Page 96 of End Game

Ronan looks up from where he’s settling into the chair. “What?”

“You brought the notebook.”

“We’re having a discussion.”

“We’re having a meeting. You brought office supplies.”

Cami laughs as she drops onto the couch beside Griffin. “To be fair, this isn’t even our first relationship meeting with a Ronan notebook.”

“Which makes it worse,” he groans.

I sit on the other end of the couch, and Dex immediately drops down between Cami and me.

Ronan looks at the four of us on the couch. “Can we begin?”

Dex raises his hand.

“No.”

His hand drops. “Oppressive.”

Griffin laughs quietly, and some of the tension eases.

Good.

Because this needs to be serious.

But it doesn’t need to feel like a court hearing.

“Ronan and I were talking earlier,” I begin, before he can turn this into a quarterly business review, “and we realized that while we did have conversations before, we’ve gotten pretty good at making this work without actually defining much of what this is.”

Cami’s eyebrows rise. “That sounds ominous.”

“It isn’t,” Ronan assures her.

“That sounded ominous too,” Dex points out.

I bump my knee against his, then look to Ronan. “Let me try.”

He gestures for me to proceed with exaggerated patience.

“We aren’t having a meeting because something’s wrong. We’re having one because things are going well enough that we’re making assumptions now and we don’t want those assumptions to step on anyone else’s needs.”

That changes the room.

Griffin leans forward slightly, forearms on his thighs.

Cami’s hand rests on his back as she looks between Ronan and me. “What kind of assumptions?”

“About who gets prioritized when,” I say. “What relationships have obligations attached to them. What happens when two people need different things. And also the power structure when we’re playing together, because that’s becoming more… complicated.”

Dex glances at Cami.

She grins.

“Because Cameron is discovering a life of crime,” he says.

“I tied you up once.”