Page 106 of Shared By my Ex's Best Friends
She’ssupposedlydoing a prenatal yoga video, but I’m ninety percent sure that just means she’s lying on the floor with a pillow under her knees, scrolling through baby name forums and swearing she’ll stretch in “just five more minutes.”
In the kitchen, I rinse out mugs from after-dinner tea—Jake’s on some herbal kick lately, so everything smells like lemon andhoney. Liam’s cinnamon roll plates are stacked in the sink like a shrine to sugar, bits of icing dried along the rim.
That’s when Liam walks in.
A little too slow. A little too deliberate. The kind of stillness that means something.
He leans against the doorway like he needs it to hold himself up. Like he wants to disappear into the trim and pretend this is just a regular night and nothing’s clawing at the edge of his thoughts.
Jake catches it too. He’s at the kitchen table, still picking at the cinnamon roll he pretended not to want earlier. His brows lift in a silent question.
“What happened?”
Liam hesitates. Then he sighs, and that’s when I know it’s somethingreal.
His hand drags through his hair, messing it up more than usual. His eyes flick upstairs like he’s checking to make sure Maya can’t hear us.
“I ran into Nick,” he says, voice quiet but sharp.
Jake straightens, the motion subtle but instant. All the easy humor drains from his face, replaced with that laser focus he gets when something threatens Maya. His body stills, coiled.
I don’t say anything. Just set the mug down gently in the sink, the clink of ceramic against metal sounding louder than usual in the hush of the room.
“When?” Jake asks.
Liam shifts his weight. “Earlier. When I went to grab Maya’s cinnamon roll. He was outside that little coffee shop on 7th—the one next to the bookstore.”
Jake stands now too, slow and silent. “And?”
“He called my name. I turned around and…” Liam shakes his head. “It escalated fast. He was angry before I said a word.”
I dry my hands on a towel, then walk over to lean against the fridge, arms crossed. “You okay?”
Liam nods, but his shoulders are still tight. “Yeah. Now, but he pushed.”
Jake’s jaw flexes. “What’d he say?”
Liam hesitates, mouth twisting like he’s trying to spit out something bitter.
“The usual,” he says finally. “That we don’t know her. That what we’re doing with her, it isn’t real. That it can’t last.”
He pauses again. Long enough for Jake’s eyes to narrow.
“Whatelse, Liam?”
Liam’s jaw clenches. His fingers curl into fists and then release again at his sides. He looks… tired. Hurt. Angry.
“He asked if we were all just screwing her,” he says finally. “ Wanted to know if that was the deal now.”
The silence that follows is heavy. Ugly. It thuds into the middle of the kitchen like a dropped stone.
I feel heat crawl up the back of my neck. My pulse spikes behind my ears.
Jake mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like “I’ll break his teeth,” then pushes back from the table. The chair legs scrape against the tile, sharp in the quiet.
He starts pacing, long strides back and forth across the kitchen floor, running a hand through his hair like it physically hurts to stay still.
I stay by the fridge, watching Liam.
