by Alyssa Cole
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
An Excerpt from A Prince on Paper Chapter One
Can’t Escape Love
About the Author
Also by Alyssa Cole
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Winter
“Attention, passengers, we apologize for the delay.” The MTA conductor’s voice was tinny, but the exasperation rang clear as the voice fuzzed through the speakers in the stalled subway car. “We are being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher due to a malfunctioning signal. Or something. Thank you for your patience. We will be moving shortly. Maybe.”
Likotsi Adelele, mother of schedules and slayer of inefficiencies, would usually have been quite annoyed with her train being stuck on a bridge for half an hour with no explanation, but it was a special day: she had off from work. The full weekend! Two days to herself, a reprieve from managing meetings with dignitaries, heads of states, and business interests; planning royal dinners, royal date nights, and royal relaxation; and overseeing most aspects of the life of His Royal Highness, Bringer of Light and Love, Prince Thabiso Moshoeshoe of Thesolo, currently situated in Manhattan.
Or more time to think about her.
Likotsi tugged at the thigh of her trousers—teal gabardine with a matching blazer—before crossing her leg so that an ankle rested over her opposite knee, exposing bright yellow socks. She brushed away a speck of dirt that had lodged in one of the diamond-shaped perforations that decorated the aged tan leather of her new brogues. Her father had mailed her the shoes a few weeks back, a Christmas present to go under the giant fir tree lodged into a corner of the royal townhouse, since Naledi enjoyed partaking in Christian holidays. When Likotsi had finally been allowed to open the package, held hostage until four a.m. on December 25 by an ever vigilant Naledi, she’d discovered a note inside: New shoes point toward the future, sweet daughter. You cannot keep wearing that which you have outgrown.
Likotsi had slipped the note and the shoes into her closet for the two weeks following the holiday. Today she would break them in, walking away from memories that should’ve evaporated long ago but had left residual damage, like stains on suede after a sudden downpour.
She winced as the conductor made another announcement, this one completely unintelligible static.
A train delay was fine. A train delay was delightful. Anything she encountered this weekend would be delightful because she was tired of the dejection that had nagged at her for months. Dejection was inefficient, and worse, it was pedestrian. Moping and wallowing had left a green tinge on the memories of her few perfect days in New York the previous spring, like the band of a fake gold ring. It was time to leave the shoes she had outgrown behind.
It was time to create new memories.
As far as interminable train delays went, being stuck on the Manhattan Bridge on a Saturday morning was about as good as one could get. Outside the window of the train, the January sunlight was dappling over the choppy, ice-strewn waves of the East River, tinting the muddy waters a silvery green-gold. The cold blue of the morning sky seemed endless as it stretched out over Brooklyn on one side and Manhattan on the other, holding all the promise of the recently arrived New Year.
A week before, Likotsi had watched the ball drop from the apartment of a translator she’d met at the UN. As she’d walked home, surrounded by drunken revelers, she’d wondered what it would’ve been like to kiss Fab at midnight instead.
No thoughts of her today. Enough.
On the Manhattan side of the river, the sharp angles of the skyscrapers were burnished with light, making it seem as if the impossibly tall buildings were sunbathing. New York City didn’t have majestic mountains or roaring waterfalls or rolling plains, like her homeland, but it was a beautiful city in its own way. It deserved better than to be the receptacle of memories that impeded her forward motion like a badly tailored suit that was too tight at the knees and elbows.
Likotsi had been working double duty as assistant to both Prince Thabiso and Naledi, his betrothed, for months. She’d been particularly dedicated to her job for the last seven months and three weeks, happy to work long hours and not just for the supplemental pay. Thabiso had gone from gently asking that she work less to outright commanding it.
She supposed she had been very . . . focused on keeping their schedules and making sure everything ran like clockwork.
The goat that wanders is the goat that gets lost. She hadn’t allowed herself to be lost to the pain of stinging rejection, especially over such a fleeting affair. She had focused, stayed on the path of international relocation and American apartment hunting and making sure that everything in her boss’s life was handled before he could think of it. There was a certain comfort in putting someone else’s life to order when her own felt uncharacteristically messy.
