In a way, we both left this city to find ourselves. As much as I hated leaving Kimba, I found myself overseas. Kimba had to leave the city to carve out a space for herself, out from under the shadow of her family’s name. Now we’re both back where it all began. Where we began. I’m here to stay, but she’s not. What are the odds of her coming back to town when Aiko and I just broke up? When I’m, for the first time in a decade, free to pursue her.

Like I said. Sometimes what we think is a fluke is really fate.

Whichever it is, I won’t let it go to waste.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Kimba

Coming to Mona’s cookout was a bad idea.

On so many levels.

Level one.

I could quite possibly eviscerate her guest bathroom. I’ve been either sitting on or kneeling before the porcelain throne for the last two days, digestively prolific from both ends, and I’m about damn tired of it. Between diarrhea and vomiting, I’ve been chained to my mother’s house. There’s a reason I put several states between us. We love each other, God knows we do, but after a day or so, two alpha females under one roof is a whole-ass mood.

Not a good one.

In addition to Mama’s usual lecturing, advising and “guiding,” she’s also fussed over me, assuming I’m sick, a much more logical conclusion than the truth. The detox pills that may re-start my period arrived. The catch? They have run through my body like a typhoon.

Never thought I’d say this, but I better bleed.

Several of my homeopath’s patients have not only restored their cycles through this remedy, but have gone on to have babies.

Do I even want to have a baby? I was hoping that wasn’t a question I’d have to answer quite yet, but apparently, if I want to give birth naturally, the time is now…or at least within the next year or so…or never.

But first, my period has to come back. That’s pretty much square one with reproduction.

Level two for why coming to this cookout is a bad idea?

Ezra Stern.

He’s an old friend. A blast from the past. An all grown up, broody, brilliant, intense, tall and handsome blast from the past.

And he’s taken.

Let that sink in, Tru.

I can’t stop thinking about him, though. I keep seeing him, not just as he is now—handsome and towering and sex-on-a-magic-stick—but as he was then—kind, slyly witty, compassionate, and protective. He was my solace and my secret. No one else knew how amazing Ezra was back then, and I liked having him to myself. Now he belongs to someone else, and I have to respect that.