“You okay?” I ask into the damp silk of her neck.

“You tell me,” she says, laughing as she starts to move.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She clamps her internal muscles and they drag on me every time she propels herself up and down. And the view.

The motherfucking view from back here is breathtaking.

She pulls her hair away from her neck. Does she have any idea how she looks? A handful of tattooed stars trickle down her nape. The flowered zipper embroiders the sexy length of her spine and undulates with our every thrust.

And her ass.

Those two round, plump globes riding my dick. She reaches back to spread the cheeks, taking me even deeper. I reach one hand around to cup her breast and slide the other hand down to caress her clit, spreading my whole hand over it, rubbing my palm over her until it’s a hard, tight nub.

“Oh, my God, Kenan.”

We create a rhythm of shared sighs, breaths we draw together, a copulating choreography. The pace turns furious, the vigor of our bodies churning the icy water into a riptide. We ebb and flow like a wave, turbulent waters climbing, rising. Even submerged in the cold, sweat glazes my forehead, her neck. We are wild and hot beneath the frigid water. I lay my hand flat against her heart, which roars in her chest like a beast trapped in a cave. My heartbeat answers, clamoring to get out. To find its other beating half locked inside of her.

My beloved is mine and I am his.

She turns her head and I bend to take her mouth, slide my hand down the tight plane of her belly and find her clit, pinching, twisting rubbing until her lips break free of mine on a whimper, then a moan, then a scream that yanks an answering cry from me—a call, a response. Our voices and our bodies twist, mating until we’re both hoarse and spent.

And finally, we’re silent.

36

Lotus

“So I guess we have to clean this tub out,” I joke a few moments after the storm has died.

The door is locked, but the demands of both our careers wait on the other side. The plane he’s taking to China in two days. The one I’ll take back to New York.

But right now, it’s just us in the quiet split by the rumble of his chuckle.

“It’s self-cleaning actually,” he replies, kissing my temple. “Low maintenance. Lucky for us.”

The reverse cowgirl has flipped around, and I’m sideways on Kenan’s lap in the cold water.

“Does this water never get warm?” I ask. Now that the initial rush of passion has died, the cold is getting to me, but I don’t want to move. Not until Kenan does. I don’t want him to outlast me.

“Never.” He lifts my hand with its fingertips, puckered even though I haven’t actually been in that long. “You ready to call it? The cold too much for you?”

“Nope,” I reply immediately, clenching my rattling teeth. “Feels great in here. I love it.”

“I agree.” His head drops back and he spreads his arms out over the lip of the tub, as if he’s got all night. “I fall asleep in here sometimes.”

Oh, hell no.

I stand abruptly, disrupting the water’s smooth surface. I’m climbing out when his mocking laughter makes me turn.

“I win,” he says, his white grin a taunt on that damn handsome face.

“Not everything’s a contest, Kenan,” I say, faking exasperation.

“Oh, yes, it is.” A well-muscled arm slinks around my waist and his lips brand my butt, a kiss on each cheek. “And I win. I won you.”

When I glance over my shoulder, he’s still seated in the water, and the look on his face is almost reverent. Did King Solomon look at his lover this way? Did her resistance crumble like mine? Did his beloved feel him wrapping around her heart like a vine? Did they have an inkling that centuries later, two people would take the words they passed between each other, destined to be canonized, to heart? That we would take their passion, their words for one another literally to our hearts?

But who am I to hide behind their bold declarations of love? To not bare my soul, my heart to a man finally worthy of it?

I turn, sitting on the lip of the tub, and take Kenan’s face in my hands. I want to, need to tell him in my own words. In my own way.

“I love you, Lotus.”

It’s an eerie silence that follows his words to me before I could say them to him; the kind that follows a miracle; the kind that chases the supernatural, searching for reason. That’s what this is—the synchronicity of our hearts, a shared beat and thump. The miracle is that we’ve found each other.

“I wanted to say it first,” I tell him, tears pricking behind my eyelids. “You beat me to it.”

“I told you I always win,” he says with a gentle, if slightly cocky, smile. That smile starts in his eyes and spreads over his face, slowly but surely, until it illuminates all the dark passages no one else has ever ventured into. He’s a castle with secret tunnels and abandoned dungeons and heavy locked doors.

