Page 154 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

I couldn’t go after her. I couldn’t call Charlie to see if there were any updates. I couldn’t ask Rooke if Reese was still alive. None of it.

When something goes wrong, I find the person I need. I read them. I build a connection. I get through the door. Yesterday, Reese needed someone to get through a door for her, and it wasn’t me. Every second of that nearly killed me. And I think the worst part was not just that my job put her in danger, but that I couldn’t control what happened next.

I walk into my kitchen, then stop as a realization hits. I didn’t fail Reese yesterday because I wasn’t in control. I was never going to be in control of all of it—Charlie was the one looking for the cameras. Ledger was the one going after her. Nora was the one tracking vehicles. Reese watched the people holding her closely enough to figure out which one might give her an opening. And a family she’d never met opened their front door to her.

While all of that was happening, I was trusting the people around me enough to do all those things so I could keep doing the one thing that only I could do.

I lean both hands against the counter. Being an intelligence operative is about making connections.

I’ve always believed that. I’ve never believed that being an intelligence operative was about having everything under control. Or doing everything myself. It’s about people trusting me. Me trusting them. Knowing who can get me where I need to go and when I need to let someone else do the part I can’t.

Then I spent five years acting like the safest way to love Reese was to limit the most important connection in my life. Yesterday, I got scared enough that I immediately started doing it again. But Reese getting kidnapped doesn’t prove that I was wrong to let her into my life as an intelligence operative. It proves that choosing her doesn’t come with guarantees. Neither does anything else worth choosing.

I look at the time—school gets out in a little over two hours.

For once, waiting until Reese is available is going to require more patience than I have.

At 3:28, the hallways of Cipher Springs Middle School are almost empty. I pass two teachers carrying stacks of papers, a custodian pushing a trash bin, and three kids who are trying to make leaving school take as long as humanly possible.

When I get to the library, Reese is behind the circulation desk with a cart of books beside her. She looks up, and for one second, she just stares at me. Then she says, “That was fast.”

“Well, I like to be efficient.”

I walk further inside. I swear her black eye looks even worse than it did earlier. But this time, I make myself look at the rest of her, too. Her bright shirt, her bee earrings, the pencil stuck through her messy bun, her geometric glasses. Even bruised and tired, she is so beautiful that wanting her is its own kind of ache. The woman I love, standing in the middle of shelves and books and half-finished projects, looking at home.

“What are you doing here?”

“I need you to pretend something.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Okay, this could go a lot of directions.”

“Pretend this isn’t your library.” She recoils just a bit until I add, “Pretend it’s our college library.” Then something shifts in her expression.

I take another step toward her. “And pretend it’s Tuesday.”

She smiles in a way that tells me she knows exactly which Tuesdays in our college library I’m referring to, and something in my chest loosens. That smile still gets me every time—the curve of her mouth, the light in her eyes, the way it makes me want to close every inch of distance between us. I come to a stop on the opposite side of the circulation counter from Reese.

“Do you remember when I saw you in the library for the second Tuesday in a row?”

A smile spreads across her face slowly as she thinks back on it. “I remember. You were already at the library when I got there.”

“Yes. And then I was there again on the third Tuesday in a row, and you showed up again.”

“I did.” She tilts her head. “Where are you going with this?”

“You always tell the story like we accidentally kept running into each other until you decided we were best friends.”

“Because I did decide we were best friends.”

“You did. Very decisively, as I recall.”

“And as I recall, you adjusted well.”

I chuckle. “Because I had ulterior motives.” I meet her eyes for a long moment. “We didn’t ‘accidentally’ keep running into each other. I kept going back because I hoped you would be there.”

The teasing leaves her face. “You did?”

“The second Tuesday wasn’t by chance. Neither was the third.”