Page 61 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

Ledger smiles and gestures toward Zoe. “Go ahead.”

Zoe gets back onto one knee, and the humor slips from her expression as she looks at Ledger. She turns the part that looks like a larger-than-normal lock on the carabiner, revealing the ring. “Ledger, the first time I told you I loved you with my whole mansion heart, you were locked behind bars in a dungeon while half our coworkers listened.”

I blink. There are clearly pieces of that story I have never heard.

Ledger’s smile widens.

“This time, I planned to do it somewhere beautiful and private,” Zoe continues. “But Ledger, I will do this anywhere. Because I don’t just want to love you with my whole mansion heart. I want to build our whole life inside it together. Ledger Lancaster, will you marry me?”

His eyes shine, and a smile spreads across his whole face. “Of course, I will.”

She lets out a laugh that sounds half like a sob and slides the ring onto his finger. Ledger takes her hand and pulls her to her feet, and then he kisses her while everyone cheers.

After a moment, he pulls back, then drops to one knee. Zoe presses both hands to her mouth. Ledger opens his ring box and looks up at her. “I used to think winning meant getting ahead of you. Now I know that winning means getting to spend the rest of my life beside you. Zoe Steele, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice coming out a little squeaky.

This time, she pulls him to his feet, throws her arms around him, and they kiss again. Everyone cheers even louder.

Heidi turns her sign around. Blake appears to have written Congrats, Uncle Ledger and Aunt Zoe! for her, and Heidi has covered the entire poster in glitter and at least forty heart stickers.

The sparkling cider gets poured. The cake is cut with the knife I remembered and eaten with the forks Miles remembered. Everyone hugs Ledger and Zoe, and we’re all laughing. I stand near the shelves of family photographs, watching it all.

This isn’t the setting either of them planned. There are no treetop lights or sweeping forest views. They’re surrounded by storage bins, emergency supplies, childhood projects, and a security system that currently believes the shed is plotting something.

But Zoe was right. It’s better. They’re surrounded by the people, memories, and history that make marriage worth choosing.

Miles comes to stand beside me, holding two plates of cake. He gives one to me without needing to ask which piece I want. It has extra frosting and the corner flower.

“Perfect night,” he says.

I glance toward the red emergency light still flashing above the door. “Your definition of perfect concerns me.”

“I don’t know. Everyone’s safe. They both got a yes. There’s cake.” He lifts his plate. “A flawless victory.”

I laugh, and his shoulder brushes mine.

I think of him holding me while I cried. Remembering my permission slips. Catching the half of the cake tray I couldn’t carry comfortably. Bringing the forks while I brought the knife. I think of him kneeling for Heidi even though it hurt, and of the look on his face when he told Emerson he was ready to find this.

I want this, too.

Not merely an engagement or a wedding. I want the years that fill a room with labeled bins. The history behind the inside jokes. The person who knows which piece of cake I’ll choose and remembers what I forget—not because loving me is a burden, but because we remember different things.

I want it with Miles.

I’ve spent years assuming that loving him would mean asking him to carry me. Maybe we could carry each other. I don’t know whether I can give Miles the future he deserves. But for the first time, I let myself wonder whether we could build one together anyway.

CHAPTER 13

HOW NOT TO TELL YOUR BEST FRIEND YOU’RE A SPY

MILES

I’ve spent the past two hours going through everything we have on Julian Rooke’s known clients, suspected clients, and past transactions, looking for anything that might tell me what to expect tomorrow. Celeste confirmed that she sponsored Maxwell Shaw, and sometime after that, Rooke’s people started digging into him. Apparently, the paper trail Emerson and the team built passed their first round of scrutiny, because this morning Maxwell received instructions to report to a private aviation hangar tomorrow afternoon.

The software we use can catch exact matches between names, employers, addresses, and known associates. I’m looking for the human connections it can’t recognize—a person who appears repeatedly at the edges of Rooke’s transactions, someone different clients trust, a name mentioned casually in more than one debrief. Anything that might tell me who I’ll be sitting across from tomorrow or how they’re likely to test me.

It’s exactly the kind of work that becomes dangerous when your eyes start skimming instead of reading. Which mine have done three times in the past ten minutes, because apparently my brain would rather rehearse twenty-seven disastrous versions of telling Reese I’m a spy.