“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I laugh, grabbing a fistful of curls and bringing her lips to mine in a fierce, tongue-tangling kiss. When the kiss slows, I roll my palms over the taut muscles of her back, over the swell of her ass, the supple line of her thighs. I would know her anywhere. The shape of her, the smell, the taste. Through the years, those things will change, but this living thread that has connected us since birth, it’s inviolable.

“After this baby, you want another?” I ask. “We have eggs.”

She laughs, a throaty, happy sound that wraps around me more warmly than this cashmere blanket. “We have eggs, Dr. Stern. After this one, let’s see what my body has left. I’m down to try again.”

I’m greedy. I wake up each morning starving for everything I can get from this life, from this woman, and want to offer everything I have to give. We spent two decades apart and for the rest of our lives, I’ll be making up for lost time.

She looks down at me, the laughter dying. “But if not, we have Noah and Mai. I know they’re not mine, but I love them like they are. I really do, Ez.”

“I know you do.” I lift the little tab suspended from the chain she wears around her neck, a symbol of our two weddings, of a lifelong love.

“You know Mama thinks Daddy set this all up, right?” she asks, catching my fingers at the necklace. “That he requested I present the awards, selected you, to bring us back together.”

The memory of Joseph Allen, a giant in this city, taking time to talk for hours with me that day, furiously scribbling my dreams on a napkin as our coffee grew cold, is vivid in my mind. I unpacked my heart to him that day, and there’s no way he could have seen what lay in my heart without seeing his daughter Tru.

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” My smile fades. “Maybe he wouldn’t have if he’d known what you’d have to endure, living through someone else having my child.”

Kimba drops her forehead to mine, slips her fingers into the hair at my nape.

“He wouldn’t have changed a thing. Daddy knew firsthand how messy love can be,” she says, her words wistful, certain across my lips. “Mama told me that love isn’t tidy, and she’s right, but all the mess we had to wade through to have this, to have each other, was worth it.”

Nothing life has thrown at us so far—not a twenty-year separation, not Aiko’s pregnancy or any of the challenges that come with negotiating such a complex blended family like ours—have managed to crack the foundation we laid for this marriage starting the day we were born.