Chapter One #2
Deep down, Avery knew he hadn’t hired a jet to show off. If Miles loved someone, he’d go to great lengths for them. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t so much as call or text. How he’d treated her was proof of that.
“Miles,” she said. “I’m looking for Lily. Have y’all talked today?”
The second she said “y’all,” he cocked his head to the side and smiled—a sign he’d caught her accent too.
“No, I’m not sure she knows I came up last night. But you know Lily, she’s always late.” He laughed a little too loud. “I came over to check the waterfront and saw you standing here. Like a vision.”
Funny he called her a vision when he’d done the ghosting. Nothing good could come from broaching that topic today. Avery frowned and resolved to keep everything on the surface.
“I’m sorry you drove all this way to work at the front desk.” Miles rubbed his stubble again. “I hoped you’d return for something happier, like a vacation.”
Avery shook her head, surprised he couldn’t see why she hadn’t come back here until now. Vacations were for making new memories, not reliving painful ones. She’d taken trips with Lily almost every summer, but never to Maine.
“I’m not here on vacation,” she said. “I’m here to open the resort.”
“So am I.”
For a split second, the world fell so quiet she could’ve heard a pebble drop clear across the lake.
Lily hadn’t mentioned Miles being here. Seeing him at a wedding was one thing.
Working with him sounded like hell on earth.
One of them needed to go, and she had the summer off.
Given his active social life, she’d let him off the hook.
“I’m sure you’re busy.” Avery straightened her shoulders. “I’ve got this. Go back to New York and your red carpets.”
She waved him away like he’d vanish and become a ghost again. Instead, he widened his stance and crossed his arms. Miles wasn’t going anywhere. She felt a tingle of attraction at his big dock energy.
“Nate and his mother are staying at my apartment in the City, and he asked me to get the waterfront ready,” he said.
They stood there in silence, and Avery stared down into the crystal-clear water. She could see every rock on the bottom.
“I’d already planned to be here most of the summer. At my new house,” he said. “I’m working on a project.”
Miles hooked his thumb over his shoulder, across the cove. He must have bought a house on the other side of the point.
“If you need anything, I’m a paddle away.” He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt.
“Paddle?” Avery stole a peek at his forearms, more rippled than the lake and just as inviting. When she lifted her head, he smiled. He’d caught her ogling. Heat rose in her neck.
Miles ran his teeth over his lower lip, as if gathering the courage to say something. He’d done that right before he asked her out the first time, before he’d kissed her, and again right after she’d told him she loved him.
“I bought the Red House.”
The air left her body. At nineteen, that had been her dream house. He’d heard her ideas for it as they’d sunbathed on the floating dock, planning a future that never came. He could have given her a second to absorb this news. Instead, he waited for a reaction.
“The A-frame?”
He nodded and she gulped down the bitter taste of acceptance. Since she’d never returned to the lake, she’d given up claim. But she never thought Miles would take it for himself.
Out on the point, the Red House’s triangular roof glistened in the sun.
The spruce green pines behind it complemented the fresh crimson paint.
Large boxes sat on a pallet by the front door, partly covered by a blue tarp, its edge flapping in the breeze.
Solar panels covered half of the roof. She put her hand to her heart to steady the betrayal moving through her chest.
“You should see it.” He smiled like he’d won a prize at a carnival. “Come for dinner. Tomorrow. Six.”
It was a dreamy Maine lakeside cabin, an A-frame straight out of a hot cocoa ad, nestled among the tall pines, with a big porch and a long dock made for getting a running start before jumping off the end.
She’d always wondered if it was equally as quaint on the inside, but she couldn’t hand him a reprieve for their very public breakup. Or the ten years of silence.
As if reading her thoughts, Miles cleared his throat. “Our best friends are engaged, and it’d be nice if we could be in the same room and not be…”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
Not be what? Mad at the guy who left her crestfallen and crying in a parking lot?
“We should talk,” he said. “About us.”
He stared out over the water.
“About us?” She waited for him to make eye contact. “There’s no us, Miles. You made sure of that.”
He shifted on his feet and dug his hands into his pockets.
“That summer,” he said.
A sour taste rose in Avery’s throat. A decade ago, he’d walked away with his dignity intact, leaving her crumpled on the pavement. When she’d finally stood, long after he drove off, there were tiny pebbles embedded in her knees. Hearing him call it that summer was an emotional gut punch.
“I’d like to move past it,” he said.
Of course he would. He’d ruined it.
Avery recited the words she’d practiced hundreds of times in the mirror, still unsure she believed them. “Listen, I granted your wish and gave you space. Ten years of space. And I do not need to see your house.”
“But you want to.” He smiled in slow motion, one side of his mouth lagging behind the other.
Teasing her about the house he’d stolen from her was both infuriating and seductive. Those chestnut eyes widened as if he knew exactly what she wanted. Hoping to silence the traitorous thrum radiating down her middle, Avery reminded herself they’d never been friends.
