Page 85 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

Three days.

I look back out at the city.

Connor is already on the ground. None of us moves.

Chapter thirty

Chapter Thirty—Liam

Nobody moves for a long time after Riley sets the phone down.

Andrew is the first one off the couch, not because he has somewhere to go, just because sitting still isn't something he knows how to do when the walls are closing in. Ethan closes his book. I watch the city below like it might have something useful to say.

Riley keeps flipping her phone over in her hands like the screen might change if she moves it enough times. I do what I always do when things get heavy. I suggest we move to the bedroom. Just to be close.

She looks up at me, eyes tired but soft, and gives a small nod. “Yeah. I don't want to be alone right now.”

She lets me pull her up from the couch, her fingers threading through mine like she needs the anchor. In the bedroom she climbs onto the big bed without being asked, curling onto her stomach in nothing but one of my old T-shirts. The fabric rides up her thighs and she doesn't bother fixing it. She just wants to be held. Touched. Reminded that we're solid even when everything else feels like it's tilting.

I kneel beside her first.

“Relax,” I tell her.

She lets out a shaky breath. “Easy for you to say.”

Ethan takes her feet first, his thumbs pressing firm, slow circles into her arches and then gliding up her calves in long, soothing strokes. I start at her shoulders, my hands big and rough from years that had nothing to do with gentle, but I keep my touch light, thumbs working slow circles into the deep knots. Andrew settles on her other side, his palm sliding down her spine in long, steady strokes.

She sighs into the mattress, the sound soft and unguarded, her body loosening under our hands. The longer we touch her, the more she melts. Hips shifting, breath deepening, a quiet hum in her throat. When my hands move over the curve of her ass, she arches just enough to tell me the comfort has shifted into something hotter.

Andrew pauses beside me, hand resting against her hip.

“You sure?” he says, voice steady.

Riley nods into the mattress, breath catching. “Yes.”

Ethan's fingers tighten slightly on her calf before sliding higher, not pulling away, just grounding her.

The tension moves through all of us at once. The moment before touch.

Nobody rushes it.

Andrew looks at me first, then Ethan, one of those silent conversations that only works because we've spent too many years reading each other without words. Riley feels it too. I can tell by the way her breathing changes beneath our hands.

She’s waiting. Not nervous exactly. Aware. Of all of us.

My thumb drifts along the curve of her shoulder while Ethan keeps tracing circles against the back of her leg, grounding her without crowding her. Andrew stays still for one extra second, watching her carefully like he’s giving her every chance to change her mind.

She doesn’t.

Instead she presses back into us slightly, seeking more contact instead of less, and something possessive tightens in my chest at the trust in that movement alone.

Andrew drags his fingertips down the curve of her spine, teasing, testing, before letting them slide between her thighs. She gasps when his fingers slip inside her, slick and ready. I watch the way her back bows, the way her lips part against her arm. The trust in every small movement hits me low and deep.

I settle behind her, guiding myself into place, dragging the head of my cock along her without entering. She whimpers at the contact, small and desperate.

“Easy,” I say. “We've got time.”

I push in slow, inch by inch, until I'm buried deep. The heat of her closes around me and my vision blurs for a second. Riley makes this small broken sound that nearly undoes me on the spot. Her hand twists in the sheets while Andrew whispers something near her ear that I can't fully hear, only feel in the way her body reacts to it instantly.