If I Stay {Fillie}

Remember

When Millie regained consciousness hours later, she awoke to see Gaten sitting on the foot of her bed on his phone.

He turned his head when he heard her stir, and flashed her a full-force grin. "There she is!" he exclaimed, standing and coming to stand next to her after setting his phone down on the dresser. "How are you, Miss Brown?"

Millie was thrown off by the worry in his voice. He spoke hoarsely, and had dark circles under his eyes from exhaustion. She could barely remember what had happened, much less tell him how she was doing. But she tried anyway.

"Um...I guess I'm okay," she replied wearily. She felt weak, almost fragile, like she would fall apart if she said too much or tried to use her legs. "I can't...I can't exactly remember much of the last thing that happened to me."

"It'll come back to you after you've had some time to rest," Gaten promised softly, briefly laying a hand on hers in comfort. "But in the meantime, you're welcome to call your family and invite them here to see you. Mr. Wolfhard gave the okay."

Millie blinked. "He said they could come?"

The chauffeur nodded enthusiastically. "We convinced him that you needed them, being as sick as you are. Lilia, Caleb, Maddie, and I are really worried about you. But if it's no trouble, you should wait until tomorrow to call them. You slept through the evening, ma'am. It's three in the morning."

"It's three in the morning?" Millie blinked up at him in shock. "What are you doing here so late?"

"We've been taking shifts watching you in case something happened, Miss."

"Um...just—just Millie is fine," the Brit intercepted before he could call her anything else she was uncomfortable with. "Miss Brown" and "ma'am" were incredibly too formal for her, considering the circumstances she had grown up in.

Gaten's face brightened, as if he had been waiting his whole life for her to say those words to him. "Of course! Finn kept telling me to stop calling you Miss Brown, but I wanted to hear it from you before I—"

"He told you to stop calling me that?" Millie interrupted, not at all trying to be rude. First Finn had relinquished the horrible rule about not being allowed to see her family, and now this.

"Sure did. The first time was in the car after that kid at the airport was talking to him about you and he got upset at us for laughing—"

"Woah, woah, woah, back up." Millie squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a little dizzy from all the speaking Gaten was doing. "A kid at the airport was talking to Finn...about me?"

Gaten sucked in a breath. "I probably wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"Well, what did the kid say to make Finn so upset?" she pressed, leaning forward eagerly.

The curly-headed driver pretended not to know what she was on about. "Huh? What kid? No one said anything about a kid."

"Gaten." Millie raised an eyebrow.

He held his hands up in surrender, shaking his head of brown hair. "It's not my place to tell you. I shouldn't even have brought it up. If you wanna know, ask Mr. Wolfhard. Though he most likely won't tell you."

Millie harrumphed and fell back against her pillow, crossing her arms in annoyance. "I don't want to talk to him. We had a stupid fight."

Gaten smiled at her. "Look at that. You're already remembering what happened."

A little more light entered her eyes in hope. "You're right! With any luck I'll remember how I passed out." Then she went back to sulking. "But now I also remember that I'm mad at that son of a bitch."