Page 11 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

She studies me for a beat. “Does it yet?”

I meet her eyes. “Getting there.”

That almost-smile of hers breaks into the real thing for just a second. It hits me square in the chest—a little dangerous. Connor warned me she'd make me laugh before I noticed she needed looking after.

I finish my water and set the glass down. “Good talk.”

“Mm,” she says, already looking back at her screen, but still smiling.

I head back to my room telling myself to focus on the Harrington due diligence.

Instead I keep thinking about that smile.

* * *

Andrew comes in from the gym forty minutes later, hair damp, jaw tight, the look of a man who just tried to outrun his own head. Riley’s back working on the couch in the living room which he has to pass to reach the kitchen.

Riley doesn't look up—both earbuds in, fully focused. But as Andrew walks by, close enough that she shifts her legs a little, her fingers pause on the keyboard for half a second.

Then she keeps typing.

Andrew opens the fridge and stands there staring at nothing.

“Connor called,” I say from the table.

Andrew goes still like he's been waiting for this conversation.

“What did he say?” he asks.

I keep my tone casual. “Nothing we hadn't already figured out.”

Andrew holds my gaze a beat—long enough for both of us to understand we're not competing. Not yet. He nods once, grabs a bottle of water, and heads toward his room.

Three guys who just got handed an off-limits rule after the game had already started. One woman who turned a simple phone call into a starting gun.

I've been in tighter spots.

Very few that felt this inevitable.

And I don't walk away from things like that.

Chapter six

Chapter Six—Riley

Three days with my roommates and I have developed a system.

It started as insomnia at 2am. By 3, it was a plan. By 4, it had subsections.

Work: minimum six hours a day, preferably more. I have three client projects that don't care about my personal life, a deadline on the Mitchell rebrand I keep not being ready for, and a freelance career that runs entirely on the fiction that I am a functional adult. Headphones in by eight. Late nights as needed.

Early nights: nine-thirty at the absolute latest. The longer I stay up, the greater the probability of ending up in the kitchen at midnight talking to someone for forty minutes and going back to bed lying awake looking at the ceiling. Not happening again.

No eye contact with Andrew: self-explanatory. The plan is not to be rude. The plan is to be professionally civil, appropriately distant, and completely unavailable for any conversation that starts with I just want to explain or can we talk or Riley, please. I've been in this position before, standing close enough to Andrew Hayes that my feet forget how to move, and I know exactly how that ends.

Systems like this have kept me going since I was sixteen—since the accident that took our parents and left Connor as the only family I had. Since Andrew cheated, ghosted, and proved people don’t stay. Portland was just the latest reset.

The system works. Day Three goes smoothly. Day Four, I'm in bed by nine-forty. Day Five, six hours of solid work, zero unauthorized conversations.