Page 117 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

The pause before he did it. His hand against my cheek. The way nothing about being with him stopped feeling familiar, even while everything felt completely new.

My mom has gone back to slicing strawberries, but she’s watching my face.

“It feels real.”

She goes very still, but her eyes have lit up.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your entire face said something.”

“My daughter just said it feels real with Miles Lancaster. Allow me one facial expression.”

“I regret telling you anything.”

“No, you don’t.”

I smile despite myself. Then the smile fades.

“What is it?”

I look down at my hands. This is why I came. Not to report on the date. Not to let Mom interrogate me about kissing Miles. Those were only the easy things I put in front of the hard one. “I have to tell him.”

Her gaze drops briefly to my hands before returning to my face. “Oh, honey.”

“He knows about the cancer,” I say quickly. “I’ve told him things about it before. Not all at once or anything. He knows I had Hodgkin lymphoma. He knows about chemo and radiation. He knows I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the hospital when I was fifteen. But he doesn’t know what the treatment may have done.”

I shake my head. Spark nudges against my leg, and I reach down automatically to rub her head. “It’s something I try not to think about, so it never came up. I never needed to tell him.”

My mom pulls out the stool beside mine and sits.

“I mean, I could have. We tell each other almost everything. But this was…” I shrug. “Different.”

“And painful.”

I look at her. She knows. Of course she knows. She was there when the doctors explained it. She was there when I was fifteen and too busy being relieved that the cancer was gone to fully understand why everyone in the room suddenly looked so sad when the conversation shifted to fertility.

She was there later, when it really did sink in. I trace one finger along a seam in the countertop. “It didn’t matter before.”

Mom doesn’t say anything.

“But now he’s told me he loves me. He’s apparently loved me for years. We’re dating. We’ve kissed.” I swallow. “This is becoming something.”

“It sounds like it already is.”

“Exactly.”

I exhale and drop my forehead into my hands. “I don’t know how to tell him.”

“You tell him the truth.”

“Not helpful, Mom.”

“I’m contractually obligated to start with the obvious.” I lower my hands, and she gives me a small smile. “Which part scares you most?”

I laugh once, but there’s no humor in it. “The part where I tell the man who has always wanted kids that I probably can’t have them.”