A complete misreading of the passionate, vulnerable woman I'd held in my arms last night.
In that moment, I understood exactly why they'd broken up, despite Miles's revisionist version.
"Your call," I said. "Eleven o'clock."
I ended the conversation and tossed the phone onto the bed, irritation pulsing beneath my skin. Miles had always had a talent for getting under my skin.
Always pushing boundaries, always expecting me to fix his messes while resenting me for being able to do so.
Miles had always been sharp. Ambitious. Difficult in that particular way that comes from having never needed to work for anything, but still feeling like life shortchanged him.
I hadn’t known him growing up.
Catherine made that choice for both of us.
She’d been clear: she didn’t want a traditional family, didn’t want me involved.
And back then, I hadn’t exactly been pining to play house.
I was building my company from the ground up—boardrooms, late flights, champagne and clean exits. Fatherhood wasn’t just off the table—it wasn’t even in the building.
So I didn’t know about Miles until he was well into adulthood.
I found out only a few years ago, when Catherine—casually, as if discussing the weather—told me I had a son.
And just like that, the boardroom king became someone’s father.
He was already grown.
Educated. Fractured.
He hadn’t been raised by me and doesn’t share my name.
But he carried my edge, my ambition, my refusal to be underestimated.
When we met, it was a tense atmosphere. Awkward. Like two people sharing a bloodline but no language.
I offered him a job.
Not a title—just an opportunity.
It was the only thing I knew how to give that didn’t come with emotional strings.
He took it, eventually. Not because he wanted a relationship, but because he wanted to prove something.
To me.
To himself.
So we'd settled into an uneasy alliance.
He worked at Turner Holdings but maintained a carefully cultivated image as a maverick who'd succeeded despite his overbearing father, not because of him.
I allowed the fiction because it kept the peace, stepping in only when his "maverick" tendencies threatened significant deals.
Like Madison Street.
Like Westlake, potentially, we were still figuring each other out—walking that tightrope between polite distance and reluctant curiosity.
