Page 6

She kept going, faster and faster, until she was a block from home and her shoe caught a slick pile of wet leaves, dropping her down to the asphalt, her knee grinding into the road.

“Mother fucker .” KC heaved herself up and looked up at the sky and stomped her feet, feeling blood trickling down her shin.

When she limped into the house, she was surprised to discover Yardley at the kitchen table, wearing the extra-short navy-blue robe that murdered KC every time she put it on. The morning light made her skin glow, and her ordinarily shiny, perfectly perfect inky hair was messed up everywhere.

KC’s stomach soured. She’d loved morning Yardley. Morning Yardley had been entirely her Yardley. Messy, sexy, gorgeous in the raw.

But she wasn’t KC’s anymore.

She knelt down to untie her shoes, grateful for the sharp sting in her wounded knee. Glad to be able to look at the damp knot of her shoelaces so she didn’t have to look at the woman she couldn’t stop disappointing.

They’d met at a backyard barbecue. Yardley was a friend of a friend of a roommate, and KC had heard her very memorable name a few times in passing but never run into her until that blistering-hot summer day.

She turned around from laughing at a joke and spotted Yardley Whitmer in a white strapless sundress, her bow-shaped lips painted red, dark hair braided and pinned up, looking exactly like the illustration of the goddess Athena in KC’s favorite childhood collection of Greek and Roman mythology.

I’m going to marry that woman. That was the thought KC had. Only it wasn’t a thought, it was more like the voice of her actual ancient and immutable soul, speaking aloud the purest desire it had ever felt.

KC kicked her shoes off and started toward the bathroom.

“Why are you bleeding?” Yardley stood, her soft alarm and prettiness like another world from Gramercy in the alley.

“Bit it.”

“It looks like it hurts.”

It did hurt. It never stopped hurting. An uneasy silence filled the space between them.

“It’s fine.” KC hated this—the awkwardness where there used to be endless conversation. The anxious stomach ache she got every single time she tried to talk to Yardley now. “I’m going to grab a shower.”

Yardley’s gaze was fixed on KC’s knee. “Let me look at that first. It might have gravel. Sit down, and I’ll get something to clean it up.” She hustled out of the kitchen to the bathroom cabinet in the hall, leaving KC to hunch over in the warm seat of the chair Yardley had vacated.

Her hands were shaking.

They hadn’t been able to talk to each other since KC had spite-ordered the POD after finding out Yardley signed the lease on an apartment.

When it got delivered, she’d watched Yardley’s blue eyes fill with tears that spilled over her blotchy cheeks while she stared at KC, not even wiping them away, and it became perfectly, horribly plain that they weren’t going to be “taking a break” or “taking time to find their way back to each other.”

It was over.

Yardley’s extensive travel, more and more extensive all the time, followed by KC’s overwork and lies—those were the first blows.

But KC had taken apart the rest with her failure to act on the knowledge that Yardley desired and deserved more.

More romance. More gestures. More confidence in their commitment.

It wasn’t that KC hadn’t wanted to, it was that she couldn’t.

She couldn’t talk to Yardley about forever when their past and present wasn’t the entire truth.

And even if she had been able to, she couldn’t live with how much she couldn’t give this woman who deserved to have every single thing she wanted.

Yardley came back into the kitchen with a huge brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bag of cotton balls.

“Sit up straight.” She knelt down on the floor in front of KC.

The placket on her robe fell away to reveal the soft, luminous skin of her throat and shoulder.

When she looked up, her deep blue eyes were crinkling at the corners with concern that made KC’s chest feel tight. “It’s pretty deep, actually.”

“It’s but a flesh wou— Yikes!” KC jumped at the unexpected cold sting of a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic touching the scrape.

Yardley dabbed one more time and then—dreadful—leaned forward and softly blew on KC’s knee.

It completely stopped the pain. Mainly because of KC’s overwhelming and instant horniness.

She gripped her uninjured knee against the sudden impulse to grab Yardley’s wrist or to say something, anything, to tighten this unexpected thread of connection between them.

But what could she say? Nothing had changed. Yardley wasn’t even paying attention anymore. She’d stood up to stare out the window at the driveway, where the white hulk of the POD waited for the last boxes to be loaded in.

“I have to remember to call those guys back.” Her voice was flat.

The coffee maker beeped, loud in the quiet kitchen. KC’s knee hurt three times as much as it had before. She squeezed her hands into fists to stop the trembling, listening to the coffee maker hiss and gurgle.

Coffee. That was why Yardley had been sitting at the table. She hadn’t been waiting for KC. She’d been waiting on her coffee.

It was just a few minutes after six. KC had never known Yardley, when she was home, to get up before seven thirty. Certainly not when she had the day off. “You’re awake early,” she said, breaking the heavy silence.

