Page 9 of Filthy Rich Brother’s Best Friends (Filthy Rich Harems #5)

Miles

P eople confuse me.

They say one thing, mean another, and expect you to understand both. They smile when they’re sad. Laugh when they’re angry. Pretend they’re fine when they are very clearly not.

It took me a long time to realize most people don’t want to be understood. They want to be perceived the “right” way. It’s all about optics.

I stopped trying to decode their words a while ago.

Body language speaks louder than words. That’s where the truth lives. Not in what they say, but in how they move when they think no one’s watching.

So I watch.

I stand near the patio table, close enough so it feels like I’m part of the conversation. I have a drink in hand because it’s expected of me, but I’ve only taken a few sips since Gigi shoved it at me with a syrupy smile. And I track everything.

Jude’s laughing at something Blaire just said.

Her hand grazes his bicep when she reaches past him.

The movement is designed to look accidental, but it was clearly done with intention.

She’s calibrated every movement to signal interest. Her smile is a few degrees wider than necessary.

Her posture is open, tilted slightly toward him.

She’s making it look unrehearsed, but it’s not.

She’s trying to pull his focus to her.

Jude either doesn’t notice or isn’t returning that interest. My money is on the latter given how he was staring at Lola nonstop until she retreated upstairs after her interaction with Reid.

Gigi, meanwhile, is running the full theatrics on Reid. Everything about her seems artificial, from her oversized gestures to her candy-sweet smile. She keeps adjusting her top and laughing louder than the joke requires.

Unlike Jude, Reid is eating the attention up. He loves it—especially when it comes from pretty girls. We’re opposites in that sense. I hate being the center of attention; Reid lives for it.

But my favorite thing to watch is Lola. It’s always Lola.

Reid can’t help himself either. He may be subtler than Jude, but I watched his eyes flick in her direction more times than I could count.

Her body was in hostess mode, but her smile was too calculated. Every expression landed with a half-second delay. She was managing herself in real time, editing as she went. That means she was overwhelmed.

Other people wouldn’t notice. But I’ve known Lola long enough to know the difference between real and performance. And I’ve seen her like this before. Wes used to call it her “pretend chill.” It’s what she does when she wants to seem unbothered but is two seconds from spiraling.

Now that Lola is gone, I would rather be buried in code. There’s structure in that. This? I don’t have the time or patience for women who are trying to flirt their way into my bed or sleep their way into my bank account.

I’d call this party a complete disaster if it weren’t for one thing—Lola.

Lola’s the girl who used to bring fresh-baked cookies during my all-night coding sprints. She’s the one who mocked me for working too much, then stayed up with me—curled on the end of the couch, reading a book and keeping me company while I worked. She always called me “Tech Boy.”

I pretended not to like it.

I liked it more than I should have.

I like her .

I always have.

I just never had a window to act on it. At least not without blowing up something that mattered. And by the time I thought maybe I had a chance, she was already hanging out with someone else.

Then, there’s the even bigger problem that she’s my best friend’s sister. Wes would fucking kill me if he knew I had these thoughts about his little sister.

Jude walks away from Blaire and she quickly moves in beside me. Her glass is empty, but she twirls it in her hand like it’s not.

“You’re very still,” she says. “That usually means one of two things. Bored or dangerously interested.”

I say nothing. God, this is painful.

She hums. “Let me guess which.”

I don’t take the bait. She’s testing for a reaction. Just because I don’t have interest in girls like her doesn’t mean I haven’t interacted with them before. They treat every conversation like poker—bluff, prod, wait. See who folds first.

I let the silence hang.

She eventually lifts the glass to her lips, forgetting it's empty. “You’re not nearly as hard to read as you think you are.”

That makes me glance over.

She grins. “There he is.”

I look away before she can land the next line. “I’m not trying to be hard to read.”

Jude returns and Blaire attaches herself to him once again, whispering something to him.

I think about Reid and Lola’s interactions from a few minutes ago—right before she stormed upstairs.

