Damn him.
I used to lie in his lap just like this. Sunday mornings. After board meetings. On days when I hated the world and he refused to let me carry it alone.
Back when it was easy.
“If anything, I should be doing this for you,” I told him.
“Shh,” he said.
Now it was all secrets and deals and pretending we didn’t remember what this used to feel like.
I told myself not to lean into it.
But slowly, stupidly, I did.
My body softened. My spine curved into his chest. And when his lips brushed the top of my head, I didn’t flinch.
I just breathed.
CHAPTER 19
Miles
“Wassup, people,”I shouted, stepping into my parents’ house.
When I’d gotten the money for Victor, this had been the first thing I bought. We had needed somewhere safe. We were now on the other side of town, in a quiet, less flashy neighborhood, away from prying eyes.
“Who’s that makin’ all that noise?”
I heard the soft shuffle of shoes and smiled—it was Mama Teagues, Pops’s caretaker during the day when Ma or I were at work. After everything that happened with Pops, Ma and I both stepped in to keep Whitmore Ventures afloat. She’d walked away from her career in marketing years ago to raise me, but when the company started slipping, she dusted off that corporate hat without hesitation.
Mama Teagues came around the corner. Her gray hair was pulled back into a neat bun, and she wore her usual Sunday best: a floral-print dress, thick gold chains around her neck, and a pair of sensible shoes.
“Boy, you how I feel about noise. Damn, what happened to your face?”
I went over and picked her up, and she squealed like a girl before hitting my side to be put down. She was the only one willing to take on the case that was Pops after the whole town blacklisted us.
“You should see the other guy. Sorry, Mama Teagues. How you doin’ today? I stopped by Café L’Amour and got you those brownie cookies you like.”
Mama Teagues’s eyes went wide behind her coke-bottle glasses, and she snatched the paper bag from my hand.
“Your father out on the back with lunch. Beware, he’s in a mood today.”
When wasn’t somebody always in a mood?
Victor was still on my mind. Always in the corner, always lurking. He was back—and holding a fucking knife over my throat. Laundering money. The fuck I look like? A white-collar criminal?
I should’ve been focused. I needed to be. But instead, my head was full of her.
Serena.
The way she’d looked at me when I pulled her in—sharp at first, all warning and fight—but she came anyway. Sat between my legs like muscle memory, like her body remembered mine even if her pride refused to admit it.
She gasped when I unhooked her necklace. That sound…low and surprised, a little breathy. I’d felt it in my chest. And when I removed her earrings, her whole body had gone still, like she didn’t trust what was happening but couldn’t stop it either.
Now she was my wife and still a stranger. Still walking around like she was built from glass and sharp edges, like softness would kill her.
And I hated how bad I wanted to be the one she could collapse against again.