Yardley tightened her robe. “I have a work thing.”

“I thought you had the rest of the week off.”

“I thought so, too, but my boss called. There’s paperwork we have to finish up for the mortgage brokerage in New York. Then, after, I’m meeting someone.” Yardley gave KC a small shrug.

KC didn’t permit herself to react, even though this—the small shrug, and the way Yardley held her mouth when she was doing the small shrug—was a blow.

Not because she believed Yardley would be unfaithful even now, when there was nothing left to be faithful to, but because KC had heard her say this kind of thing too many times.

I’m meeting someone. I have a work thing. I’ll be late, I’m getting together with a friend in the city after.

Every time, it hurt a little more what Yardley didn’t say.

I wish I could stay home with you.

Do you want to come with me?

Mostly, KC couldn’t even go with her, and if Yardley happened to decide to stay home, KC would have to make up a reason to explain why it was necessary for her to leave so she could drive herself to Langley.

It was pointless and stupid to care about Yardley’s solo friendships, her excessive work hours and endless business trips, when they were precisely what made enough room for KC to carry on her secret life.

But she did care. Because she was a fool.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“Not sure, actually.” Yardley waved her hand. “You know how it is when a friend’s in crisis.”

Just a few hairs lifted at the nape of KC’s neck, the way they did when she was on the trail of something and her hindbrain noticed an anomaly in a hot mess of code. “So it’s work on your day off and then a friend in crisis? Who?”

Yardley frowned. “Not really crisis -crisis,” she said. “But you know.”

That “you know” was a bald cue for KC to pick up. Agree and let me go , it meant. You don’t want me here with you any more than I want to be here.

KC didn’t know if it was the sting in her knee or her early-morning tête-à-tête with Gramercy making her obstreperous, but she refused to say her expected lines. “I don’t remember you having a friend who has problems.”

Yardley coughed. “Who doesn’t, right?” She looked away from KC again. “It’s kind of a friend and kind of a work thing. Hard to explain.”

“I’m pretty smart. You could try.”

KC watched color climb from under Yardley’s hand up the sides of her neck. Finally, she turned her head to meet KC’s eyes. “It’s not really your business, is it? Anymore.”

Awful. Hopelessly, desperately awful. KC had to pinch the bridge of her nose to keep the sting in her eyes from turning to tears. “Yeah,” she finally choked out. “Right. Not like it ever was.”

Civilians weren’t supposed to know anything about KC besides her cover.

Dr. Brown had made it clear when she joined the agency: from that day forward, she was a smart, precocious kid who’d been raised by Dad and Grandma after Mom died, who went early to college, then set up her own freelance tech business.

KC’s cover’s life was an easy-breezy one, without a lot of money but with enough of everything that mattered.

Nothing to worry about or dig deep into.

That was who she’d been with Yardley. Who she’d had to be.

Maybe KC could’ve, should’ve , shared with Yardley more of the emotional truth of her life—the benign neglect of her upbringing, the anxiety and loneliness, how her idealism had led her to the community she’d always needed but also to the illegal activities that threatened her entire young adulthood.

But for KC herself, her shallow cover story was more comfortable. It made her feel equipped for a relationship with someone like Yardley, who’d grown up surrounded by family and friends, entered private schools and sororities, and could navigate a career in finance with grace.

KC’s decision to stick to her cover had killed any possibility that she and Yardley could share the joyful fantasies and dreams of an ordinary couple three years into their relationship.

They’d walk past a school during recess, and KC would squeeze Yardley’s hand and nearly ask, So have you ever thought about kids?

But then she’d bite her tongue, knowing it wasn’t possible, and she didn’t want to get Yardley’s hopes up.

Or Yardley would tell a story about her beloved childhood cat, Okra, and KC would stop herself just short of saying, Should we get a pet?

There were so many words arrested in her throat, frozen and unsaid. It meant that every sweet nothing came out a little more strangled until Yardley inevitably noticed, and then KC didn’t have an answer for, What’s wrong with us? How can we fix us?

The only thing she ever could say to Yardley that was the full truth was I love you . But that didn’t matter when Yardley could never really know the woman who was saying it.

The scrape of the kitchen blind on its track was jarring in the silence between them.

Yardley yanked the slim rope until the blinds were partially closed, obscuring the view from outside.

She was always getting after KC about turning lights on early, transforming the house into a fishbowl. “I have to get ready,” she said.

And then she was gone, leaving KC in an empty kitchen with no choice but to make herself forget about her heart for now.

Forget the waste of the best three years of her life, and forget the dark, narrow feeling she got in her chest when she thought about what living here would be like without Yardley.

KC had to focus on the Unicorn.

Whatever she could dig up, whatever advantage she could give the Unicorn for this shitshow the agency had decided to fling its best agent into without adequate preparation, had just become Priority One.