Page 62 of The Best Shot

She climbed onto the cushions and started unpacking snacks. Ava settled beside her, already looking like she’d paid for a ticket. Tabby scooched in next, half hostess, half judge.

Yasmine looked at the remaining six inches of cushion, made the only sensible decision of the night, and took the chair beside them instead.

“You said this was closed to the public,” Nico said.

“It is,” Tabby said. “We’re not the public.”

“Continue,” Annie said, already digging into chips. “Pretend we’re not here.”

“We’re not your entertainment,” Nico said.

“Of course not,” Ava said, lying clean through her teeth.

Nico sighed. “We were talking about⁠—”

“Stamina,” I supplied.

“And Hale’s lack of it,” Carter said.

“The physicality,” Nico cut in. “How it works as communication between them.”

We all looked at him.

“It does,” he said, a little defensive. “They don’t talk about their feelings. They show it. Through—” He gestured.

“Acts of service,” Grant said. “Aggressively naked acts of service.”

“Exactly,” Nico said, seizing it. “They use sex to say what they won’t say out loud.”

“One way to phrase it,” Annie said around a chip.

Carter leaned back in his chair. “It worked, though.”

Annie eyed him. “Worked how?”

He shrugged. “You believed they were obsessed. You felt it.”

“That’s actually true,” Ava said. “Plot was wild in places, but I bought that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

“Wild in places,” Annie repeated. “Baby, that man crossed state lines on pure dick and instinct.”

“Which is why it was entertaining,” Ava shot back.

Grant bent to scratch his dog behind the ears. “My issue was logistics.”

“What do you mean?” Carter asked.

Grant took his time about it. “People keep doing all this furniture-breaking, wall-slamming, middle-of-the-day fucking. Nobody got a job? No lower back pain? Nobody needs water or a snack?”

Ava laughed. “You don’t complain about logistics at home.”

Grant’s smile turned downright smug. “That’s because we hydrate.”

Even Nico cracked a smile.

After that, it stopped being a discussion and became what it had probably been from the start. People half-talking over each other with a book as the excuse.

“See?” Tabby pointed with her drink. “This is why women read romance and men think they’re reading about organized crime. Subtext.”