Chapter Fifteen—Riley
Ispend eleven minutes deciding what to wear to a dinner that is not a date.
It's stupid. Liam has seen me in the same Portland State hoodie for six weeks and never once made it weird. The navy dress I finally choose is simple, but I still feel annoyed at myself for caring this much.
He's in the living room when I walk out. Button-down untucked, glass of water in his hand. At first he isn't looking for me. Then he is.
He stops completely.
His eyes drag down the length of me like he forgot how to blink. He doesn't even pretend otherwise.
“Jesus,” he mutters under his breath.
“Relax,” I say. “It's just a dress.”
He keeps staring anyway.
“Disappointing.” His mouth curves into a grin. “I was starting to get attached to the hoodie.”
I roll my eyes, but my stomach does a little flip anyway.
Five minutes later we're in the back of an Uber. He sits close enough that the car feels smaller than it should. I watch the Strip slide past the window. When the car turns, his leg presses against mine and stays there.
I glance down before I can stop myself.
He's hard.
Right there through his jeans.
Heat slides up my spine. Definitely not imagining that.
“Comfortable?” I murmur.
His eyes flick toward me. He's already putting it together. Watching me catch up.
His jaw tightens. “Not particularly.”
We both stare straight ahead for a beat.
“You're thinking awfully hard about something,” he says.
“Work.”
“Mm.” He watches me a moment longer. “You always get that little crease right here when you're stressed.” He taps his own brow.
“You've been staring at my face long enough to map every stress wrinkle?”
“Part of the job.” He grins.
The restaurant glows gold with crystal chandeliers overhead and deep velvet booths.
A server walks past carrying a bottle of champagne with sparklers trailing smoke and light.
Glass walls frame the glittering city below.
Someone spent real money on the lighting.
Wine list leather-bound, no prices on the menu anywhere.
Liam shifts beside me, shoulder along my arm, and I catch cedar and something clean on his skin before I'm ready for it.
“Good table,” he says.
“Great table,” I correct. He ordered it specifically.
When the waiter comes, Liam orders bourbon and I order water. The half-second of silence that follows does the work of an entire sentence. He's been doing this for two weeks—watching me order water and push food around without comment.
“You should try the gnocchi,” he suggests. “Connor brought us here the first time we all went out. Best thing on the menu.”
“All four of you?”
He chuckles softly. “We sat in silence for twenty minutes, then argued about the Henderson-Ellis deal. Ethan won.”
“Because he was right?”
“Because he outlasts everyone else.” Liam tips his head. “Different skill.”
I order the gnocchi, Liam the filet. When the breadbasket arrives I move a piece around my plate without eating it. He notices but doesn’t say anything.
“You're quiet tonight,” he says eventually.
“I'm always quiet.”
“Not like this.” His gaze drops to my dress, then returns to my face. “You wore a dress.” The teasing drops out of his voice. “You're hiding something.” “And you've been hiding it for weeks.”
“The Comic Sans situation is weighing on me.”Jules would call bullshit on that answer in a heartbeat. She’d also remind me what I promised myself after Andrew. Both things are true.
He gives me the look that says he's choosing not to argue. The food arrives and he starts talking about a deal he and Andrew are closing next week. He speaks about work the way other people talk about nothing important, easy and relaxed. I find myself listening. Really listening.
He makes me laugh once when he describes Andrew refusing to put a mug back where he found it. Another time when he tells me about Ethan winning a restaurant argument with a spreadsheet on his phone. Both times I laugh before I remember I'm carrying a secret I can't share.
“You always do that,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Laugh like you're surprised it happened.”
“Because most of the time you're not funny.”
He grins. “That hurts, Riley.”
“You'll recover.”
“Eventually.” His eyes catch the light. “But not tonight.”
I take a sip of water to hide the smile that creeps across my face anyway.
Liam leans back, sleeves pushed to his elbows. His gaze drops to my collarbone and the way the dress fits tighter than anything I've worn in weeks. His jaw tightens slightly.
He catches me looking.
“Problem?” he asks.
“None,” I say.
“You keep looking.”
“You keep giving me something to look at,” I shoot back.
His smile changes, slower and more certain. Like he just learned something useful.
I'm barely eating. The nausea is persistent, the gnocchi untouched on my plate.
“Connor texted today,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“About the Harrington dinner. Wanted to know if it's still on track.”
“It is. Ethan's handling it.”
“Good.” I nod. Like this was useful information. Like any of this is about the dinner.
Connor still doesn't know. That thought sits underneath everything else.
His fingers brush mine when he reaches for his glass, and his hand stays against mine a beat too long.
His gaze drifts past me to the window and the bright chaos of the city.
“Portland,” he says. “What do you miss about it?”
“The coffee.” No hesitation. “The quiet. The rain.”
“Vegas has rain.”
“Vegas gets a drizzle twice a year and calls it a storm.” I pick up my water. “Portland rain starts before you wake up and it's still going when you fall asleep. The kind that makes staying inside feel earned, not like giving up.”
He considers that. “Sounds less like missing the rain and more like missing somewhere that let you disappear.”
I look up at him.
“Maybe,” I admit.
“Are you thinking about going back?”
He's watching me now with the version of himself that sits underneath the easy charm. Something catches in my chest before I can stop it.
“Eventually,” I say. “Once things settle.”
“What needs to settle?”
“The client situation, mostly.”
“Riley.”
“The Comic Sans thing is very unresolved.”
His jaw shifts, but he lets it go. I'm grateful and I resent being grateful. I force down one bite of gnocchi.
