Perfect Match Enemies to lovers romance - Leia Stone Page 0,67

life.”

I frowned. She didn’t get it. “He’s not worth saving, Millie.” My voice was low.

She stepped closer to me, bringing the scent of her coconut shampoo with her. “He is to me.”

I put my head in my hands. She was so much like Jenna that it physically hurt me sometimes. Like all of a sudden I realized I’d gone and fallen for someone with a heart big enough to rival my twin sister.

This is exactly something Jenna would do.

“He’ll drink your new liver to mush within a year!” I yelled.

She shook her head. “Oh hell no he won’t. I’m going to see him today. If he doesn’t agree to a sober living facility of my choosing for a full year, I’ll let him die.”

I swallowed hard. He would agree, that was the thing. Wayne always agreed, moped, said sorry, and then he just fell off the wagon again.

Millie clearly had no experience with a lifelong alcoholic.

Raising my head, I met her gaze. “Okay, if you’re serious about this, then I’ll go down today and get tested. If I’m a match, I’ll give it to him.”

She frowned, tears building in her eyes. “Ash, you can’t. The doctor came out while you were back in ICU and said you weren’t a candidate based on the heart rejection. That’s when he asked Gran and I to get tested.”

“Fuck!” I stepped away from her and started to pace the room.

For the first time in my life I felt like I could breathe, like I wasn’t drowning, and that’s because Millie was my fucking life vest. I couldn’t lose her before I’d ever gotten a chance to love her fully.

She stepped in front of me, cutting me off, forcing me to meet her gaze.

“Ashton, if you wanna be with me, you’re going to have to get used to supporting my decisions. I’m a saver. I save dying bars, birds with broken wings, stray cats … it’s just who I am.”

I frowned. “Boys with broken hearts.” I tapped the scar on my chest.

She grinned. “I think in this case…” She stepped closer. “This broken-hearted boy saved me.”

She leaned forward and brought her lips to my mouth.

God, I loved her. I could fully admit that I loved her, and wasn’t part of that love for her passion for saving people like my piece of shit father? Maybe he needed her. Maybe Wayne needed Millie, because me and Gran had surely given up on him. Maybe Millie could turn him around … I just didn’t know.

A need to be closer to her burst inside my chest and I reached out, grabbing the back of her neck and pushing her lips harder into mine. She moaned, parting them and our tongues met in a fevered rush.

Reaching out, I cupped my hands under her ass and hoisted her on top of me, walking her back to the bedroom. She pulled back and looked in my eyes, her pert little mouth swollen from my kiss.

“Everything will be fine.”

My heart stopped beating for a few seconds.

It was the last thing Jenna said to me before she ran after Wayne the night she died.

Chapter 20

Millie

Wayne had been in the hospital about five days now. He had medically dried out from alcohol and was fully clean and sober. If I could get him to agree to the sober living facility I’d called this morning, I was going ahead with the surgery on Monday.

At my request Ashton stayed back at the bar to prep for the brunch opening. I stood outside Wayne’s door, gathering my nerve to ask a grown man who was pretty much a stranger to me to go stay in sober living for a year.

I called Gran not ten minutes ago and she agreed to split the sober-living monthly bill with Ashton and I. I just needed to tell Ashton we were doing it. Colin never initially wanted to get into saving failing restaurants, it was my idea. It all started with Marcie’s Diner. Sweet Marcie was a thirty-year-old single mother who’d opened a retro nostalgic diner in Brooklyn but didn’t have the budget or creativity to make it any better than Denny’s. When she posted on the door that she’d be closing her business the very next month, I went home to Colin and declared we were saving Marcie’s Diner.

And we did.

And every restaurant after that. Colin called it my good flaw. It was a flaw because sometimes I saved places that couldn’t afford our fee, or I put way too