Page 115 of Lavish
Even after everything, through all the hate, all the pain, all the years… I still fucking loved Miles Whitmore.
CHAPTER 26
Miles
“You gotta be kidding me,”I muttered.
“No, that’s what we’re looking at,” Carlus said, his flashlight beam highlighting the warped seam along the ceiling joint, the beam catching dust motes dancing in the air.
Even though I’d struggled the last few years with what to do with Whitmore Ventures, I did love getting my hands dirty. Getting into a place, building, shaping it till it was something someone else would call home for years to come.
I leaned the ladder against the wall.
“Easy, man, that looks like it’s gonna come down.”
“I got it.”
I climbed up and ripped a piece off. The plaster crumbled with a soft sigh, releasing a cloud of fine white dust that looked like powdered sugar. Then, with a groaning crack, the whole ceiling gave way. A torrent of cold sludge, gray muck, and broken drywall slammed into me, the smell of dust and decay thick in the air.
I hit the floor, coughing violently, dust and memory filling my mouth.
Serena.
The sound she made when I told her to look at me. The way her body clenched around me like she couldn’t help it. How she whispered she hated me right before coming so hard she damn near blacked out.
That face—eyes glassy, lips parted, hands grabbing at anything she could find to anchor herself. That was mine. That wasreal.
I’d seen her wrecked. And she let me see her like that.
No armor. No claws.
Just her.
And now here I was, face-down in drywall and rot, thinking about the woman who’s both the sharpest weapon I’ve ever held and the only softness I’ve ever really wanted.
She’d never admit it, but something shifted between us last night.
And I felt it.
“Goddamn!”
Carlus cursed. “You good?”
“Peachy,” I spat, the word tasting like ash as I pushed plaster dust from my braids.
I wasn’t stupid enough to believe she trusted me again. But maybe…maybe for the first time in a long time, she didn’t hate me either.
Maybe she needed me.
And fuck—maybe I needed her too.
“Mr. Whitmore.” I turned to see one of our workers enter the living room, nervously glancing over his shoulder. “There’s a guy here for you. Not sure how he got past the gate.”
I frowned. “Send him away?—”
“Hmm, didn’t think you got your hands dirty here, son,” Victor said as he entered the living room.
I didn’t say anything at first. Couldn’t. The shame hit me in two waves—first, that Victor was here, now, in front of my people. Second, that he’d found me like this.
