Page 69 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Ezra watched her, his gaze possessive.

“It’s mine,” he said quietly. “Probably why it makes you feel like that.”

Ricki snatched her hand away, like she’d just touched an open flame.

“Sure. And every leap year February you’re drawn to Harlem to find your soulmate. And I’m really expected to believe that’s me.”

Planting his hands behind him on the floor, Ezra leaned back a little. Gravely, his eyes searched her face.

“I don’t know, Ricki…,” he started. “Do you believe you’re my soulmate?”

And then, for a moment, as their gazes collided, sense-memory scenes of the night before hit her like a sudden punch. His mouth, his tongue, his hands, the hungry desperation of his growl as he sank into her the first time. Her connection to Ezra Walker felt earth-shattering.

God, Ricki was so weak for him. Still. Even knowing that he was out of his mind.

Keep it together, she thought, taking a restorative inhale.Don’t falter.

“And Felice?” she went on, in an unsteady voice. “Her family? Her people?”

“Her mother was sent her belongings: her clothes, shoes, and the pearl bracelet. Maybe her things are still in the family. Her death didn’t even make the papers; I doubt it’d even appear in civic records.”

“Convenient. Well, don’t think I won’t do my research,” she threatened.

“Ricki, I know it sounds like malarkey. But why would I invent all this?”

“Shrooms? Peyote? Multiple personality disorder? I’ve dated guys who’ve had experience with all three. I know the symptoms.”

“Listen to me,” said Ezra, getting up off the floor. This time, Ricki let him, but she still backed away into the kitchen, maintaining a safe distance. “We’re fated. It’s why we kept running into each other. It wasn’t a coincidence. We were destined to fall for each other.”

Ricki went still, her breath catching in her throat. If they were, in fact, fated lovers (she knew it couldn’t possibly be, butif), then the rest of Felice’s curse would be true, too. A grave realization settled over her, and it felt far heavier than every other detail in Ezra’s story.

“If we’re soulmates,” she breathed, “then I’m also destined to die on February 29.”

Ezra’s whole body seemed to wilt. “I tried to save you, Ricki. I told you to leave Harlem. I tried to avoid you, before we got in too deep. But here we are. And it’s too late.”

“Because we’re twelve days out from February 29.”

He nodded, miserable. “And it’s all my fault. I did this to you. And I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

Ricki shook her head back and forth, trying to clear her mind. “Sorry, no. No. None of this makes sense. Ezra, you’re clearly having some sort of mental break or… or… a hallucination or something.” She delivered this gently, the way you’d speak to a hysterical child. “I don’t believe in magic, dark or otherwise.”

“You got eucalyptus hanging in your shower to enhance emotional clarity.”

“It’s an aesthetic,” she declared. “And don’t look at me like that!”

She made an impatient sound and buried her face in her hands. Ricki felt destroyed, toyed with. She felt like a cosmic joke. That she was able to fall so hard, to feel so protected and sacred in his arms, was beyond cruel. Ricki felt more like herself with Ezra than without him.Heput this wild ache in her.Hemade her cravehim;hemade her fucking fall so hard—but he hadn’t given her a place to land. And now she was suspended in midair, a terrible purgatory. Until, of course, her death sentence.

Feeling what she felt for him and having it snatched away was worse than never feeling that connection at all.

Why do I seek out these outrageous, ridiculous situations? I moved six states away to start fresh, but I can’t escape my calamitous personality. I’d be me even on the moon.

“Let’s say that, by some insane possibility, you’re telling the truth,” she started evenly. “What have you been doing since 1928? Just wandering the earth aimlessly?”

“More or less.”

Ricki threw up her hands. “Specifics!”

“All right,” he mumbled. “The first February I came back, four years after the curse, I realized Harlem wasn’t the same place. It was 1932. Prohibition ended but so had the Renaissance; the Depression decimated Harlem. And no one remembered me. Not Lo, not my band. It was like my old world had pushed me out the door, turning the lock behind me. So I stayed in my house every fourth February, but the rest of the time, I rented it out and traveled the world. Went where the music was.

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