Page 126 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

The word nearly destroys me.

“Do you make my life harder sometimes?” I ask. “Yes.”

She lets out a partial chuckle and dabs a knuckle at her lower eyelid. “This is going terribly.”

“I’m not finished.”

“I was hoping you weren’t.”

“But Reese, I make your life harder, too.”

She frowns.

“I disappear in the middle of dinner. I lie for a living. I can get called away for twelve hours while you’re waiting for me to kiss you.”

“That was inconvenient.”

“I travel without warning. My job is dangerous. There will be times you worry about me, and I won’t be allowed to tell you enough to make the worry go away.”

She’s listening now. Really listening.

“You aren’t the difficult partner getting paired with the easy partner.”

“I never called you easy.”

“Good, because I’d be insulted.”

That earns the smallest smile.

I bring her hand to my chest. “You don’t keep score when my job costs you something. You didn’t send me a bill for spending all night waiting to hear I was safe.”

“That would be a weird bill.”

“Exactly.”

I trace my thumb across her knuckles. “Helping you isn’t a tax I pay for getting to love you.”

Her breath catches.

“I don’t need loving you to be fun all the time. You are going to annoy me.”

“Again, going terribly.”

“And I am absolutely going to annoy you.”

“That part I believe.”

“We’re going to have days when one of us is tired, and the other is difficult. We’ll have habits that stop being cute. We’ll have things we have to solve more than once.”

I lean closer. “That isn’t the same thing as discovering you cost too much.”

A tear slips down her cheek. I reach out and gently brush it away.

“You said you wish I’d known before I fell in love with you. I didn’t fall in love with some incomplete version of you because you withheld a warning label.”

Her mouth trembles.

“I fell in love with you while you were losing keys and changing plans and forgetting where you put your purse.”