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KC had never figured out what to do when she got punched besides punch back harder.

“Let’s talk about that, Yardley. How exactly was I supposed to demand your attention when I couldn’t even get you to answer a text until the end of the business day?

It got so that every time I heard the squeak of that one wheel on your carry-on bag, I felt sick.

And you know what? I don’t even think it was ever just about the agency!

When I had you, I didn’t really have you.

You always want to get together with friends, go to the bookstore, there’s something you read about we need to see at the Smithsonian, you’re shopping for a contractor to redo our bedroom.

It’s like a simple conversation with me isn’t enough! ”

“Is that what you think?” Yardley put her hand over her chest, got up, and sat down hard on the chair next to KC’s.

She started shaking her head. “That’s not it, it’s not.

I’ve had so much I want to… that I just want .

For us. I wanted you to design a monogram of our initials so we can decorate every room in the house with it.

I dreamed I’d take you to a Whitmer family reunion, which is an experience no one should have, they are on the Gulf Coast in high summer and they always reserve blocks of rooms in hotels known for their cockroaches.

If anything wasn’t enough, it was us . I have been obsessed with work, I have, because I didn’t think there was anything else I had permission to be obsessed with. I’ve been hurting. Yearning , KC.”

That was when she had to turn away, her hands gripping the edge of the table, because she couldn’t think of anything to say in response.

She’d thought she knew why Yardley smiled when they caught each other’s attention at the picnic.

Why they’d gone home together. Why their bodies fit against each other so perfectly, why kissing Yardley felt so right that KC had been brave enough, finally, after Yardley invited her to North Carolina to meet her whole family, to ask her to move in.

She’d thought they fit . She’d thought they were fated. That it was right. They were made for each other.

She’d honestly believed that if she could just tell Yardley the truth about everything, it would fix what was wrong, and they could have that feeling back from their very first hours together, before KC started to lie and fucked it all up.

“Eleven hundred ninety-nine days,” Yardley said into the silence.

KC made herself turn to look at Yardley. Her eyes were tired. “What?”

“Eleven hundred ninety-nine days. I went to that wedding. At the Ritz-Carlton.” She glanced at KC.

“The bride said how many days it had been since she met the groom, how it was the only number that mattered. It’s been eleven hundred ninety-nine days since I met you.

I thought I’d do anything for another eleven hundred ninety-nine.

For all of them. But I never could figure out if it was what you wanted, KC. If what you ever wanted was me.”

Eleven hundred ninety-nine days. That was how long she’d had with Yardley.

That was as long as she’d ever have her.

Putting a number to it made KC feel unruly, smothered by a fate that was choking the breath out of her while she kicked and screamed in a futile struggle.

“I was going to fix it,” she said bitterly.

“Excuse me, ma’am, what?” Yardley crossed her arms.

“I was going to fix it! I needed to get through Maple Leaf and then resign, or get reassigned to something completely unclassified, because I wanted things, too! Maybe not a monogram in every room, and the reunion sounds awful, but everything else. I did what I could do. I asked you to move in, even though that was the worst idea and didn’t change anything, and the agency hated it, obviously. ”

“That was the worst idea.” Yardley nodded, her jaw tight. “The worst idea. The watch and that key and the speech at my mama’s house? The worst idea.”

“That’s not what I meant! I meant because of this.” KC whipped her hand back and forth between them, then around the apartment. “The spy thing! Of course I wanted to move in with you, it’s just that it made everything more complicated.”

“Complicated?” Yardley lifted up her chin.

This meant KC was in danger, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t have Yardley. She was still embroiled in the middle of Maple Leaf and could be tossed into one of the CIA’s dark holes anytime with no one to talk to but an interrogator named Bradley who had no emotional regulation. What did she have left to care about?

Yardley crossed her arms with an audible huff that was more like a suppressed scream. “ Complicated. ”

Causing an ear-splitting screech, KC scooted her chair toward Yardley and leaned forward into her face.

She could smell her skin, her French lavender soap, and it was outrageous for Yardley’s smell to be so arousingly familiar, still, in the middle of this mess, thou sands of miles from home, after they’d lost everything.

KC gripped the arms of Yardley’s chair. “I said what I said,” she bit out.

