed to him the very reason I picked this place.

The balcony from the room spreads out into the land behind, almost half of it taken up by the largest bubbling hot tub I've ever seen set directly into the ground. The view from here is so high and clear that you can see straight across the ocean, all the way to the lights from the lighthouse at the very edge of Westbrooke cascading across the open sea.

Josh looks completely fucking gobsmacked, the lanterns and rose petals that I set up on here earlier still perfectly placed around the tub and the moonlight now glistening off the rolling tides making it feel like we are sitting in the pages of a fantasy novel rather than a quiet land just outside our comfortable hometown.

I got him. I really fucking got him.