by Kennedy Ryan
She’s quiet, running her fingers through my hair, soothing the turmoil that idea causes.
“Does it make you feel guilty?” she asks after a few quiet seconds.
I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t know what I feel, but it’s nothing related to regret. I did try, had been trying, but after that funeral… I knew why you didn’t give me your number. I felt it, too, that pull. I can’t even reduce it to just attraction. It feels like we were this one thing that was severed in half, and our parts want to be rejoined.”
Wow. That sounded intense.
“I mean—”
“Yes. That is how it feels,” she says.
We’ve only been back in each other’s lives for two weeks. We just made love. It’s too soon to say what I know is true. What has always, on some level, at least for me, been true.
I love her.
She might not call it that yet, and I won’t say it aloud, but I know it. We were born on the same day. I’m not overly religious, and I’m not sure what I believe about other lives, other worlds, and other dimensions. I do know if soul mates are real, Kimba is mine. I believe that if people are “created,” we were made together. She was there for my scaffolding—there when my flesh was knit over my bones. And if love is not just an emotion, but a type of eternity, an infinity that lives in our hearts, then we have always been in love. It’s an ageless thing that isn’t about puberty or chronology, or even if we get to live our lives together.
But when we are apart, I ache.
I can disguise it with friends, mute it with other women, distract myself with goals and dreams, but the truth remains. If I don’t have Kimba, there is a part of me missing. And as much as I tried with Aiko, as much as we’ve done together, built together, despite the beautiful boy we made together—she is not my soul mate. How could she be when there was Kimba?
“What if she’d said yes?” Kimba asks. “When you asked Aiko to marry you? What if you’d been married when we met again?”
“I would have been faithful to her,” I say without hesitation, with absolute conviction. “I wouldn’t have betrayed my vows or done anything to hurt Noah and Ko, but I would have hurt. Probably for the rest of my life, a part of me would always hurt wondering if I could have had you.”
Barely visible in the moonlight, on the cusp of dawn, she glances up at me through a fan of long lashes. “Who says you have me now?” she asks, her voice teasing, but I see the contentment in her eyes.
“I say I do.” I caress her hip, her back, her finely boned face. “And you have me if you want me.”
“You know I want you.” She reaches up to brush her fingers over my face, too. “I always have.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Kimba
“You’re fucking brilliant.”
“Huh?” Ezra asks absentmindedly, paying more attention to the flame under his pan than to my compliment. “What’d you say?”
“I said you’re brilliant.” I hold up the iPad I’m using to read his manuscript. “Your book, the YLA story, is incredible, Ez.”
“Oh. Thanks.” He flashes me a smile and then goes back to his French toast. “The key to getting this right is the milk-to-bread ratio.”
I hop off the counter and walk over to stand beside him at the stove. “Would you forget about your French toast for a minute and listen to me?”
“But it’s stuffed French toast.” He takes the pan off the burner and pulls me into his arms. “And I could listen to you all day. What were you saying? Something about me being a handsome, sexy genius?”
“Um…those weren’t my exact words.” I laugh up at him.
“I could have sworn that’s what you said, and I’m never wrong.” He slides his hands over my ass in a pair of his boxer shorts. “Some even say I’m fucking brilliant.”
“They probably just like your big dick,” I whisper and blink up at him as innocently as I can manage.
“I get that a lot.” He drops a kiss on my head and turns back to his French toast. I lean down to rest an elbow on the counter and watch him work.
“A lot?” I ask teasingly. “Have there been a lot?”
He pauses mid-toast-flip and slants me a glance. “Are you asking how many people I’ve had sex with?”
“I mean, it’s none of my business. If you don’t want to—”
“Eight.”
Eight?
Lord above, only eight?!
“Oh.” I straighten and rest my hip against the counter. “What a, um, single-digit number that is.”
“Well, I’ve been with one person for ten years so…what about you?”
What about me? I’m tabulating years of hook-ups, one-night stands, fuck bois and carrying the one.
“If you don’t want to,” he says, cracking an egg into a bowl, “it’s fine. I don’t care how many people—”
“I don’t know.”
He glances up from whisking eggs, a small frown puckering his dark brows. “You don’t know what?”
“My number. I don’t know how many people I’ve been with.”
He resumes whisking, his frown clearing. “Oh.”
The whisking eggs and whirring refrigerator are the only sounds in the kitchen. I’ve never been embarrassed by my choices. I enjoy sex. I’ve had it with a lot of people. People I really liked…or tolerated…but didn’t want to commit to. I’ve always been safe and never mean about it. I was upfront, and when someone wanted more, I let them know “more” wasn’t an option.
“I just never…” I cross my arms over my stomach, fold one bare foot over the other. “I haven’t been interested in committed relationships. There hasn’t been anyone I wanted that with.”
“Tru.” He stops whisking and gives me the full impact of his undivided attention. His eyes are placid blue. No shadows or undercurrents. “I don’t care.” Ezra pushes the bowl aside and faces me. “But there is something I feel like we should be clear on regarding how you’ve handled sex in the past.”
Here we go.
“You’ve never wanted to commit before,” he says.
