Chapter Thirty-Two—Riley
The text comes at eight forty-five in the morning.
Connor provides a restaurant name, an address, and a time. Eight o'clock. Dress nice.
I google it before I'm fully awake. Twelve-seat omakase bar, off the Strip. Two-month waitlist. You don't stumble into a place like this. You plan for it, or you know someone, or you've been holding a reservation since February and waiting for the right occasion.
I set my phone face-down on the pillow.
He picked it for me. Not for Sarah. Not for the table. For me—because Connor is the person who once found me sitting in my car outside the only omakase restaurant on my twenty-second birthday, staring at the door after six weeks of saving.
I couldn’t make myself go in.
He didn’t make it a thing. Just handed me his card, told Jules to meet me inside at seven, and said, “You’re allowed to want things like this.”
And that was it. That’s Connor.
I pick the phone back up and stare at the restaurant name.
Of course he did.
***
The restaurant looks exactly like the photos.
Low lighting. Warm cypress wood, pale and honey-colored, expensive-looking without announcing it.
Handwritten menus on washi paper, small and clean and precise.
The twelve seats curve around the bar, and the chef greets each of us like we're expected, like he's been keeping something special aside.
Connor orders the full omakase for the table before anyone else has a chance to read the menu. He doesn't look at the card.
When the chef turns to me, I smile and say I'd love the cooked options—black cod if there's a choice, wagyu, tempura. I make it sound easy. A personal preference, nothing significant. What you say when you need a reason that isn’t the real one.
Connor's chopsticks pause.
Half a second. Maybe less.
He doesn't comment. He reaches across me and refills my water glass before I can reach for the pitcher myself, and I pick it up and take a sip and focus on the menu I'm no longer reading.
Sarah is radiant. Cream dress, hair loose, naturally pretty in that effortless way. She's already telling the Maldives story—the overwater bungalow, a night the rain came so hard they couldn't see the lagoon from the bed. Connor is smiling the whole time and it's nice seeing him so happy.
I laugh in the right places and mean most of it.
She goes on about the snorkeling they hadn't planned on and getting sunburned in the exact shape of a starfish on her left shoulder.
She pulls down the strap of her dress to show Andrew and he makes a face of genuine horrified respect.
Liam tells her she should lean into it, get the other shoulder to match.
She laughs hard enough that the couple two seats down looks over.
The food comes in several courses. Each plate small and refined. The black cod is perfect and I eat more than I probably need to. It helps.
Across the bar, Connor and Ethan are into the Harrington deal. Final approval timeline, a meeting next week with the city contact. Andrew and Liam lean in. The conversation becomes its own contained thing, the three of them angled together over minute details.
Sarah catches my eye. Makes a small, fond face.
“They're at it again.”
I smile back.
Then she leans toward me, voice quiet and easy, like it's nothing.
“Do you have a tampon? I thought I packed one and I didn't.”
I open my purse.
I know exactly what's in it. I haven't packed one for weeks. My phone, my lip gloss, the prenatal vitamin I forgot this morning, now tucked into the small inside pocket where I keep things I can't leave on the counter.
I shuffle the items around anyway.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don't.”
She squeezes my arm and excuses herself to the restroom anyway. I pick up my water and take a long, slow sip.
When I set the glass down, Connor is still talking to Andrew but reaches across me and refills my water glass before I can reach for the pitcher myself.
He knows me too well. The thought hits because this is Connor doing what he's done since our parents died.
Taking care of me without a second thought.
His hands are moving, open and emphatic, talking through something he cares about. But his eyes cut to my face.
Just for a second.
Then back to Andrew.
By dessert he's watching me like he did at sixteen.
I know this look. I've been on the receiving end of it for half my life—calm and patient and already past the point of being fooled.
He gave me this look for months after the accident, when I kept telling him I was fine and he kept not believing me and not pushing, just watching and waiting for the moment I stopped holding it together.
He doesn't order sake for the table with dessert.
He orders a sparkling water and sets it in front of me without comment.
I look at it for one beat. Then I pick it up and take a sip and keep my eyes on Sarah, who is telling Liam about the resort's night dive excursion that Connor refused to go on because, as she puts it, “he is a CEO and not a fish.”
“In my defense,” Connor says, “I did not pay for the honeymoon to drown.”
“You paid for the snorkeling.”
“Snorkeling is supervised swimming. Scuba requires a certification course I didn’t budget for.”
I laugh. It sounds right. I feel Connor's attention on the side of my face like a question he's choosing not to ask yet.
The word yet does a lot of work.
The valets pull the cars around front and Ethan orders our Uber Black. It's late and the air is still warm. Sarah hugs me first, tight and quick, and says into my ear that we're doing this every month. She's already decided. She says it like I’m not going back to Portland but I don’t correct her.
“Every month sounds perfect,” I say.
She moves on to Liam, delighted again by his height, and Andrew says something that makes her laugh and I'm watching it happen and trying to be present in it, trying to just stand here and be a person at a dinner who had a nice time.
Connor hugs me last.
He smells exactly the same. The same cologne he's worn for years, the one that used to be my whole definition of home. I let myself hold on for three full seconds.
He pulls back. Both hands on my shoulders. Looks at my face like he's checking something specific.
“You good?”
“I'm great,” I say.
He nods.
Not convinced.
The valet is still sorting the sequence—their car first, then our Uber Black behind it. Thirty seconds, maybe less. We're all still standing on the curb when I see Connor pull Ethan aside.
I turn toward Liam and Andrew. Sarah is telling Andrew something about the hotel's rooftop terrace, her hands moving, and I contribute something that makes sense in the conversation and keep my eyes forward and my face easy.
Behind me, Connor's voice drops.
“My sister. Is something going on with her?”
My grip tightens on my clutch.
Ethan's answer comes back level and unhurried. “You would have to ask her about that.”
A pause. Long enough.
Connor again, “I'm asking you.”
“Ask your sister.”
I watch Sarah's hands. I think keep breathing. I think don't turn around. I think Ethan, please and then I stop thinking anything because thinking isn't helping.
Both cars pull up.
Sarah reaches for Connor's hand and pulls him toward the car and he goes—but he looks back first.
At me.
Then Liam.
Then Andrew.
Then Ethan.
It's three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough that Liam shifts almost imperceptibly beside me, and Andrew goes very still, and I keep my face arranged into something that doesn't confirm anything because there is nothing to confirm and everything is fine.
Connor gets in the car.
Their taillights pull away and Andrew has his hand on the Uber door and I get in and slide across and Liam gets in after me as Ethan hops in the front seat and then we're moving.
Nobody talks.
The city moves past the window, all light and noise and none of it useful.
Liam's knee is pressed against mine. Andrew is on my other side, close, not touching me but close enough that I can feel the heat of him, and none of them say anything, and I can't tell if that's better or worse.
It's not a question anymore.
Connor knows something.
He just hasn't said it yet.