Her smile slips and then disappears. “I suspected this could happen.” She waves a hand between us. “And didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Why?” I let us into my place and immediately bring her close. She snuggles into my shoulder like she missed me as much as I irrationally missed her. All out of proportion to how long we’ve known each other. Beyond the few kisses we’ve shared.

“Why didn’t you think it was a good idea?” I ask again.

She wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head to my chest.

“The women of my family make fools of themselves over men,” she says, her voice a confession. “They let men influence them. Ruin them. I don’t want that.”

I kiss the top of her head and draw her a few inches closer. “I don’t want to ruin you or make a fool of you. I know how that feels.”

“I know you do.” She glances up at me, her eyes as guarded as they are vulnerable. “That’s why I decided to kiss you in Brooklyn.”

“Why?”

“You have as much to lose as I do—as much of a leap to trust again.” She shrugs. “Maybe I’m kidding myself because I was tired of resisting the attraction, but that’s what I told myself before I kissed you.”

I nod, thinking this may be the one time all the crap Bridget put me through has worked to my advantage. I take Lotus’s hand and lay it against my chest, cover it, completely eclipsing hers. She’s so small, but not fragile. If I’m using one of MiMi’s Bible stories that even I know, Lotus is the pebble David slung to take down Goliath. Maybe I’m not the gladiator after all, but Goliath. Am I falling? Falling from a little pebble right between the eyes?

“Let’s eat,” I say after a few moments like that.

We walk into the dining room where the chef left the food in warmers.

“Nice place,” she says, surveying the open-plan apartment and settling into the dining room chair.

“I can’t really take credit. It came furnished. The only thing I’ve really added of my own is the ice bath.”

“Ice bath?”

“I take ice baths after every game and really hard workouts. Helps with recovery. I had one installed for while I’m here.”

I press a few buttons on the wall and music, “In A Sentimental Mood,” seeps into the room. Some of the tension I’ve carried in my shoulders ever since Lotus told me about Bridget drains away. Each note from John Coltrane’s saxophone seeks out the knots in my neck, and rolls over them with precisely the right amount of pressure.

“I actually think I recognize this one,” Lotus says, propping her chin in her hand.

“Is that so?” I serve a portion of the grilled chicken and vegetables for her plate and a larger portion for mine. I set them both on the table and nod for her to start. “Dig in.”

“Yeah. It’s from the soundtrack for Love Jones,” she says and slides a forkful of mushrooms and asparagus into her mouth.

I almost spit out my water mid-sip. “One of the greatest songs of the last century, by John Coltrane, a genius, and your context for it is a movie?”

She laughs and shrugs, teasing me with her eyes and taking another bite.

“Wait,” I say. “Are you messing with me?”

She squints one eye, and squeezes her thumb and index finger together, leaving a small space. “Maybe just a little.”

That is the pointy tip of Lotus’s sharp humor.

She shows me a lot of it over the next hour. We talk so much during dinner my food gets cold, neglected because I’m absorbed in how she thinks, the way she voices her opinions. The entire night is a stream flowing easily from one topic into the next. Our conversation drifts effortlessly from movies to music to politics. We don’t align on every point, but hearing how she arrives at her opinions is as satisfying as sharing them. Coltrane yields to Chet Baker and his Funny Valentine. By the time we make our way to the couch, Miles Davis takes center stage, and we fall quiet, me sitting in the corner of the couch and her snuggled against me, knees tucked beneath her.

“It’s this one,” I tell her when “It Never Entered My Mind” begins.

“Your favorite song?” she whispers as if afraid she’ll interfere with the dialogue between the man and his instrument.

I nod, hearing it not in this room now, but in the book-lined walls of my father’s study for the first time; sitting with him, listening while he reviewed material for his court cases and I did my homework. “It was my dad’s favorite, too.”

She turns eyes filled with compassion up to me.

“You miss him.”

I swallow, surprised by the burn in my throat. It must be remembering him with this song playing, reminding me of his contemplative nature and appreciation for beautiful things. How he passed both on to me.

“Yeah. I do,” I answer after a few seconds. “You think you’re fine and then . . .”

She nods against my shoulder, biting her lip and knotting a handful of my shirt in her fist.

