China shut the door behind them. “You two are single-handedly—well, double-handedly? Does that sound dirty?—making my career take off! Have I said thank you?”

Ashna came the closest he’d seen her come to beaming and it killed him a little bit. After watching her in the kitchen these past few challenges, it was going to be impossible to accept anything but right-out fierce joy from her.

“Actually,” Ashna said in that playful way you had to know her to recognize, “it’s been . . . it’s been . . .”

“Fun?” China said, even as Rico thought it.

“Yes, it has. It’s been so much fun! Also, Curried Dreams has a waiting list for reservations. So, I should be thanking you!” She threw Rico a sideways, albeit guarded, glance. “Both of you.”

It was a scrap, but it made him want to run a lap around a stadium, especially now that his knee didn’t feel like exposed nerves. Turns out, Trisha was the genius Ashna claimed she was.

Over the past two weeks they had fallen into a rhythm—a rhythm that resembled a tango and kept him up at night with yearning, but a rhythm nonetheless. They had somehow become a real team, building each other up, relearning each other, compensating for each other’s flaws, spotlighting each other’s strengths, and making some delicious food.

“I told you so!” China said. “There’s one more thing I think I might need thanks for.” She threw a speaking look between Ashna and Rico.

His nemesis, the famous Ashna blush, spread up the column of her neck, and across her cheeks in a slow ruthless burn.

Had he really thought he could put away feelings this precious? That they could be gone forever? For all the fragile peace they had managed to negotiate and all the feelings Rico could no longer deny, the hope that bubbled inside him was terrifying.

“I’ll leave you two to catch up,” he said and without waiting for a response, he let himself out.

“I can’t believe you did that!” he heard Ashna hiss the moment he left. “What is wrong with you?”

China laughed. “What? I might have found someone to melt through the famous Ashna Raje ice.”

The problem wasn’t the melting. All it took was for them to be in the same room and there were puddles all over the place, not a sliver of ice in sight. The problem was the ghosts of their pasts, and how much those ghosts had altered them both. The problem was finding each other around the ghosts, melted or otherwise.