“Right. I’ve never wanted any strings attached.”
“I know I said we could be just sex, no emotional attachments.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But I feel like I have to be honest with you. Having you back in my life has been…it’s been exactly what I need, and what I felt last night… I’ve never felt that way before.”
I’m not even sure my heart is beating, but it also feels like there’s a tumult in my chest. “What are you saying, Ez?”
His mouth flattens into a hard line and his jaw hardens to stone. “I want strings.”
“Y-you do?”
“I want strings.” He links our fingers, strokes his thumb across my palm. “Ropes, if necessary. I want anything that keeps you with me and me with you and tells everyone else don’t even think about it.”
I’m stunned and incredibly turned on, but that doesn’t take much where Ezra’s concerned.
“You…you do?” I ask faintly…again.
“I wouldn’t do well sharing you.”
The thought of sharing him pours acid into a deep cut, a completely unfamiliar feeling, but I can’t deny it’s there. “I agree,” I tell him.
“Look. We’re already redefining the relationship,” he says. “Strings attached?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this.” I step closer, tipping up on my toes to kiss him. “But yes, I want all the strings.”
If I wasn’t really into Ezra before, after I had his stuffed French toast, I would have been.
“Wow.” I pat my full belly. “Now I get it.”
“It’s Noah’s favorite,” he says, taking his empty plate and mine to the sink. “Wait’ll you see what we’re having for lunch.”
“First of all, I can’t even think about more food right now.” I walk over and loop my arms around his waist, press my front to his broad back. “Second of all, I need to go home.”
He tenses under my ch
eek. “Already?”
“I could let you see me later today,” I say, smiling and huddling deeper into the taut muscles of his back.
He turns, cups my face in both hands and dots kisses along my jawline. “How very gracious of you.”
“I do have to get home, though. My mom…let’s just say I’m already due an earful. My dress should be dry by now. I can catch an Uber.”
“No way.” A frown settles on his face. “I’ll take you home.”
“Ezra—”
“I said I’ll take you home.”
Before I can protest further, his cell rings. He leans over to inspect the screen and sighs. “Aiko’s mom. She probably wants an update on Aiko and Noah. I can call her back.”
“No. Talk to her.” I slip out of his hold. “I’ll get dressed and be ready by the time you’re done.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
He nods and reaches for the phone. “Xin chào cô.”
I do a double take at the base of the stairs. Ezra speaks Vietnamese? He leans against the counter, continuing in words I don’t understand, crossing one arm across his chest while he’s on the phone. There’s a familiarity, affection in the exchange with Aiko’s mother. Noah’s grandmother. They’ve known each other ten years, so it makes sense.
Hearing him actually speak Vietnamese with such ease underlines how tangled his life is with Aiko’s. Even if they aren’t romantically involved anymore, they’re inextricably linked through Noah and so many other things I can’t even begin to anticipate.
Upstairs, I go to the laundry room where Ezra hung my dress. It’s slotted on a metal bar between a tiny red robe with bright flowers and a blouse I couldn’t fit one boob into.
“Wow, she’s petite,” I mutter, tossing Ezra’s boxers and T-shirt into the hamper. I slip the dress over my head, slide my feet into my mud-splashed, misshapen Jimmy Choos and walk back to Ezra’s bedroom. Actually, it’s the guest bedroom where he told me he’s been sleeping. I venture down the hall to a door that opens to the master.
Their bedroom.
It was dark and we were mad with lust last night when we came upstairs, but I consider the room in the glare of daylight. A pair of pink silk bedroom slippers peek from beneath the edge of the bed. Photos of all sizes fit together like a jigsaw puzzle on one entire wall. Different seasons of life chronicling their little family’s journey together. There’s pictures of them—at the Eiffel Tower, Disney World, the Grand Canyon, dressed up for Halloween.
In the hospital, the day Noah was born.
There’s such joy on their faces. Ezra and Aiko both look young and proud and overwhelmed. She’s holding Noah and Ezra has an arm around her. He’s beaming.
“You okay?” Ezra asks from the doorway.
I jump guiltily and step away from the wall.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be nosy. The door was open and I was...”
Ezra lifts both brows and smiles a bit. “Curious?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I look back to the wall, running a finger over a photo of the three of them at the Space Needle in Seattle. “Noah’s been all over, huh?”
“He loves to travel.” Ezra walks up beside me, studying the photos. “Next year, he wants to go to Israel. Shocking.”
“I love how interested he is in his Jewish heritage.”
Ezra breathes out a laugh and shakes his head. “A lot more interested than I am. He asked me if I’ll start taking him to synagogue. I am not that Jew. I was a lot more involved when I was younger, but mostly because of my mom and Bubbe. As I got older, there were some things I wanted to keep, and some that just didn’t matter as much to me.”
“We all have to figure that stuff out for ourselves.” I slip my arm through the crook of his. “I still am half the time.”
“Mom is determined to get her a good Jewish boy even if she has to skip a generation. Remember how miserable we were on the weekends when we couldn’t play because of Shabbat?”
“Our mothers got sick of us, but we always complained when we couldn’t be together.”