“I think about MiMi almost every day,” she says. “Not always sad. Good, too. Something she told me, taught me. A recipe. A sewing pattern. I used to fight memories of her because it hurt, but I realized it was like her knocking at my door, and me not letting her in.”

She shrugs, a sheen of tears over her dark eyes. “She always let me in. Not thinking of her would be like forgetting parts of me exist. The best parts.”

“I never thought of it like that.” I kiss the top of her head and draw her a little closer. “I want you to meet my mom. She’s not dealing with it well. I think she’ll like you.”

It only occurs to me after I say it that it might be too much. That she might think I’m already wanting her to meet my family, and it’s too fast.

She smiles, blinking the last of her tears away. “That’d be nice.”

I return her smile, glad it didn’t feel like a big deal to her. “And you can meet my sister Kenya next week. She can’t wait.”

“You told her about me?” Surprise colors her voice and the look she angles up at me.

“Only that there was someone I liked.”

“I tried that with Iris, but now she knows it’s you,” Lotus says, her laugh rumbling into my chest. “She’s been hounding me.”

“God, August is the same.”

“Why they so obsessed with us?”

“I know, right? Did you tell her about our first kiss?” I ask, hoping to disconcert her. She blinks a few times, but doesn’t otherwise seem surprised or affected.

“No,” she replies with a little pull of her lips.

“And our second one?” I ask, smiling wider. “Did you tell her about Brooklyn?”

“No, I’ve been kind of protective of this—of all of it, and not wanting a lot of input, I guess. Testing my instincts and limits. Does that sound weird?”

“No, but it has me wondering.” I shift so I can reach her lips when I’m ready to. “Will you tell her about this kiss?”

“Which kiss?” she whispers, her eyes fastened to my mouth.

I press my mouth to hers, tease her tongue out to play with mine, and her sigh, her moan, the sounds she makes, rocket through my blood. I sit up, pulling her onto my lap, and one lean denim-clad thigh and then the other fall on either side of my hips. She comes back, opening my mouth with hers, thrusting her tongue in aggressively. I slide my hands under the thin tank top and explore the silk of her back. She rocks her hips over me and we both gasp.

“Do that again,” I command hoarsely.

She obliges, grinding into me and drawing a groan from my throat. She wraps her arms around my neck and dusts kisses over my jaw, my cheekbones, my nose. It’s tender and sweet and hot as fuck.

I don’t even realize my hands have drifted to her ass and are coaxing her hips into a steady ride that has her panting and my dick hard in my jeans. Her whimpers grow louder, her cries harmonizing with the notes falling from Davis’s trumpet. She’s close. God, she’s gonna come. I pull back enough to see her face, riveted on the play of emotions, the hunger, her mouth dropped open, her head hung back.

And then she stops.

“Kenan,” she breathes, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “I’m still off dick.”

I sit perfectly still and will my cock to shrink to its normal size. Will my breathing to steady.

We sit like kids waiting for a storm to pass, only we’re the storm. This feeling between us is a tempest, and I have no desire to take shelter. When she kisses me, I forget everything and want to stand in the rain.

“Obviously, I’m attracted to you.” She breathes a laugh, shakes her head, and lowers her lashes. “But there are some things I’m still working out.”

She glances up to search my face.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks. “For getting you worked up?”

I pass my thumb over her kiss-swollen lips. “I’m not a teenager. If I can’t stop when you ask me to without sulking, I shouldn’t be kissing you. You’re off dick until further notice. That’s the deal, and I’m fine.”

She drops her forehead to my chin and nods, but slips her hand to my nape and brushes her fingers there over and over, as if she’s calming a wild animal. The way my emotions and hormones are raging, that’s not too far off base.

“Are you ticklish?” I ask, needing a distraction from the way my body still burns and my blood still roars.

Her head pops up and she bites into a grin. “Not at all.”

“Liar.”

I flip her onto her back on the couch and tickle her sides. Her squeals drown out the first strains of Sarah Vaughn. After several minutes of wrestling and tickling, and almost getting worked up again, she stands, breathing hard.

“I should go. I have a really early morning and late night tomorrow,” she says. “We have fittings and a lot of other stuff to do the closer we get to Fashion Week.”