Page 64 of Deep Cover

The ugly truth gave new meaning to the words “performance anxiety.” She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

The work is all I have, she reminded herself to screw her head on straight. After the funeral, she’d built her new identity out of being the most relentless analyst the FBI had ever seen. She wasn’t known as Reid Rivers’s girlfriend, the one he would have proposed to her if he hadn’t died. She was known for never letting a thread go unpulled and biting off more than anyone else could chew.

No matter how this case ended, the work would still be all she had left.

And that scared her the most. For a brief time, she had been suspended in this bubble with Reid, and though she never allowed herself to think of a future, the notion had crept up on her anyway.

Instead of her lonely apartment, she saw that damned house with a yard they’d lain in bed talking about long into the night.

She hiccupped against a sob and pressed the back of her hand to her lips. Reid was a dead man on paper, tethered to a base that didn’t exist, running ops that could kill him for real next time instead of just leaving a lethal scar.

And she had a normal life that couldn’t touch his without shattering. There was no future where both of them existed at once, and she’d known it the second she learned he was alive.

Except now she did know he existed here in this place, with these people, and dammit, she would be thinking about that every single day for the rest of her life.

Looking at that board now, she wondered if some reckless part of her had been prolonging finding the answers on purpose. She might have unconsciously worked slower so one more day stretched into one more night with Reid’s arms around her.

She pressed the marker hard enough into the board that it squeaked.

A knock sounded, soft. And she didn’t have to guess who it was.

Reid’s voice came softly through the door. “Ryss. Can I come in?”

She swung to stare at the closed door, aching for him to burst through it and grab her, slam his mouth over hers and prove their love wasn’t destined to fail.

Her eyes blurred for a moment, and she blinked rapidly to clear them. “It’s open.”

He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He stood just inside the room, giving her space she didn’t want. He drank in her face for a long heartbeat, then his gaze darted to the board.

His expression shifted. “You’ve hit a wall.”

She let out a short, humorless laugh. “How can you tell?”

“You get a look. Right around your eyes.” He tapped his own temple, a faint smile threatening at the corner of her mouth—and threatening to break her heart all over again.

Nobody had known her this deeply since Reid. Not Doyle, who only ever saw the finished product of her efforts. Not the handful of people she briefly allowed to flit in and out of her life, never coming close enough to know her the way Reid did.

Just Reid. It was always Reid.

She rubbed a fingertip between her brows. “Phillip used to say I worked too much.”

Rivers focused on her harder. “The agent? The one guarding Stina.”

“Yeah.” She placed the cap on the marker and set it down.

“How well did you know him?” His words were careful and his tone too neutral.

He wasn’t the only one who knew things. She knew Reid Rivers as well as her own soul.

“We were friends. Got drinks a few times back before all this. Nothing more than that.” She met his eyes, steady now. “I was never ready to be with anyone else. In fact, after the funeral I swore I would never be with anyone else. And I’ve sworn it every day since.”

Until I saw you again.

He didn’t say anything, just watched her, waiting.

She looked at him—really looked at him, past the new muscle and the scars she didn’t recognize and the years between who he’d been and who he was now.

And she felt the truth settle in her chest with a certainty she hadn’t let herself feel since the last time she faced him and believed in a future.