“You can leave.” Again, she shooed him away. “Go back to New York. I’ve got this.”
Miles straightened and made himself taller, which only made him more alluring. She didn’t remember his chest being so broad, or his arms being so muscular. He’d changed in the last decade.
“Well, if you think you can open this hundred-acre resort in a month with your lists and that sweet southern accent, I won’t stand in your way,” he said. “Especially if I get you so up into your feelings that you can’t handle having me around.”
Avery bristled at his massive ego. Her accomplishments were more than lists and southern charm.
“Don’t you dare insinuate I can’t do a job I once did or run a business,” she said, pointing at the lodge. “I founded and sold a successful stationery company. For a lot of money. I got into a top ten business school, and I’m starting my MBA at Dartmouth in the fall.”
Miles’s playful demeanor grew sullen. His gaze fell to the dock planks.
“It’s been a decade, Miles.” She pointed at the lodge. “You can’t waltz up like some kind of athleisure local hero, expose your forearms, and invite me to dinner expecting forgiveness.”
When he didn’t respond, she kept going.
“I appreciate you saying hello,” she said. “But your ten years of silence still stings, and dammit, Miles. No one told me you’d be here.”
“I can leave,” he said. “But if my presence bothers you this much, we should talk. Our best friends are getting married in October, and I don’t think we want this”—he swirled his hand between them—“at their wedding.”
Avery crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t see the point in talking. They were different people now, and this felt like all she could muster.
“I didn’t come here for you,” she said. “I came to help the Coopers. I’m okay with you being here. But please don’t make me pass through the second circle of Hell every time we meet.”
“Lust?” Miles grinned. Like a devil.
Avery rolled her eyes. This new Miles and his big dock energy had grown tiresome.
“The second circle of Hell,” he said with an infuriating, intoxicating smirk, “is lust.”
She should have known this. A decade ago, they’d both discovered their schools offered a class on Dante’s Inferno.
He’d signed up at Yale and she’d done the same at Vanderbilt, agreeing they’d study together via Skype.
She grimaced at the memory of taking the course and reading the book on her own, hoping he’d call and apologize so they could finish the semester as planned. It never happened.
His eye twinkled. Sarcasm and sunlight suited Miles.
That had not changed. Neither had the dent in his chin.
She resisted the urge to press her thumb into it, feel his stubble, watch his lips part softly in anticipation of a kiss.
If he had been anyone else, she’d jump into his arms and wrap herself around him.
“We can discuss the Inferno when you come for dinner,” he said. “I’ll let you pick another circle.”
“The ninth circle is for betrayers of special relationships. They’re frozen in a lake of ice.”
“Perfect. I can tell you’ve imagined me there already.” He winked. “And we happen to have a lake.”
Avery bit back a laugh. Miles couldn’t know he’d acclimated her to future betrayal. It had made it easier for her to break the engagement off with her fiancé, Trent, when he’d cheated. After being fooled twice, she’d given up on finding someone who committed to her the way she committed to them.
Miles reached across the dock and rested a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“Come on, Avery.” His melty chestnut eyes begged for forgiveness. “This first time may be the toughest part of seeing each other again.”
She hoped so. She couldn’t open this big resort by herself, but she’d never admit that. At least not to him.
She looked up at the lodge. Lily stood at the top of the path, rubbing her brow, as if warding off a headache.
“You two okay down there?” Lily shouted down.
“Yep, just discussing Dante.” Avery glared at Miles. “I should get off this dock before he moves on to War and Peace.”
“‘Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women,’” Miles said.
Lily laughed. Avery scowled, annoyed he could pull quotes out of thin air so quickly.
Miles raised his hands in surrender, his shirt lifting to reveal a trail of hair below his navel. She couldn’t see the rest of his abdomen, but she remembered those peaks and valleys. A luscious playground which should come with a warning: Abandon all hope, ye who enter. He will break your heart.
Miles motioned for Avery to leave the dock first. As she passed by, she recalled how he used to rest his hand in the small of her back. A tingle pulsed through her, and she reminded herself yet again that allowing his hand to brush her there, or anywhere, would let in a lie.
He headed down the lakeside path toward the marina and, beyond that, out to the Red House. His house. Avery’s gaze shot darts at his back.
She bounded up the path to hug her best friend.
“What was that?” Lily asked, as they walked into the vacant lodge.
“Nothing. Just setting boundaries before your wedding.”
Lily huffed out an exhale, and Avery shivered under a blanket of guilt.
Lily didn’t need to add another burden to her busy month.
May was crazy for teachers, with a zillion end-of-year picnics, graduations, and whatnot.
Her future father-in-law’s heart attack happened three days ago, sending her fiancé to New York for who knew how long.
Lily and Nate did not need a war breaking out between their best man and maid of honor.
Avery rested a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Everything’ll be okay. Miles and I are adults now. We can handle this.”