Page 93 of No One Wants That (Blitzen Bay)

“He’s not ready to be out of it.”

“Who cares?” she says, throwing her hands up. “He’s not relevant to us. Kit’s ready to have a real relationship. You know she’s crazy about you. You’re saying she’s not ready, but you’re the one who’s scared. You’re just projecting it onto her.”

“Is that your official analysis, Agent Laghari?” I say, laughing.

“Quit trying to make jokes. It’s your pattern to avoid intimacy. Say something real.”

I hiss at her. She rolls her eyes.

“Fine. Kit’s great, but she could do better than me. A lot better.”

“There’s no one better than you,” she says. “You already know that.”

“You think that, but we’ve never dated.”

“Thank God.” She throws her hand over her mouth. It’s what she does when she has a secret that she’s dying to tell someone.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” She laughs when I raise my eyebrows. “Okay, but you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

“Do I ever tell anyone your stuff? Spill it.”

She lets out a little squeak. “I had a huge crush on you when I started working with you guys in Virginia.”

“You didn’t have to tell me that. Believe me. I knew. Everyone knew.”

“Did not!” Her mouth flies open. “I was completely professional.”

“You were completely professional. No doubt about it, but I still knew.”

“Liar!” She crosses her arms again. “There’s no way—”

“Raine, you sat by me at every meeting. You sat by me on the planes. You sat by me at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I knew. Everyone knew.”

“Oh my God,” she says, putting her head in her hands. “I’m so embarrassed. Why didn’t you say something?”

I flip more water on her. “Okay first, you can’t be retroactively embarrassed. You’re my best friend. It doesn’t matter now. And second, I didn’t say anything because we worked together. It would have made things weird.”

“Or you weren’t into me,” she says as she flips some water back at me.

“I’ve told you this about a hundred times. There’s not a man in the world that wouldn’t be into you, but it wasn’t worth even going there. We couldn’t have dated. You would have been reassigned if anyone found out.”

“Come on. You’ve slept with plenty of people we work with—”

“I said we couldn’t have dated. We could have had sex but you’re too good for all of that.” I pause. “Honestly, you’re too good for me, period. Every decent woman is.”

She tiptoes across the canoe and sits right in front of me. “You’re way too hard on yourself. I’m not right for you, but I’m definitely not too good for you.”

“You’re not right for me because you’re too good for me.”

“Don’t contradict me. You know how I hate that.” She sits in the belly of the canoe and rests her back against my seat. “Do you know what Alex and I do for fun?”

“God,” I say, groaning, “please don’t tell me.”

“Sometimes,” she says, draping her arms over my legs, “we sit together and read books for hours. Not to each other. We’re both reading our own books—separately, but together. And it’s the most fun thing in the world to us. Could you do that with me?”

“What’s a book?”

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