Page 114 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

And either way—

I might be the one who breaks Riley.

I set the phone face-down on the table and stare at the blank screen.

For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what the right move is.

And that’s a problem.

Chapter forty

Chapter Forty—Riley

Ican’t stay in this penthouse another hour.

The Harrington message is still on my phone. I've read it four times and each time it lands the same way—clean and cold and completely my fault. They're asking about stability. Partnership integrity. Connor's been canceling meetings.

Because of me.

I stand at the window and look at the city and do the math I've been refusing to do. Three men who spent years building something real. A deal worth more than anything I own. A brother who's been shutting down professionally because he walked in on his partners in bed with his pregnant sister.

I've known this was coming. I've been watching it and hoping the feeling would pass. It hasn't passed.

I know what the right thing looks like.

I hate that I know.

I go to the bedroom and pull out my bag. The one I brought when I came for two months. I start folding things into it before I let myself think about it too long—because if I think about it too long I'll find a reason to stay, and I'm very good at finding reasons. I've been finding them for weeks.

My toiletries from the bathroom. The charger from the nightstand. The cardigan draped over the chair that's been there for two weeks because I kept meaning to put it away and didn't.

I work fast.

Portland. Third floor, sticky window, the coffee shop that gets my order slightly wrong. I can be back there in four hours. I can send a message when I land. I'm sorry. This was my mistake. The baby—we'd figure out the baby. We could do this the normal way. One father. Reasonable arrangements. Something that didn't require three men to set their lives on fire.

I zip the bag.

I don't let myself look at the room.

Downstairs, the lobby is all marble and recirculated air and strangers who have nothing to do with any of this. I set the bag down near a chair and open my phone and pull up flights.

Portland. One seat. Tomorrow would be better but there's a 4:40 that's still showing green.

I stare at it.

My hand is steady. My breathing is not.

Three hours and forty-five minutes. I know this route. Desert to mountains to coast to gray and wet and something that used to feel like relief.

Except I haven't felt that way about Portland in a while. I've been trying not to look at that too closely.

I think about my apartment. Third floor. A window that sticks. The coffee shop that gets my order slightly wrong and I've never once corrected them because at some point it became mine. The woman at the corner market who sets aside the good sourdough on Fridays. A ficus I've kept alive for three years by accident. A life I built small and careful and portable—easy to leave, easy to defend, never quite enough to make me want to stay.

Three open browser tabs on a baby registry I've been keeping like a secret. Stroller comparisons. A convertible crib in white. A note I typed in the margin: needs to fit through a standard doorway. I've been thinking about the doorway. That's not something you do for a place you're planning to leave.

The 4:40 blinks at me from the screen.

Andrew didn't run. Seven years he was gone, and when the worst of this landed—Connor's face, the door clicking shut, all of it—he didn't run then either. He stood there and took it and said I know and didn't flinch. That's not the person who left me at twenty-one. I don't know exactly when he stopped being that person, but I know what I've watched him be for the past few months, and it isn't someone I'm supposed to run from.