Page 57 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

“They both checked?”

“She wanted the weather to be perfect.”

He looks at me. “Why?”

I freeze.

Evelyn materializes between us with a bowl of strawberries. “Miles, will you help your grandfather move that chair?”

He watches her set down the bowl. “You know, Mom, I’m beginning to feel like you don’t want Reese and me talking.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Arthur needs help.”

Arthur is already sitting comfortably in the chair in question. Miles’s eyes narrow, but he walks over anyway.

I watch him go over to Emerson and start chatting with him. After a moment, I find myself wandering near, because Miles is my person and I’ll always be pulled to him.

I’m just coming up behind Miles when I hear him say, “I want this.” He’s gesturing to Charlie and Owen, who are both organizing a plate of cookies, but his gesture also encompasses Mackenzie, who’s leaning against Jace, Evelyn laughing with her parents, and the front windows where everyone keeps watching for Ledger and Zoe. “I think I’m ready to stop pretending I don’t,” Miles says.

Every part of me goes still. Miles is ready for a real relationship. Which means he’s going to find someone.

Of course he wants what his siblings have. Someone he can build a future with. Someone who can become his first call, his favorite person, the woman he brings to every Monday dinner for the rest of their lives. The woman whose texts he answers before mine.

A few days ago, I told everyone I would be fine with that. It’s a lie I can’t believe I even managed to utter. Especially because the horror that fills me now is immediate and absolute. I can’t keep doing what I’ve always done—assuming Miles will only go on one date with a woman, lose interest, and return to the comfortable shape of us. He is going to find someone.

And if I don’t want that person to be someone else, then I need to decide whether I can ever let it be me.

The thought should feel impossible. It has always felt impossible. Yet, it doesn’t.

Terrifying, yes. Complicated. Potentially disastrous in at least fourteen different ways. But not impossible.

Miles glances in my direction, and I turn so quickly that I nearly walk into the dining table. The room erupts before he can come over. A vehicle has pulled into the driveway, and Heidi races toward the front window.

“They’re here!”

Everyone starts moving at once. Arthur reaches for the sparkling cider. Elizabeth straightens her blouse. Charlie grabs Mackenzie’s hand. Blake takes the sign from Heidi and turns it so the front faces the wall before anyone coming through the door can see it. Evelyn positions herself near the center of the room, looking like a woman about to welcome home a victorious military unit rather than two people returning from a date.

The front door opens, and Zoe steps inside first. She does not look like someone who just experienced a flawless romantic proposal. Her athletic leggings are wet from the knees down and damp everywhere else. Mud streaks one side of her jacket, her ponytail is coming loose, and a tiny leaf is caught near her temple. Ledger comes in behind her, equally wet and windblown, with dirt on one pant leg and an expression of deep personal offense toward the weather.

Everyone inhales, ready to cheer.

Zoe’s eyes find mine. She gives the smallest shake of her head and mouths, I didn’t propose. Charlie sees it, too, and clamps both hands over her mouth.

Behind Zoe, Ledger meets Miles’s gaze, shakes his head dramatically, and mouths much more exaggeratedly, It didn’t happen.

Blake lowers Heidi’s sign.

Arthur looks between the two groups. “Did something happen?”

“A thunderstorm happened,” Ledger says.

Zoe pulls off her damp jacket. “We were nearly to the highest platform when they shut down the course.”

“We were one obstacle away,” Ledger says. “They could have let us finish.”

Zoe turns toward him. “The obstacle involved a suspended metal cable.”

“We had harnesses.”