The deep, possessive beast in my chest wanted to snarl at anyone else touching him, but I was good and said nothing.
When Tina also said nothing, Miles frowned at her. “What is it? Did you tell her about Mat?”
“No! Well, yes, I told her you had a boyfriend, but I didn’t say who. She’d been posting . . . pictures of you.” Tina set his phone gently on the table, flicking a worried look up at him. “Ones she’d taken without your knowledge. And when I asked her to take them down, I gave her a hint, you know, to remind her that this is an arrangement, not a relationship. And now all her pictures have to be okayed by me.”
“What sort of pictures?”
Tina seemed unwilling to explain, but her worried look slid my way again.
With his brows raised in faint incredulity, Miles followed. “Mat? You know about this?”
“Half your social media traffic when we’re apart, remember?” I said, my heart flip-flopping in sudden panic that I’d done the wrong thing and he was about to walk out on me again. “I noticed when we were in Cincinnati that her photo drops always started with a few selfies or snaps of food, then descended into . . . look, softcore porn is honestly the best way to describe it. Close-up shots of your hands, your ankles, your profile while you’re napping against car windows. Things like that.”
“Cincinnati? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He toldme,” Tina said, coming to my defence with a mulish look. “Since it’s my job to deal with these things, not yours. You’ve had quite enough going on, if you remember.”
Eyes widening in surprise, Miles lifted his hands. “That wasn’t an accusation! Sorry, love,” he added, a gentle reassurance that was like a whole handful of chalk marks added to the tally I absolutely wasn’t still keeping. “I was just surprised.”
He looked upset with himself, scowling at the dining table, and I pulled myself off the fancy leather couch to go to him. “I didn’t want to give you anything new to worry about,” I said.
“And I don’t want to keep giving you things to worry about.” He sighed, and kissed my forehead. “I promise I wasn’t mad at you, only at Emily. I should break things off with her.”
“No, you can’t!” Tina cried. “We have to be careful, remember? She knows too much to just cut her loose.”
“Fine, then what am I supposed to do about this?” he asked, gesturing at his phone.
“Well, maybe we should just go out and—”
Miles interrupted her with a groan. “I don’t have time for this, Tee! I have a lot of points to defend here or I’ll drop further down the rankings, and when I’m not playing, I’d rather be spending time with myactual boyfriend.”
There was no possible world in which I could ever get sick of those words.
“Surely, she’s the last person who would tell the world Miles is gay,” I said instead of admitting that. “Since that would mean acknowledging her relationship with him is a lie.”
“That’s true,” Miles said, grabbing his phone off the table. “Can’t argue with that. I’m going to break things off.”
“Miles, wait!” Tina closed her laptop with a snap and set her fingers to her brows. “That’s true, but her parents know ours, and if she complains to them, it will absolutely get back to Mom and Dad.”
“So? They won’t care that I broke up with someone.”
“They will when she tells them it’s because you have a boyfriend now! We need to keep things peaceful or they won’t come to the table, remember?”
With a frustrated growl, Miles threw up his hands. “Fuck! God, I should just let them take half the damn money if they’ll leave me alone. Maybe I should rip off the Band-Aid and let things fall where they will. If they want to make news by suing me for everything I’ve got, let them.”
“Look, I know this is hard,” she said, reaching out a hand toward him, “but I’m working on it. They still trust me and theyarelistening, we just have to keep up the appearance of being dutiful children a bit longer, even if it’s like walking on eggshells all the time.”
I couldn’t but think of everything Miles had said about their manipulations and their cruelties. People who would even considersuing their own son weren’t the sort to give up just because the fish they were reeling in stopped struggling.
“Do you really think you can talk them into letting Miles go?” I asked.
“No, probably not, but if we move slowly, I can talk them down from making it worse. From lashing out at—”
“They’re already lashing out!” I said, throwing out an arm in the vague direction of everything Miles had told me that day beside the pool. “They aren’t going to change, so tiptoeing around them only keeps Miles the victim. He doesn’t need softly, softly, Tina, he needs you to go in to fucking bat for him.”
Tina’s cheeks heated and she set her jaw, looking all too like Miles as she did so. “I know you warned me you would fight for him and I appreciate that, but this is not the time, Matteo.”
“Well, when is the time, if not when he’s under attack?”
