Page 102 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

“Riley.”

“He’s not that guy anymore.”

“That’s not an answer,” Connor says.

“It is,” I push back. “You just don’t like it.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It is if the outcome’s the same.”

He exhales hard, pushes back from the counter, and stands.

There it is.

The first crack.

“You don’t get to decide what I’d do,” he says, pacing once, then stopping like he caught himself. “You don’t get to run that whole conversation in your head and then not give me the chance to actually be in it.”

“I wasn’t trying to shut you out—”

“You did,” he says, more animated now. “You shut me out completely.”

I flinch.

“I was trying to figure it out first.”

“For who?” he asks. “For me? Or so you wouldn’t have to deal with what I might say?”

I don’t answer right away.

“That’s what I thought,” he mutters.

I press my thumb into my palm, harder this time.

“I didn’t want to be a problem,” I say.

The words come out before I can stop them.

Connor goes still.

“You’re not a problem.”

“I know that,” I say automatically.

“Do you?”

I look at him.

Really look.

He’s not angry in the way I expected. Not yelling, not losing control.

He looks… tired.

“I didn’t want to blow up what you’ve built,” I say. “The company. Your partnerships. Everything you’ve been working on with them. I didn’t want to walk in and make you choose between me and that.”

“I wouldn’t—”