Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
I love her.
She might not call it that yet, and I won’t say it aloud, but I know it. We were born on the same day. I’m not overly religious, and I’m not sure what I believe about other lives, other worlds, and other dimensions. I do know if soul mates are real, Kimba is mine. I believe that if people are “created,” we were made together. She was there for my scaffolding—there when my flesh was knit over my bones. And if love is not just an emotion, but a type of eternity, an infinity that lives in our hearts, then we have always been in love. It’s an ageless thing that isn’t about puberty or chronology, or even if we get to live our lives together.
But when we are apart, I ache.
I can disguise it with friends, mute it with other women, distract myself with goals and dreams, but the truth remains. If I don’t have Kimba, there is a part of me missing. And as much as I tried with Aiko, as much as we’ve done together, built together, despite the beautiful boy we made together—she is not my soul mate. How could she be when there was Kimba?
“What if she’d said yes?” Kimba asks. “When you asked Aiko to marry you? What if you’d been married when we met again?”
“I would have been faithful to her,” I say without hesitation, with absolute conviction. “I wouldn’t have betrayed my vows or done anything to hurt Noah and Ko, but I would have hurt. Probably for the rest of my life, a part of me would always hurt wondering if I could have had you.”
Barely visible in the moonlight, on the cusp of dawn, she glances up at me through a fan of long lashes. “Who says you have me now?” she asks, her voice teasing, but I see the contentment in her eyes.
“I say I do.” I caress her hip, her back, her finely boned face. “And you have me if you want me.”
“You know I want you.” She reaches up to brush her fingers over my face, too. “I always have.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Kimba
“You’re fucking brilliant.”
“Huh?” Ezra asks absentmindedly, paying more attention to the flame under his pan than to my compliment. “What’d you say?”
“I said you’re brilliant.” I hold up the iPad I’m using to read his manuscript. “Your book, the YLA story, is incredible, Ez.”
“Oh. Thanks.” He flashes me a smile and then goes back to his French toast. “The key to getting this right is the milk-to-bread ratio.”
I hop off the counter and walk over to stand beside him at the stove. “Would you forget about your French toast for a minute and listen to me?”
“But it’s stuffed French toast.” He takes the pan off the burner and pulls me into his arms. “And I could listen to you all day. What were you saying? Something about me being a handsome, sexy genius?”
“Um…those weren’t my exact words.” I laugh up at him.
“I could have sworn that’s what you said, and I’m never wrong.” He slides his hands over my ass in a pair of his boxer shorts. “Some even say I’m fucking brilliant.”
“They probably just like your big dick,” I whisper and blink up at him as innocently as I can manage.
“I get that a lot.” He drops a kiss on my head and turns back to his French toast. I lean down to rest an elbow on the counter and watch him work.
“A lot?” I ask teasingly. “Have there been a lot?”
He pauses mid-toast-flip and slants me a glance. “Are you asking how many people I’ve had sex with?”
“I mean, it’s none of my business. If you don’t want to—”
“Eight.”
Eight?
Lord above, only eight?!
“Oh.” I straighten and rest my hip against the counter. “What a, um, single-digit number that is.”
“Well, I’ve been with one person for ten years so…what about you?”
What about me? I’m tabulating years of hook-ups, one-night stands, fuck bois and carrying the one.
“If you don’t want to,” he says, cracking an egg into a bowl, “it’s fine. I don’t care how many people—”
“I don’t know.”
He glances up from whisking eggs, a small frown puckering his dark brows. “You don’t know what?”
“My number. I don’t know how many people I’ve been with.”
He resumes whisking, his frown clearing. “Oh.”
The whisking eggs and whirring refrigerator are the only sounds in the kitchen. I’ve never been embarrassed by my choices. I enjoy sex. I’ve had it with a lot of people. People I really liked…or tolerated…but didn’t want to commit to. I’ve always been safe and never mean about it. I was upfront, and when someone wanted more, I let them know “more” wasn’t an option.
“I just never…” I cross my arms over my stomach, fold one bare foot over the other. “I haven’t been interested in committed relationships. There hasn’t been anyone I wanted that with.”