“Sometimes things are complicated. Sometimes there isn’t a debutante’s stack of silk pillows to fall back on.

Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes you’re getting six different directions from twelve different sources and no time to think.

Sometimes you’re surprised your chest hasn’t split open with a bloody squelch from all the secrets you’re stuffing in it.

But none of that has to mean I didn’t want to give you a fucking watch and a key!

For fuck’s sake. That was the only thing I’d been sure of for a long goddamned time. ”

She was right there . It made KC furious to be stonewalled and disheartened when Yardley Whitmer was right there, close enough to touch, close enough that KC could count every single one of her ridiculous dark, thick eyelashes against the clear sapphire blue of eyes that KC had spent nearly a thousand days memorizing.

They’d given up, and the agency had screwed them over, and the actual fucking president had made it so KC had to be here, where she could almost see the temperature of the place under Yardley’s jaw where it curved into her neck, how warm it always was against her lips, then sanded with goosebumps as she would kiss back up to her mouth.

“ Dang it,” Yardley said, but so softly, it meant something entirely different.

KC hit the end of her rope and let go. There wasn’t anything to do but skip the apology on the tip of her tongue and whatever else she’d spent three years failing to say in favor of grabbing two handfuls of Swedish sweatshirt.

Yardley hooked her hand into the collar of KC’s hoodie and yanked, and it was all the permission KC needed to start in the middle.

They both knew how good the middle was.

She pulled up Yardley’s shirt just as Yardley slid her arms out of it, and KC grabbed Yardley’s waistband to drag her to the wool rug so it was easier for Yardley to slide her hand straight down the front of KC’s joggers.

Her fingers were fast and rough and speedily slick where she found KC ready, lifting her hips to ease the way.

“Fuck.” KC tipped her head back as Yardley’s fingers, her palm, found just the right place at the same time she bit KC’s neck.

Had she been this hot and wet the whole time they were fighting? Were they fighting or saying good-bye?

KC didn’t know, but whatever this was, she was taking it. She needed it.

Yardley shoved up the hem of KC’s sweatshirt and applied her tongue to KC’s aching nipple while she pushed two fingers up and down alongside KC’s clit, building a rhythm that forced KC’s hips to plead for just a little bit more than she was getting.

More pressure. More speed. More. And when Yardley closed her teeth around KC’s nipple and pushed her wicked fingers a fraction harder, KC knew, she knew , that this was penultimate to a move between her legs that would force her up and over into a fast, furious orgasm that would fist her hands and cord her neck and barely take the edge off.

But if they were going to bad-idea-sex their way out of this fight, she was determined to wring more than thirty seconds of pleasure from it.

She hooked her leg over Yardley’s and rose up over her, pushing her thigh between hers, caging her with her forearms, looking into her eyes.

This gorgeous, imperious, singular woman. KC had never, ever known what to do with her, but she sure as fuck knew how to make her come.

She pressed hard with her thigh where Yardley was hot, damp through her jeans, and watched Yardley’s eyes close as she bit down on her lower lip.

KC freed that lip with her thumb. “You’re not going to look at me?”

Yardley’s mouth came open, her hips lifting in a grinding movement so explicit, it made the seam of KC’s joggers slick over her clit where Yardley’s knee was applying constant, exquisite pressure.

The hit of that pressure forced a deep pulse through her clit and sent her right to the edge, and they both made a noise she knew meant that one hot, open kiss would put them out of their agonizing, fucking perfect misery.

“Please,” Yardley begged against KC’s mouth, and KC didn’t know what would make her hesitate on this precipice, but she did.

She was.

She wanted to kiss Yardley more than anything—her entire body was enraged with her that they weren’t kissing right now—but a part of KC that had kept quiet since she and Yardley hit the floor had picked this moment to remind her of all the times, when she and Yardley had been together like this, they’d said how much they loved each other.

That wasn’t what this was.

This wasn’t anything they’d ever done. It felt like it was, her body knew how to move as though it was, but her heart was hitching, aching, and, worse, the corners of her eyes had started to burn.

Then, three pounding knocks rang against a door no one in Sweden was supposed to know was there.

No one anywhere.