Page 97 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

“Any of them?”

“I miss certain abilities the cover gave me. Access. Freedom to move through a place unnoticed. But I don’t miss the identities.”

“Why not?”

“Because none of them are real.”

She leans back against the couch. “Parts of them have to be. You can’t build a convincing person out of absolutely nothing. Dominic’s posture came from somewhere. The accountant’s expression came from somewhere. Vineyard Uncle’s tragic romantic history apparently came from my imagination, but the rest of him came from you.”

I look at the photographs spread across the coffee table. She’s right. Abraham builds the external details. The agency builds the records. But I supply the person. A cover can’t survive if every reaction is rehearsed. It needs pieces that are true enough to become instinctive.

Reese looks around my living room. “I thought everything would feel different once I knew.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

The word makes my stomach drop before she continues.

“But not in the way I expected.”

“What way did you expect?”

“I thought I might sit across from you and wonder whether every story was fake. Whether every habit was part of an act.”

I swallow. “And now?”

She gives me a sly smile. “Now I mostly wonder how I missed the fact that you reflexively locate exits everywhere we go and notice the tiniest details about everything.” She picks up the photograph of the accountant. “I know these men aren’t real. But you are.”

Something shifts inside me. Our old rhythm is still here. Tacos. Teasing. Reese constructing elaborate lives for strangers. But for the first time, all of me is sitting beside her.

She knows why I leave, even when I can’t tell her where I’m going. She knows why I can’t answer certain questions. She saw my desk, my mother’s authority, my father’s portrait, and the people who depend on me. For the first time, it feels like all of me is here with her.

The truth did not destroy us. But it did change things, and not only does going back to the way things were before feel impossible, but I no longer want it to. After telling her so much, I can’t keep hiding the one remaining truth between us.

“You look serious,” she says, and I can see her shoulders have tensed.

She’s sitting only a few feet away, one leg tucked beneath her, her hair slipping loose around her face. I know every version of Reese—laughing, furious, exhausted, crying, covered in beekeeping gear—and somehow, I still have moments when looking at her hits me like I’m seeing her for the first time.

I’ve spent years training myself not to let wanting her show. Tonight, I’m about to stop pretending entirely.

“There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “No. You are banned from that sentence.”

“Reese—”

“The last time you said there was something important you needed to tell me, I nearly developed a stress-induced facial twitch before discovering that you’re a government spy.”

“This one isn’t classified.”

“That is not improving my heart rate.”

“And I didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to tell you.”

She presses both hands against the couch cushion she’s sitting on. “Somehow worse.”

“I’ve only been afraid of what it might change.”