And I’m his skeleton key.

I dip to kiss him again, wanting as much of his taste as I can keep.

“You’re staying, right?” he asks, his hands working the muscles of my naked back. “Until I leave for China in a couple days, you’ll stay?”

“Why not?” I shrug. “Got nothing better to do.”

“Why you little . . .” He wraps his arms around my waist and hauls me back into the icy water.

Shit!

The frigid shock forces the air from my lungs.

“Kenan!” I slap the water with my hand so it flies in his face.

He laughs, pulling me in onto his lap and clamping me to his wide chest with one hand and tickling my sides with the other.

“No!” I yelp. “Stop it!”

I can barely breathe. We’re both wheezing with laughter, struggling to catch our breath. When he finally relents, I lie limp against his heaving chest, breathing as hard as he is.

“I love you, Button.”

It’s even sweeter the second time. I can’t hold back my tears. They roll of their own accord over cheeks still aching from laughter. “I love you, too.”

His arms tighten around me and I lean back to kiss him again, but my phone rings, disrupting the moment.

“Leave it,” he mutters against my lips. “Don’t go.”

“First of all, it’s freezing in here.” I leave one last quick kiss on his lips before scrambling over the side to grab the phone from my dress pocket. “And second, it’s Iris’s ringtone.”

“Nice view,” Kenan says from behind me.

“No more reverse cowgirl for you,” I warn, glancing over my shoulder and wiggling my naked ass.

“Oh anything, but that.” His smile drops. “No, for real. Anything but that.”

I smirk and answer the phone. “Hey, Bo. What’s up?”

“Lotus, where are you?” The solemn tone of her voice sobers me right away.

“What’s wrong?” I reach for a towel hanging on a nearby hook. “Is it Michael? Is he okay? Are you—”

“We’re fine,” she rushes to reassure me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . we’re fine.”

There’s a hesitation, a pause before she resumes.

“My mom called,” she says.

“Aunt Priscilla?” A frown knots my eyebrows. “What’d she want?”

“She didn’t have your number.”

“Neither of them do. Why would they?”

“She was calling to let us know your mom’s in the hospital, Lo,” she says. “Mama says you need to go home.”

37

Lotus

Home is not New Orleans.

And home certainly isn’t anywhere near May DuPree, the woman who abandoned me thirteen years ago for a piece of shit named Ron Clemmons.

I haven’t called Aunt Priscilla back. I don’t know if I will. Iris’s relationship with her mother isn’t quite as bad as mine, but it’s not much better. It was a coincidence Aunt Pris called the day her new grandson was born. Iris hadn’t shared any of the details of her pregnancy with her. They have their own drama.

I’ve chosen to have no contact with my mother, and don’t see any reason to change that. Iris thinks if it’s as serious as Aunt Pris says, I may want to try making some kind of peace before it’s too late.

It’s taken me years to be as healthy as I am now. What if seeing my mother, revisiting that place and that time, sets me back? What if all the ground I’ve gained over the summer, I lose chasing some idealized peace that seeing a dying woman won’t actually give?

My mother gave birth. Whoop-de-do. Cats and dogs give birth to entire litters. There is no miracle to birth, from what I’ve seen. The miracle is what follows. The miracle of selflessness. The phenomenon of nurturing self-worth and sacrificing for a child—feeding not just their bodies, but their souls. Oh, I know what a mother is, and it is not May DuPree. I had a mother. When I was dead inside, a walking, catatonic open wound of a child who refused to even speak, MiMi gave me life.

That’s a mother, and mine is already dead.

“You have to do what’s right for you,” Marsha tells me over the phone.

“Yeah, but what should I do?” I ask. “How am I supposed to know what’s right for me?”

“I think—”

“Yes,” I cut in. “Please tell me what you think. I don’t need your professional distance, Marsha.”

“I’m your friend and a professional,” she reminds me. “I think if you go, you need to know why you’re going and manage your expectations. What would you want from her? For her?”

“I don’t want anything for her,” I spit, shifting to bring my legs under me on Kenan’s couch. “She was basically dead to me anyway. We haven’t spoken since the day she gave me away.”

“Okay, that’s fair. Then what would you want from her? For yourself?”

I think about that for a moment and ask honestly what I’d want from her if we were in the same room.