She tilts her face up to me, lazily sliding her lips with mine: warm, heavy, wet.

“I love you,” I tell her. Her eyes flutter closed, her kisses deepen. And I don’t need to hear the words from her in return because this—her body language, her response when I say it, even the fact that she’s confirmed to anyone in the store that she’s mine—tells me she feels it, too.

After another ten seconds where I’m debating having her again, but this time on the couch near the window, I pull back, kissing the top of her head and coaxing her arms from around my waist. It’s time to face the inevitable.

I cross the room and look over my shoulder at her; she swipes away the smudged eyeliner from beneath her eyes, and then gives me a tentative thumbs-up. The squeak of the doorknob seems to reverberate in the quiet and I pull the door open, letting in a gust of cool air.

My heart drops when I see Harlow first, Finn just behind her. I expected Joe. Not this.

“Well, well,” Harlow says as a smile spreads across her face. “If it isn’t my two favorite nerds.”

I step out, working to keep my expression neutral. “You know two other nerds?”

Harlow’s mouth tries to form a few words. Finally, she manages, “How long have you been—”

Finn gets his hand around her and over her mouth just milliseconds after she releases a loud “Fucking?” into the entire store.

“Roughly for the last eighteen hours,” Lola answers, coming up behind me, and I look down at her, surprised by the poise in her voice. She slips her arm around my waist. “Though we took a break between ten and three today to get some work done.”

Joe whistles from behind the counter, and then looks down at a book he’s reading, as if he weren’t behind these shenanigans.

“Think you could have started the music a few minutes sooner?” I ask him with a grin.

He laughs down at the book. “Probably. But where’s the fun in that? This is your punishment for taking so long to do that.”

“And leaving him in charge,” someone calls from the front reading nook.

“Wong to Doctor Strange . . .” I remind him. “Wong would have been a team player.”

Joe looks up at me, feigning insult. “That hurts, boss.”

Harlow is staring at Lola, brows raised in expectation. “Do you have a minute, friend?” she asks, fighting an enormous grin.

Lola looks warily up at the clock behind the counter. It’s nearly four, and I’m sure she’s thinking the same thing I am—that a conversation with Harlow about this is unlikely to be quick. “I have a few. But I need to pack for L.A., so just come to the loft with me for my interrogation.”

She turns, gives me a pained look, stretches to kiss me in front of her best friend—who gasps—and then whispers, “I’ll see you Friday.”

“Friday,” I repeat, holding her hand until the last possible moment. With a last wide-eyed glance over her shoulder at me, Lola allows Harlow to march her out of the store.

Finn watches the two women leave with a mixture of amusement and concern. Harlow is already shouting excitedly on the sidewalk. “So,” he says, turning to me.

I smile. “So.”

He lifts his cap, scratching his head. “Lola’s headed to L.A. again?”

My smile widens. I can always count on Finn to keep things easy. “For a few days.”

“I hate L.A.”

“You do?” I ask through mild sarcasm.

He ignores this. “You either spend the entire day driving from meetings on one side of town to another or you get up there and do everything over the phone and could have stayed home anyway.”

“Well, I think they’re working on the script.”

He nods. “Probably better to be up there, then.” Finn walks around the counter and looks in the mini-fridge we have stashed in the corner. “Lola will figure it out, I bet.” I hear him slide a couple of cans out and he tosses me a beer. “So things are good?”

I grin at him for several beats of silence before asking, “Finn, did you just ask me a personal question?”

Laughing, he says, “Forget it,” and cracks open his beer.

“Yeah things are good,” I tell him, opening my own. “Bloody great.”

“So last night . . . ?”

He lets the question hang between us. This is the deepest Finn is willing to pry.

“Yeah.” The reality of it—of Lola as mine—makes me feel like sprinting from the store and running a marathon.

“Fucking finally,” Finn says with a small lift of his brow.

I laugh, taking a deep drink. “Do you ever stop and think how crazy this is?”

Tilting his chin up, he asks, “The wives, you mean?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, from Vegas to now.”

“Part of me suspects Harlow masterminded the entire thing,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one to slip us each the Bike and Build info years ago.”

“The long con.” I acknowledge this by lifting my can to him. “How is the esteemed Mrs. Roberts?”

He grins. “Crazy as fuck. She’s probably up there giving Lola the third degree.”

I think third degree is probably an understatement, but if Lola can handle anyone, it’s Harlow.

“It’s a good time to be a man,” I say. The clink of our cans echoes dully through the store.

Chapter

ELEVEN

Lola

I EXPECT AN INTERROGATION from Harlow, but I definitely don’t expect to find London and Mia also waiting for us at the loft. My brain is still fuzzy from the sex, from the impending trip, from the deadlines looming on my calendar; I don’t seem to have any extra space in my thoughts for what’s happening right now.

I stare at the three women just inside my door, blinking in confusion.

“I texted them,” Harlow explains with a wave of her hand. “During the fuckfest. After you came—I think—but before Oliver did.”

“You called an emergency meeting because I was having sex with Oliver?” Pressing my palms against my face, I mumble through a laugh, “Oh, my God.”

Harlow pulls my hands away, shaking her head. “I’m just relieved you’re getting pounded.”

“Harlow,” Mia says, pulling me away from her. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Says the girl who can barely walk today.”

Mia ignores this and pulls me inside. It’s true: she’s limping. But it’s not her bad leg. Harlow would never tease her about that. Mia’s walking like an old woman, or a very, very pregnant one. Delicately, like her back might snap in half.

“What’s with you, Blanche?” I ask, grinning.

“Shh.” Mia waves me off.

The girls crowd around me in the living room—London and Mia next to me on the couch, and Harlow sitting on the coffee table, facing me.

“The thing we need to discuss,” Mia says with dramatic sincerity, “is how we failed you.”

Harlow turns to look at her in thrilled amusement.

I lean away from Mia, skeptically observing the three of them. “You what?”

“All this time,” Mia says, lifting a delicate hand to her throat, “things were developing with Oliver, and we have to assume if you weren’t telling us everything it’s because we weren’t available to you. As friends.”

I level her with a flat look. “Are you being a passive-aggressive troll?”

London and Harlow nod.

Mia shakes her head solemnly. “We’ve just been so busy.”

“You were buying a house, asshole,” I remind her.

She agrees with a smile. “So busy signing all those papers for days on end, I couldn’t answer my phone, asshole.”

I lean back against the couch, laughing. “It just happened.”

“No thought at all,” Harlow deadpans.

Nodding, Mia says, “That sounds like our Lola. Impulsive.”

“No, I mean, last night—” I begin.

“Last night was the first time you guys ever flirted and then boom! Sex?” Harlow asks, nodding as if she’s got the answer right.