Page 63 of You, Me, and Forever

All of these things were firsts for me.

It didn’t change anything. This had obviously just turned into an extended fling—but at the end of the day, I didn’t live here, and she did. So there was no sense wondering if it could go anywhere.

We had two completely different lives.

We were just enjoying our time together while our paths crossed.

I stared at her, waiting for her to open her eyes. “Did you hear me? You can open now.”

“Well, now I’m nervous. What if you’re a kidnapper and you’ve brought me here to be your sex slave?” She smiled. “It’s the perfect setup. A mile out of town. An abandoned old house where no one would look for me. Are there ties and whips?”

“For fuck’s sake,” I said, reaching for her wrists and pulling her hands away.

She opened her eyes and glanced around. “How did you even get in here?”

“I’ve got my ways.”

“It’s been abandoned for a very long time. But I’m shocked that it’s so clean and well kept.”

“It wasn’t. It was a fucking disaster. I had it cleaned up before I showed it to you.”

“You had it cleaned up? Why?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s on a pretty magnificent piece of property. It has decent bones and wouldn’t take a ton of work to get it open for business.”

She shook her head, as if she was confused. “‘Open for business’? What do you mean?”

“I bought it. Charlie said he could get a small crew out here and get it renovated in a couple weeks. I thought it might be the perfect location for you to throw your events. It’s on a huge piece of land, so there’s a ton of potential.”

She blinked up at me as if she wasn’t processing what I was saying. “I would throw events here?”

“You’d be a partner and make it your own. Your dad could run his catering business out of the kitchen, and you would be a partial owner.”

“I don’t understand. I can’t afford this place.”

“Correct. But I can. And you would make monthly payments that you could afford, and you’d have a stake in the place.”

“Myles.” Her eyes watered and she swallowed. I moved closer and put my hand beneath her chin.

“What? You don’t like it?”

“This place had to cost a few million dollars. How can I have a stake in a place like this? I don’t have that kind of money.”

“I do this for a living, remember? I know what I’m doing. I want to invest in you. In your business. Obviously not in the Blushing Bride, because you’ve built that on your own. But in this venue, which you could make your own, I’d like to invest in that. In you.”

“So, Violet and I would make payments every month to have a stake in the property?” Her voice shook.

“Yes. The Blushing Bride would be a partner in this property. I’d put the financial investment up, and you could do whatever you want with the place. You could turn it into a boutique hotel, or just use it for events. The land on its own is valuable, so we can do whatever we want with it.”

We.

That was a foreign concept for me.

Sure, I’d invested in friends before, but this was definitely different.

I wanted her to have this. Wanted her to achieve her dreams.

“I don’t know what to say.”

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