The dessert menu arrives. I order the sorbet. Cold, light, and safe. The kind of thing my stomach might actually tolerate tonight.
Liam glances at the waiter. “Nothing for me.”
When it comes, small and pale green, he looks at me with the serious version of his face. The one that doesn't soften anything.
For a second I think he might reach for me, and I want him to enough that it catches me off guard.
He doesn't. His hand moves an inch closer on the table instead, and my breath catches before I can stop it.
My hand stays where it is. Waiting.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, quiet and direct, no lead-in. “Really.”
When I look up he's not guessing anymore. He's waiting.
“Yeah,” I say, staring at the sorbet. “Just tired.”
“Okay.”
“Work's been a lot.”
“Sure.”
“I'm fine, Liam.”
“I know,” he says.
He picks up the check before I can reach for it.
“You didn't have to—”
“I know,” he says again.
Outside on the Strip the energy hits like a wave. Bass thumps from club doors, a woman in sequins stumbles past with a yard-long margarita, a street drummer pounds on buckets while sparks fly from a fire performer. For a moment I forget my secrets and watch the city refuse to sleep.
We don't call an Uber. Six blocks feels like the right distance for two people who aren't saying what they're thinking. Liam walks beside me, matching my pace. When a group cuts between us at the crosswalk he shifts closer.
Half a block from the building his hand settles on the small of my back, steady, and my whole body shifts toward him before I decide to let it.
He steers me around a cluster of tourists, then the path clears. His fingers flex once against my back like letting go takes effort.
I want to lean into it, enough for him to notice.
I don't. I keep walking straight ahead like I feel nothing at all.
I'm still feeling his hand long after he lets go.
“When you're ready to tell me,” he says quietly, “I'm here.”
I almost tell him right then. The word pregnant sits right behind my teeth.
I push it down.
“Okay,” I say instead.
We finish the last half-block in silence. He holds the lobby door and we ride the elevator up without speaking. The quiet between us feels easy, the way it always does with him.
In the penthouse hallway Liam stops outside my door.
“Night, Riley.”
“Night.”
He doesn't move right away. The space between us feels like a choice now. His eyes drop to my mouth for just a second.
I start to close the distance.
Then I don't.
The disappointment hits harder than it should.
I had real fun tonight. Not the careful version I've been living for weeks. Something that felt close to normal.
Vegas is loud and bright and alive, but for a few hours I forgot to feel different from everyone else out there.
That might be the most dangerous part of all.
Not the city.
Him.
I close the door and press my back against it in the dark.
I'm not telling him tonight.
I choose that. I make it a decision instead of a defeat.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before I pick up my phone.
Jules answers on the second ring. Messy bun, glass of wine, her kitchen behind her. She takes one look at my face and sighs.
“Oh no.”
I huff out a laugh. “That’s your greeting?”
“You called me at midnight looking like that. I skipped hello.”
Fair.
She’s been reading me too easily since we were nineteen and sharing a dorm room and I still thought I was good at pretending I was fine.
“How bad is it?” she asks.
I stare at the ceiling. “I almost told him.”
Her eyebrows go up immediately. “Which one?”
“Liam.”
“Oh, that’s worse.”
“Helpful.”
“I’m serious. Andrew would’ve been messy. Ethan would’ve turned into a crisis-management robot. Liam’s the one you actually talk to.”
I hate that she’s right.
“We had dinner,” I say. “He wasn’t even pushing. I just… wanted to tell him.”
Jules sets her wine down.
“Okay,” she says softly. “And are you okay?”
“I keep not telling anyone.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I pull my knees up against my chest. Out the window, Vegas glows obnoxiously alive forty floors below me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Bullshit. You absolutely know what you’re doing.” Her tone isn’t mean. Just honest. “You’re freezing. That’s your thing.”
“Wow. Love getting psychoanalyzed for free.”
“Please. I’ve earned the right.”
I groan and let my head fall back against the headboard.
“Riley.” Her voice softens a little. “You’ve known for a while now. You haven’t told Connor. You haven’t told the guys. You barely told me, and that was over text like you were canceling brunch.”
“I told you more than that.”
“You sent: ‘small complication lol.’”
“In my defense, I was spiraling.”
“I know.”
The quiet settles for a second.
“I didn’t tell Liam,” I say finally.
“I know. That’s why you’re calling me.”
I pick at a loose thread on the blanket until it snaps.
“What do I do?”
“You tell them.”
Same answer she’s been giving me for days.
“Connor gets back soon.”
“Okay.”
“If I tell the guys first, he’s going to lose his mind.”
“Probably,” she says. “But avoiding it hasn’t exactly made you calmer.”
I exhale hard through my nose.
“You don’t get it.”
“No, I do.” She leans back against her counter. “You got your heart ripped out by Andrew, moved to Portland, built this super controlled little life where nobody can surprise you anymore, and now suddenly you care about people again. That’s the actual problem here.”
I go quiet.
Because unfortunately that one lands.
Jules watches my face for a second.
“You don’t have to decide everything tonight,” she says more gently. “But you do have to stop acting like if you ignore this long enough it’ll magically turn into a less terrifying situation.”
“I hate when you’re reasonable.”
“I know.”
“I hate that you know me this well.”
She snorts and picks her wine back up. “Again: earned it.”
Despite myself, I laugh a little.
Then she points the glass at me.
“Call me after.”
“After what?”
“After you tell them.” She gives me a look over the rim. “You’re going to eventually. I can literally hear it happening.”
I end the call not knowing if she’s right or just annoyingly confident.
Either way, it stays with me.