“No problem at all,” she replied, fishing out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Both my girls are insanely self-sufficient, so it’s nice to have someone toactuallymom, y’know. How are you, by the way? Suro’s kind of an honorary Rustanov, so I know first sex can be sort of intense with them.”
When I tell you, I nearly choked on my spit.Definitelynot the mom question I was expecting. I might’ve asked how she knew it was our first time, but… Rustanati.
My face burned. “I don’t know whether to be embarrassed forever or grateful that someone else understands.”
“I’d go with grateful,” Tasha replied, pulling out a pair of underwear and a bra to go with the outfit she’d picked. “Therearen’t a lot of people who’d get a guy buying out an entire hotel hallway just to stop the other guests from complaining.”
“Wait, what?” Just when I thought my face couldn’t possibly get any hotter. “He didthat?”
“Girl, Suro bought my place of work after our one-night stand.” She held out the clothes. “When I tell you these guys are go big and insanely expensive or go home once they set their sights on you, believe me.”
“I—I didn’t know,” I stammered, taking the small stack from her.
“Of course you didn’t.” Tasha rolled her eyes. “They rarely consult us on these grand gestures. I’m guessing he didn’t mention missing a worrying amount of practice, either, and right before the Big Ten tournament.”
I shook my head, my stomach twisting with guilt. “I thought he was off from practice for the week, and that was why he was so nonchalant about skipping a few days of school.”
“Girl, if we hadn’t shown up, he probably would have kept you here for afew months,” Tasha said with a knowing look. “That boy is in love with you—I’m talking nose double-wide open.”
She dipped her chin to tell me, “But that means you’ve got power in this dynamic, too. I suggest you use it to ensure you graduate and your man actually makes it to the USCA Championships.”
So that was how I officially met Tasha—and then her husband, who introduced himself as Suro Nakamura—before we went downstairs to awkwardly wait in the hotel lobby while Yom took his own shower.
“If we keep you with us, we can be sure he won’t try to run off with you somewhere we can’t find him,” Tasha joked as she took me by the elbow to direct me out of the room.
At least, Ihopedshe was joking.
Suro Nakamura remained eerily silent while Tasha chatted with me nonstop, even after Yom joined us downstairs, also dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that I guessed Suro must have brought for him.
By the time we headed to the parking garage, I knew all about her blended family, including “The Twins,” Sparkle and Kenji Nakamura—the famous child prodigy stepsiblings who’d written the operaChrysanthemumfor Sirena Gale.
It wasn’t until she slid into the back seat of Suro’s sleek black Nakamura EV that I realized, “Wait, is your husband like aNakamura-Nakamura?”
“Da,” a still-glowering Yom answered as he folded himself into the front seat and promptly adjusted it to fit his long legs. “You should let me sit in back seat with my girlfriend. It is easier for all of us.”
“Yes, Suro does hail from the Nakamura family,” Tasha replied like she hadn’t heard Yom say anything. “Though his brothers hold the majority stake in the company now that their father is dead. Girl, wait until you hear this story. It isepic.”
As it turned out, she wasn’t exaggerating at all. Tasha had just reached the part where the Nakamura patriarch blackmailed a woman into posing as an escort for his second-oldest son, No Nakamura, when we pulled up to an airfield where a private plane idled on the runway.
Yom was at the back door the second we stopped, unbuckling me and practically hauling me out to place me under one of his arms.
“Wait, I’m not done yet!” Tasha said from the back seat. “The story gets even wilder! And then there’s their youngest brother, Hayato. He married this really strange woman who, get this— thinks she’s an elf.”
“Seriously?” I was on the proverbial edge of my seat and wanted to linger to hear more, but Yom said, “You can tell her rest of saga at Christmas.”
Then, with a stern nod to Suro, he led me toward the steps of the plane.
“Bye, and thanks!” I waved to Suro and Tasha as best I could with Yom’s arm settled over my shoulders like a steel bar.
I wish I could say that I dutifully chastised Yom for his rudeness—not to mention everything he’d kept from me while we basically spent a week… distracted.
But no.
“Da,we are needing you to stay in cockpit,” he growled at the flight attendant who’d welcomed us on board when she asked if we needed anything. “And do not come out until we reach Gemidgee.”
As soon as she disappeared behind the faux-wood door, Yom pulled me onto his lap, and the sweet guy I’d first met in Berlin reappeared with a smile.
“I missed you,zayka.”
