Lex never bothered pretending it was complicated.

They’d been friends for years—real ones, the kind built on late nights, sharp conversations, and mutual understanding of ambition and appetite. They knew each other’s tells. Each other’s flaws. Exactly how far to push before it became irritating instead of interesting.

Sometimes, they slept together.

No promises. No illusions. No morning-after analysis.

It wasn’t romance. It wasn’t reckless either. It was familiar, comfortable, and entirely unsurprising—something that happened when schedules aligned and tension lingered a little too long. When the world was quiet enough to allow indulgence without consequence.

They never talked about it. Never needed to. One look, one shared pause, and the decision made itself like it always had.

The next day, they went back to business as usual—meetings, strategies, power plays—unchanged, unbothered, perfectly capable of pretending nothing had happened.

Because for Lex, and for her, this wasn’t a secret.

It was just another understood arrangement.

Nothing new.