Page 26 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

"That doesn't apply to dibs!"

"It's implicit! It's tacit dibs! The very act of me pointing him out created an unspoken dibs contract."

"Seriously?" Millie asks flatly.

"Seriously."

"Ugh. I hate when you go full lawyer."

"You didn't mind when I got you out of being detained by TSA so you could be reunited with Duke and Lottie," Lou says smugly.

"Touché. Tacit dibs it is."

Ash is watching her friends while I watch Ash. She looks like she's torn between gratitude and embarrassment, but she drops both from her face when Millie and Lou turn their attention to her.

"How are you?" Millie asks Ash.

"I’m fine."

Parker and Jane come into the room like vengeful goddesses, and it's a good thing I'm already leaning against the wall, because there's barely enough space as it is. Their anger takes up every remaining inch.

"I'm going to tie his arms up to four horses and send them to opposite ends of the globe," Jane says.

"You can't quarter him. Lou has dibs," Parker says.

"Why does Lou get dibs?" Jane asks in outrage.

"She saw him first," Parker says. "If she hadn't spotted him, we wouldn't even be having this argument. She who spots him calls him."

"There's no way that rule applies?—"

"It applies," Parker and Lou say together.

Jane and Millie shoot each other a look.

"For the record," Ash says. "I have dibs. And Rusty and I already used them."

"Used?" Lou says. "Past tense?"

"Past tense, baby," Ash says, and a smile pushes away the other emotions. "I don't know which of you gave him the idea, but that fake boyfriend thing destroyed Philip!"

Ash beams while my intestines tie themselves into knots.

And suddenly, I have four pairs of eyes on me, ranging from bright green to darkest brown. And each of the accompanying Janes is trying not to smirk.

Jane rolls her lips together. "Who did give you that idea?" she asks, tapping her cheek like she just can't remember.

Lou elbows Jane, officially making her my favorite of Ash's best friends. "It was a group effort," Lou says. "But it worked?"

Ash takes a handful of candy from a jar on her desk and pops it into her mouth. "Brilliantly! You should have seen Rusty! He was all confidence and swagger and … sexiness. I didn't know my boy had all that in him!" The Janes' smirks sharpen like daggers to my chest. "Fortunately, when Philip found out that we're fighting for the same job and that we won't know who gets it for two weeks, he left town."

Millie cocks her head to the side. "Did he say that?"

Ash shrugs, chewing her gummy candies. "No. But why would he stay?"

"How did he look when you told him about you two?" Millie asks.

I flex my fist. "He looked like a jealous little prince."

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