Page 92 of The Loves We Lost

“Not sure that’s your call to make,” she sneers.

I step towards her, just as arms wrap around my middle. “It’s not,” Miles says from behind me. “It’s mine. And I clearly wasn’t making it clear enough if Vi thought there was anything happening just now.” Bates kisses my cheek. Then his voice drops low. “Steady, buttercup.”

“Just ’cause you knocked up some quick lay back in the day doesn’t meant mean you need to stay with her now, for the sake of that whiny kid who might not even be yours,” Penny says.

I try to move out of Miles’s grasp to slap her, just for talking about me and Avery that way.

But everything shifts.

I find myself suddenly behind Miles as he faces off with her. “Say another word about my woman or my daughter, I dare you. It’ll get you killed, Pen.”

Halo grabs Penny as King steps in front of Miles.

“We had something,” Penny cries in desperation. In the struggle to wiggle out of Halo’s arms, her breast breaks free of her top.

Miles looks at her. “We fucked. That’s it. Just like you fucked half the men in this lot. Your choice. Your body. Your call. But don’t glorify anything that happened between you and me into anything more than sex.”

“But I was waiting for you.”

Miles laughs. “Yeah? You waiting for Halo? And Switch? And Vex too?”

“Fuck you,” she spits.

Suddenly aware this is Spark and Iris’s wedding and that we’re causing a scene, I flee. The safest thing I can think of is to hurry to Miles’s room, and so I do. The hallway is dark and cool. I let myself in and hurry into the bathroom where I lock the door. When I get there, I splash water on my face. It makes my mascara run, but I needed it.

Rage is a strange thing. I’ve felt shades of it in my life, but not like I did in that moment when she went after my daughter with her words.

The door slams and I jump. Then someone hammers on the bathroom door. “It’s me, Vi.”

I look like a raccoon, but I unlock the door and go back to washing my face until the lines of black are gone. It helps me calm.

“You wanna tell me what the fuck that was?” Miles asks.

His question sends my anger back up to level ten. “I sat and watched her make a play for you and paw at you every time you got up to get food or get a drink or go talk to the guys.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to say, ‘Hey, Miles, Penny’s constant pawing is pissing me off’?”

I eye him. “And it didn’t occur to you to say, ‘Hey, Penny, it’s disrespectful for you to keep touching me like that’?”

“Because it didn’t occur to me. Because she’s always touching us. Has been for years. I didn’t think anything of it, it’s certainly nothing sexual. Didn’t occur to me, to be honest. Now I know. Won’t happen again. But why the fuck didn’t you speak to me about—what are those?” He looks down at my hands.

“Catalina’s rings.”

“You want to tell me why you’re wearing them?”

“Niro thought I might need a little more protection to go talk to Penny.” I feel embarrassed now, in the cold light of his room. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a scene.”

“Niro put you up to this?”

Before I can answer, he’s striding to the door.

“Wait. No. He saw how frustrated I was getting and came to check that I was okay.”

Bates rubs his hands over his face. “He told you to challenge Penny?” His voice is deathly low and rough.

“Please. Don’t. He was right. Like you said, you didn’t see it. And if I’m to find a way to thrive here, those girls need to know you’re taken.”

“Am I?” Miles asks. “Because I’m pretty sure I told you I loved you and you didn’t say it back to me.”