The moment she had showed weakness he had pounced. He got a reaction and doubled down, convinced it was proof he was winning something. I’ve seen it before many times. It’s a cycle. Push. Provoke. Repeat.

And Lola has always been his favorite target.

It’s always been a game to him, the same one they’ve been playing since they met. But tonight? It seemed like he was lashing out to hurt her, not just to provoke her.

I don’t know what changed. Maybe it’s Jude. Whatever it was, it wasn’t harmless sparring like it usually is. Lola said something cruel and very unlike her. Reid pushed harder and the whole thing detonated.

After Lola stormed off, Reid acted like nothing happened. He picked up his drink again and muttered something under his breath as he took over manning the grill.

I walk over to him now. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Reid glances over, brows raised. “Do what?”

“Push her.”

“She snapped. That’s on her.”

“No. You poked until she did. That’s on you.”

He tilts his head, studying me. I’ve surprised him. I don’t usually engage with him after he pulls a stunt like this.

But I watched her face crumble right before she walked away.

And that’s not something I can ignore.

I really don’t like watching someone I care about get humiliated in front of a bunch of people.

“You’ve been off since we got here,” I tell him. “And you took it out on her.”

He doesn’t answer right away. Then he exhales. “So what, you’re her defense now?” He grabs a plate and starts taking the burgers off the grill.

“No. I just think you crossed a line.”

His eyes narrow. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know what I saw.”

He holds my stare for a second too long, then looks away and walks into the kitchen with the now-cooked burgers.

I let him go.

But the feeling in my chest doesn’t ease. Not even a little.

I can hear Reid moving around the kitchen, probably trying to find something to snack on. That man is constantly eating.

Jude’s door shut almost an hour ago. He came back over here shortly after he came back down from Lola's room. As hard as Gigi tried to salvage things, the night was pretty much over after that.

What surprises me is that Reid didn’t stay over there and hook up with Blaire or Gigi.

He spent half the night laying the groundwork and I expected him to follow through. But he didn’t. That’s not like him at all.

He left with Jude and me, mumbling the whole way home, pissed off without saying why.

I close my bedroom door and sit down at my desk.

I haven’t done this in a long time.

I tried to be good the last few years and get my updates on Lola from Wes. Instead of, you know, cyberstalking her.

But the thing is—Wes never told me much. And I couldn’t exactly push for more info without raising suspicion.

None of what he told me prepared me for what I found out tonight. She’s living next door to us. And she slept with Jude.

She doesn’t seem okay.

And I’m starting to think she hasn’t been for a while.

I sit back in the chair, eyes on the closed laptop in front of me. It would be easy. Just pull up the socials and take a look. But that crosses a line I promised myself I wouldn’t touch.

She’s still Lola.

Still Wes’s little sister.

Still a thousand kinds of off-limits.

But now she lives a hundred feet away and that makes it harder to look away.

I get up and sprawl out on my bed. I will my brain to think about something else—anything else—but I can’t.

I close my eyes and her face appears immediately.

I slide my hand beneath the waistband of my shorts. I'm already hard—have been since I started thinking about her. About how she looked tonight in those shorts that showed off her legs. About how her hair fell across her face when she leaned forward.

"Fuck," I whisper into the darkness.

I should stop. This is wrong on every level. But my hand doesn't listen to my brain, and I'm stroking my cock now, imagining it's her touch instead of mine. Soft. Tentative at first, then bolder.

In my mind, her lips are on mine, tasting like the wine she was drinking. Her tongue sliding against mine as her hand works between us.

My reverie goes back to last summer at Wes's parents' lake house. She came out to the dock in that navy blue bikini, and she looked so fucking good. I had to dive into the lake to hide what she did to me. I don’t think she knew, but I couldn't look at her for the rest of the day.

I'm fully gone now, lost in the fantasy of her. What she would feel like under me. The sounds she would make. How her skin would taste.

My pace quickens, pressure building as I arch slightly off the bed. It takes almost no time before I come, the release so intense I have to bite my lip to keep from making noise.

Reality crashes back as I lie there, panting. The shame follows quickly behind it, and I wait for sleep to take me so I can forget what I just did. Again…