Page 172 of Prickly Romance

I help Dejonae to the tarmac.

She holds my hand and looks up at me.

I smile in response.

Being with her is so easy. So delightful.

I keep finding more things to admire about her.

Her intelligence, her wit, her sharp sense of humor, her competitive spirit, her determination to never accept injustice and her refusal to find me as terrifying as the rest of the world does.

She smiles at me and opens her mouth to speak, but her eyes catch on something in the distance. I glance ahead to see what put that grim expression on her face.

Niko is here at the airport.

And she is accompanied by her mother.

CHAPTER17

HOUSE OF WONTONS

DEJONAE

I lookedAshanti up long before this. It was late at night. I was just starting to admit my feelings for Sazuki. Yaya was beside me, manning the computer.

At first, I didn’t want to look.

What did it matter who she was or what she’d meant to him? Why did I need to open things that were best left closed?

Pandora’s box.

But it called to me.

My sister was kind. She offered to close the laptop and turn off the screen. Scrub the search from my laptop’s history and then scrub her mind too.

At the time, I told myself that I didn’t like Sazukithat much. And his past didn’t have the power to hurt me yet.

Yaya turned the laptop around.

And there she was.

Ashanti.

She was stunning.

But now, looking at Sazuki’s ex-wife in the flesh, I realize that pictures do her no justice.

With long, straight black hair and big, expressive eyes, she could easily earn the role of a sun goddess in a Greek musical production. Her skin is darker than mine, moving shadows and obsidian. The contrast makes the soft pink of her dress stand out against her tall, womanly figure. There’s a graceful sway to her hips and a motherly tenderness in the way she touches Niko and signs for her not to run.

I feel numb when I see her. And I wonder if it’s my body going into protection mode. As if some part of me senses the tidal wave ofcrapthat’s about to hit me and every fiber of my being is trying to delay it for one second longer.

Sazuki steps in front of me protectively.

What is he trying to protect me from? I doubt he even knows.

None of us know.

This situation is new.

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