[Rae’s POV]
I wake in Miles's bed for the second time, and this time I don't leave.
Sunlight filters through his blinds, casting stripes across the sheets we've thoroughly destroyed. My head rests on his chest, his heartbeat a steady rhythm beneath my cheek, and I realize I've been awake for ten minutes without plotting an escape route.
Progress. Possibly terrifying progress.
Miles stirs, arm tightening around my waist. "You're still here." His voice is rough with sleep, colored with something that sounds dangerously like hope.
"Apparently I've developed a furniture attachment. Your mattress has Stockholm syndromed me."
His laugh vibrates through his chest. "I'll take it."
We attempt breakfast like two people who've forgotten how normal interactions work. Miles makes eggs while I perch on his counter—the same counter where everything changed—and we navigate conversation with the delicacy of bomb disposal technicians working on something that's already beeping.
"So," he starts, spatula hovering mid-flip.
"So." I sip coffee that tastes like anxiety and poor decisions.
"About last night—"
"Which part? The part where I showed up soaking wet with transparent excuses, or the—the second part?"
"Both. Either." He plates the eggs with excessive concentration. "All of it, really."
We dance around what this means. Whether last night was a choice or another beautiful accident we'll pretend never happened. The words hover between us, unspoken and heavy with implication, and neither of us seems brave enough to grab them.
Then my phone starts buzzing.
Beatrice. Laurent. Henderson from the board. Three messages in thirty seconds, then Miles's phone joins the chorus like a symphony of incoming disaster.
I open the first news alert and my stomach drops through seventeen floors of reality.
VALMONT HEIRESS FAKES RELATIONSHIP TO SECURE INHERITANCE.
The headline screams from every business publication that matters, complete with screenshots I've never seen—text messages, photos, what looks like a contract draft. My blood turns to ice water as I scroll through the carnage.
"What the hell?" Miles reads over my shoulder, his face draining of color. "I don't—where did this come from? I never—these messages aren't even real. This screenshot is fabricated."
"Someone leaked it." My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. "Someone who knew about the arrangement and wanted it exposed."
We drive to the Valmont building in shell-shocked silence, neither willing to separate, both terrified of what waits ahead. Miles is still wearing yesterday's shirt, wrinkled and damning. I'm in his sweatshirt. We look exactly like what we are: two people caught in the blast radius of their own deception.
The boardroom is an ambush in business casual.
Beatrice presides at the head of the table, expression carved from granite.
Laurent sits to her left, looking far too calm for someone whose daughter just became a tabloid headline—the kind of calm that suggests he knew this was coming.
Board members line both sides like a jury that's already decided the verdict.
"Sit," Beatrice commands.
We sit.
"I trust you've seen the coverage." Her voice could freeze champagne mid-pour. "The board has questions. I suggest you answer them honestly, as your credibility is currently worth less than a discount greeting card."
Henderson leans forward, jowls quivering with righteous indignation. "Is it true? This relationship was manufactured to satisfy the inheritance requirements?"
The question hangs in the air like a guillotine waiting to drop.
I look at Miles—rumpled, terrified, still wearing yesterday's shirt like a scarlet letter. He looks back at me with eyes that hold everything we haven't said, everything we've been too scared to acknowledge.
"The arrangement started as strategy," I admit. The words taste like broken glass. "I needed to meet Grandmother's requirements, and Miles agreed to help. But what we have now—"
I reach for his hand under the table, and he lets me take it. "What we have became real. Somewhere between the performance and the panic, we stopped pretending."
"Convenient timing for that realization." Laurent's smile could cut steel. "Perhaps we should table the succession vote until this scandal is properly addressed. Revisit the Dorian option when emotions aren't running quite so high."
"Laurent." Beatrice's voice cracks like a whip. "Enough."
She turns to me, and her expression shifts into something I can't read. Not anger, not disappointment—something more complicated.
"Aurelia." She folds her hands on the table with deliberate precision. "I'm going to ask you a question, and I need you to understand what's at stake. Your answer will determine everything that comes next."
The room holds its breath. Every board member stops shuffling papers. Even Laurent's smug expression falters slightly. "Are you prepared to stake your entire future on Miles Lynn?"
The question lands like a depth charge, detonating in my chest.
I look at Miles again. Really look. At the man who's fixed my spreadsheets at three AM and defended me to my father and loved me in ways I was too blind to see. At someone who agreed to perform a relationship and somehow made it realer than anything I've ever known.
"Yes." The word comes out steady, certain. "I am."
The meeting dissolves into procedural chaos—vote postponed, further review required, damage control strategies discussed in corporate euphemisms that mean absolutely nothing. I barely hear any of it. All I can see is Miles's expression, cycling through emotions too fast to catalog.
The elevator doors close behind us like a verdict.
Miles is silent. His jaw is tight, eyes fixed on the descending numbers like they've personally orchestrated his downfall. The space between us feels infinite despite standing inches apart.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
He laughs—short, brittle, nothing like his real laugh. The sound splinters something in my chest.
"Am I okay?" He turns to face me, and there's something raw in his expression, something wounded. "You just bet your entire inheritance on me in front of a dozen people, Rae. Your whole future. Everything you've worked for. And we haven't even talked about what we are."
"Miles—"
"We haven't had a single conversation about whether this is real or another performance. Whether I'm your actual choice or just the most convenient option when the scandal hit." His voice cracks on the last word.
"And now I'm supposed to—what? Be grateful? Feel honored that you publicly declared something you've never actually said to me in private?"
I reach for him, but he steps back. The movement is small but devastating.
"I need to think." He runs a hand through his hair, looking everywhere but at me. "I need space. I can't process being someone's public declaration when I don't even know if I'm their private choice."
The elevator chimes. The doors open.
Miles walks out without looking back.
I stand frozen, watching him disappear around the corner, watching the distance grow between us with every step. The elevator doors start to close, and I don't stop them.
The realization hits like a freight train: I just told a room full of strangers I was betting my future on him.
But I've never actually told him.