“We always wanted to be together as kids.” He kisses my temple, pulling me in closer to his side. “Seems like not much has changed, huh? How do you think they’ll react to us?”
“I guess we’ll find out after it’s actually broken off with Aiko once and for all.”
There’s a loaded, stiffening silence. He pulls back and looks down at me.
“It already is broken off. It’s just a matter of telling Noah,” he says. “You know that, right? I’m not some guy trying to fool a side chick into being with me. I just have to do what’s best for Noah.”
“I believe you. I guess being up here in your room, in her space and seeing her life with you—I just realize you’ve been together a long time.”
“We have been and half that time it wasn’t working. We’ve put this off much longer than we should have. It was going to happen regardless of us, Tru. I promise you that.”
I see the truth in his eyes, but I also see the truth on these walls. It twists my insides to think I might have any part in breaking up a family.
“I better get going.” I make my smile extra bright, but he isn’t fooled.
“Kimba—”
“No, I just need to get home.”
He nods, obviously reluctant to let the subject go. Neither of us says much as we walk down the stairs and to the garage. I try to push aside the guilt… Is it guilt I’m feeling over Aiko? Why should I feel guilty? She’s screwing some guy in Tanzania. Ezra said this imminent break-up would have happened with or without me back in his life. I tell myself all those things, but when Ezra opens the door for me, and I climb into his Land Rover, I—
“Wait. You pushing a Rover?” I ask, surprise and amusement effectively squelching my conflicted inner monologue. “Well, look at you.”
He rolls his eyes and backs out of the garage, but a tiny tilt at the corner of his mouth is enough to encourage me to continue.
“Being a brilliant educator must pay well.”
“Not as well as electing presidents, I’m sure.”
“I do all right, but the book deal was quite lucrative. Who’s your agent? What kind of deal did they offer? I’m telling you, Ezra, your book is fantastic and once it’s published, your whole life will change.”
“I like my life as it is.” He turns his attention away from the street long enough to spare me a quick smile. “When I was approached about writing the book, someone had seen one of the videos on our Instagram account and thought we had a story to tell.”
“They were right. Reading about your early days frustrated as a teacher, how you’ve built something for families who might otherwise have had to settle for an inferior education—it’s inspiring.”
“I want more people to know about our students and our story,” he says. “More donors and investors so we can continue helping students who can’t afford private school and live in places where, frankly, their schools suck. Your zip code shouldn’t determine the quality of your education.”
His passion, his dedication to his students deepens my understanding of the man he is now. Reading that manuscript filled in some of the gaps the years created.
“I don’t remember you wanting to be a teacher when we were growing up,” I say.
“I don’t think I did. I wanted to do well in school, of course, but I entered college unsure what I should do with my life.”
Something niggles my memory and breaks through. “Bubbe was a teacher!”
“She was before she retired; you’re right.” He angles an impressed smile at me. “Great memory. She was the reason I first decided to at least give teaching a chance, and I fell in love with it.”
“What do you like most about it?”
“The part I don’t get to do anymore,” he says ruefully. “Actually teaching. Seeing a mind expanding before your very eyes. Seeing things kids learn literally change the way they see the world and see themselves, reima
gining what they’re capable of.”
He chuckles and shakes his head, one hand on the steering wheel. “Now it’s fundraising and administration and conferences and speaking engagements, though I do as few of those as possible.”
“Well, plan on speaking more. I make my living knowing things and I know this book is gonna be a huge success. You’ll be on morning shows and doing book tours before you know it.”
“You think so?” One brow dipped in skepticism lifts. “It’s not even a huge publisher.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Your story, what you’ve built and are doing,” I say in a rush. “It’s huge.” I gesture in the air like a wand waving over his imposing figure behind the wheel. “And all that won’t hurt.”
His lips pinch at the corners and he snorts. “All that? Why, Ms. Allen, to what are you referring?”
“You know how you look, Ezra. Don’t play the modest card with me. I dealt this hand.”
“When you kissed that scrawny thirteen-year-old in the girls’ bathroom, you had no idea he’d grow another foot and a half, huh?”
That precious memory overtakes the present, and we’re not in the subdued luxury of his Rover, just minutes from my mama’s house. We’re back in that stall, both unsure if we’re doing it right, but completely sure we want to do it wrong together. His father’s genes may have kicked in, lengthening and broadening his body, but reading that manuscript, I know the shape of Ezra’s heart never changed.
We pull up in front of my parents’ house and he parks. As soon as the car is still, he reaches for my hand, studying our fingers twined together. “I was thinking the other day that I wish I’d gotten to see you grow up. Maybe you can dig out some pictures for me.”
“Maybe. I did love seeing you through all the years I missed.”
Years she had with him.
“Kimba, I know seeing the pictures in the bedroom upset you a little—”
“No, they didn’t upset me. They just reminded me that even though the sex is amazing and it feels like we’ve been together since the beginning of time, we haven’t. You have other people in your life and so do I. I know you want this to be easy, Ezra, however you and Aiko dissolve this relationship, but I have a feeling it won’t be.”