I know what she means. The pull between us is alive, is burning beneath my fingertips on her skin. Even surrounded by friends and colleagues who know I’ve been with Aiko for a decade, who know I would never cheat on her, who don’t know we aren’t together anymore and would judge me…even knowing the necessity of discretion, I can barely keep my hands off Kimba.

“Can I tell you something and you believe me?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never cheated on Aiko, and I never would.” I dip my head to catch her eyes with mine. “Please trust me.”

She searches my face for several heartbeats and then gives a slow nod. “Okay. I trust you.”

“Kimba!” Mona’s tone is just shy of strident. “Please.”

“I better go,” Kimba says, starting off. She pauses and looks at me over her shoulder. “I’ll wait around, but only for a few minutes, Ezra. I don’t…I can’t…”

She shakes her head and walks away.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kimba

“If this was Noah’s party at nine,” Mona says, “can you imagine this kid’s sweet sixteen?”

I laugh and scoop the last of the candy debris from Noah’s piñata out of the grass. “We’ll be that kid’s entourage by the time he’s sixteen.”

Mona glances around Ezra’s backyard and heaves a long sigh. “All done. Food’s put away. Place is clean. Everyone’s gone home. Ezra’s making sure four third-graders don’t kill each other and go to sleep.”

“Ezra’s lucky to have you.” I sit on the edge of the trampoline. “You’re like part of the family.”

Mona gives me a measured look before sitting beside me, the net enclosure at our backs. “Aiko, too. They’re all like family to me.”

“Well then, they’re all lucky to have you.”

Mona tips her head toward the fence that separates her backyard from this one. “Why don’t you come over for a glass…or bottle…of wine?”

“Raincheck?”

“You’re about to leave?” Mona probes.

“In a little bit, yeah.”

Her gaze drifts back toward the house. “This won’t end well, Kimba. It can’t.”

As much as she may be right, I hold on to Ezra’s frankness from earlier tonight. “You know him, Mona. Have you ever even suspected him of being unfaithful?”

“No, but you were never around.”

“That wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“I would have said that, too, before I saw him with you. Kimba, I know how a man looks at someone who is just a friend, and that is not how Ezra looks at you. I just hope no one else noticed. He’s a pillar of this community. A hero for these kids. I don’t want him throwing that away because he’s curious about what might have been.”