Jonah herded Trisha and Nisha to the other side of the room. Then he pressed his finger into his earpiece in a gesture so theatrical that, of all things, that’s what made Ashna smile.

For the first time that day she relaxed. Shifting her focus to the familiar motion of the knife, she started slicing the bitter melon into slivers.

“Okay, and we’re rolling,” Jonah said. “Just remember to be yourself. Don’t worry about the cameras.” Which was not something you ever said when you didn’t want someone to worry about cameras.

He turned to the door, and with no more warning than that it flew open.

Time did a backflip.

For the longest breath the world around Ashna disappeared. Then it slammed back into her chest and all the oxygen left the room.

A vise clamped around Ashna’s lungs. Cold sweat broke across her forehead. She raised her elbow to wipe it. The knife’s blade gleamed at the edge of her vision, and the heavy wooden handle started to slide from her hand. She tightened her grip.

Breathe.

The man, at once broad and limber, strolled toward her, his stride lazy. As lazy and graceful as it had ever been. Reflective sunglasses covered his eyes, completely obscuring them. Dark hair was pulled back from his face in a bun. Thick, perfectly trimmed stubble highlighted the sharp lines of his jaw. How she even recognized him she had no idea. He looked entirely different, yet so familiar that the vise tightened around her lungs.

Her elbow was still pressed into her forehead. Frozen there.

He stuck out his hand, that too-wide, too-finely-etched mouth pressed tightly together, his tell that things weren’t as boring as his body language suggested.

The knife slipped from Ashna’s grip.

Screams erupted around them. The blade flashed in the lights as it fell, pointed tip down, toward Ashna’s sandal-clad feet.

A ball spun across the air, slicing through years in an instant. A hand reached out to catch it. The hand closed around the handle, missing the blade by a breath just as the tip scratched the leather of her sandal. Without touching her skin.

He was on his knees at her feet, knife held in one hand like a ninja. His sunglasses had gone flying as he leaped. Breath panted from his mouth—the only sound Ashna could hear—as golden eyes met hers, the green flecks on fire. They were still edged in thick spiky lashes, still one slightly smaller than the other, still stunning enough to steal her breath.

“You okay?” The voice floated up across the years. A thunderclap of emotions spun those years into a tornado around them. Ashna fell to her knees in front of him, almost grabbed his face the way she had done the first time she kissed him.