Page 30 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

She makes a sound that's almost a laugh. “You don't know anything about typography.”

“No,” I agree. “But I know you need someone to be annoyed at who isn't a client.”

That lands. She closes the laptop halfway. “You brought two coffees.”

“I did.”

“You came out here planning to stay.”

“I brought coffee,” I say again, like that answers it.

Her mouth curves, half amused, half warning. “You're a disaster, Liam.”

“Probably.” I lean back and let the sun hit my face. “But I'm a disaster with iced coffee on a Saturday, so you're stuck with me whether or not you want to be.”

She shakes her head but reaches for the cup. That's enough.

We sit without talking for a while. The good kind of quiet. She goes back to her laptop, but her foot stops bouncing. Somewhere in the last five minutes she started actually working instead of performing it.

“Nice bikini, by the way.”

She glances up over her sunglasses. “You shouldn't be checking me out.”

“That would be completely impossible.”

She holds my gaze for one beat, then shakes her head and looks back at the screen. She's working to keep the smile off her face. Not quite succeeding.

Then she says, still without looking up, “Stop smiling at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know how this ends.”

I turn toward her. “How does it end?”

She glances over the top of her sunglasses. “Badly. Obviously.”

“For who?”

She doesn't answer. The corner of her mouth does something complicated.

“We have rules, Liam,” she says, voice quieter now.

“Yeah.” I lean in, forearms on my knees. “We do.”

I know exactly what I'm doing. I've known since I picked up that second coffee. The rules still make sense. I believe in them about sixty percent of the time, which isn't enough to justify the way I keep looking for their edges.

My hand moves before I can stop it—slow enough that she could—and I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers rest at her jaw, thumb brushing the soft line there. Her breath catches. Mine does too.

“You make following them feel like the hardest thing I've ever done,” I murmur.

Her lips part. She doesn't move away. For one long second her eyes search mine like she's trying to find the version of this that makes sense.

“Tell me to stop and I will,” I say.

She opens her mouth.

The glass door slides open.