Page 111 of Lavish

He paused. Looked over his shoulder.

I swallowed. My fingers curled in the sheets.

“Can you…stay?”

He didn’t move at first, just stared at me—those eyes unreadable, like he was trying to figure out what game I was playing. Then his voice came low and warm, a little teasing, but softer than before.

“You scared again?”

I shrugged.

He stood there for a beat longer, then pushed the door shut and turned. “Make room.”

I scooched to the side, and Miles pulled the sheets back, lying down on his back. I watched him for a few seconds longer before I did the same, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’m pretty easy, if you wanted me in your bed, all you had to do was say so,” Miles finally broke the silence.

I let out a breath of a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

But the warmth in my chest betrayed me.

He didn’t say anything, just shifted slightly—his body was so much bigger than mine, his heat radiated like a low-burning fire beside me. The mattress dipped more on his side, and I could feel the brush of his arm against mine.

“When you proposed…six years ago. Did you mean it?”

He turned his head slowly. “You really gotta ask me that?”

Everyone said we made sense. Serena King and Miles Whitmore. Two legacies. Two names. But if you looked closer, if you really looked, we weren’t built the same.

He lived out loud—messy, charming, bold. I lived in silence and strategy. I thrived on control, while he trusted instinct and chaos and that reckless gut of his that always somehow worked.

But we weren’t opposites, not really.

We were mirrors. Just…cracked in different places.

We both carried too much on our backs and smiled like it didn’t weigh anything. Both so desperate to prove we weren’t our parents’ shadows that we didn’t see how much we were already replicating them.

I stared up at the ceiling. “I didn’t know. Back then, everything between us happened so fast. One minute we were sneaking around, the next…you were asking me to be your girlfriend, and I thought—” I stopped. My voice dropped to almost nothing. “I thought it was a joke.”

He shifted again, facing me now. “A joke?”

“You’re Miles Whitmore. You flirted with anything that had legs and a smile. I didn’t think you were serious at first.”

“I was.”

“I know that now,” I said quickly, like I owed him that. “But back then? I was so used to people not choosing me. Or wanting me for the wrong reasons. And then you showed up at my house, looking like that”—I gestured vaguely to him—“and talking about forever like we even had a shot.”

“You said yes.”

“I panicked.” My laugh was bitter. “I was scared not to. Because a part of me thought,What if this is it? What if this is the only time someone ever sees me like that?”

His voice was quieter now. “And then my father’s scandal hit.”

I nodded. “And suddenly I had to choose between the only man who ever really looked at me…and the family I’d spent my whole life trying to prove myself to.”

“And you didn’t choose me.”

“I couldn’t.” My throat tightened. “But it didn’t mean I didn’t love you.”