But now she was on vacation. The last time she’d taken time for herself in this manner had been, coincidentally, eight months before, when Thabiso had been busy hiding his royal identity while wooing Naledi. Likotsi had downloaded a dating app and made the error of swiping right on Fabiola C, located 0.3 miles away.
Fab.
Fab’s bio had been seven words: Math. Jewelry. Dressing down is giving in. Dark brown skin, Bettie Page bangs, and an hourglass figure were what had initially caught Likotsi’s attention. Personality, talent, and drive were what had held it fast. An immediate, theretofore unknown connection was what had made Likotsi sure Fab was the one. Fab’s blunt, cold breakup had shattered that illusion, but the shards remained.
Fabiola C: I can’t do this. You’re leaving, right? It was fun—let’s stop before it’s not.
Likotsi had thought the hurt would fade, eventually. It had been a temporary fling after all, and she was no slouch at those. While Thabiso had formerly held the title of the Playboy Pan Afrique, Likotsi had fared just as well in her own dating sphere, minus the fuckboy tendencies. In Thesolo, there were families anxious to settle their daughters with the prince’s right hand, and when she traveled? Well, women found it hard to resist a sharp suit and a soft smile. Surely a woman she’d only spent a few nights with shouldn’t have done her heart more than a glancing blow.
If Likotsi’s obsession with efficiency had taught her anything, it was that sometimes it was the briefest setback that toppled everything afterward like dominoes.
On their second date, Likotsi had already been, as the youths say, ready to risk it all.
“What would this superimportant boss of yours do if you just . . . stayed?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never thought of leaving. Until now.”
Likotsi had considered that particular future while curled up in bed with the woman who had thoroughly captivated her. She loved her job. Thabiso was her friend, as well as her boss, but Likotsi had spent so much time planning his future that she’d severely neglected her own.
Two days later, Fab had broken Likotsi’s heart, saving her the trouble of ever having to make a choice.
Likotsi had been living in Manhattan for five months now, having had to relocate along with Thabiso so Naledi could continue her education and they could continue their courtship, but she hadn’t ever reached back out to Fab, whose last words had seemed final.
Likotsi: I thought you wanted more. Can’t we discuss this?
Fabiola C: Sorry. No.
It’d been s
even months and three weeks, and the woman’s memory remained lodged in Likotsi’s heart like a cactus thorn. She remembered the way Fab’s smile always seemed a little bit wicked because the right side of her mouth raised up slightly higher than the left. She could still outline the shape of Fab’s soft curves with her palms, if she closed her eyes. She could still feel the caress of deft fingers that created living, sinuous beauty from lifeless metal and raised goose bumps as they trailed over Likotsi’s bare flesh.
Likotsi tapped at the sole of her shoe, a reminder.
Forward.
Her phone vibrated in the inner pocket of her tan mid-length cashmere trench coat, which was slightly too thin for the weather but perfectly matched her shoes. Likotsi grabbed it and glanced at the screen.
AIRDROP—“MyNameIsAccurate” would like to send you a photo, the pop-up dialogue box on her phone read.
Likotsi looked around her train car. There were two teenagers sharing one set of earbuds between them having a subdued dance party, a couple holding hands and chatting intimately, an annoyed group of tourists taking angry selfies on the other end of the car.
A cute woman of East Asian descent seated diagonally to Likotsi glanced at her, then down at her phone, then back at Likotsi. Was she “MyNameIsAccurate”?
Likotsi’s thumb hovered over her phone’s screen. She was certain her phone was secure and that she wouldn’t get a virus that might put His Highness’s safety at risk, but she hadn’t done any infosec training since before Christmas . . .
You’re not working. And aren’t you ready to finally start dating?
Likotsi accepted the photo.
Red leather gloves holding a section of drugstore receipt, onto which someone had scrawled, Likotsi?
She glanced over at the woman who had smiled at her, zeroing in on the woman’s hands. Her gloves were of the dollar store magic variety, made of black polyester not red leather.
Her phone pinged again as a photo of a new scrap of receipt came through. Are you back in New York?
Likotsi sat still. There were few people who had known about her last trip to the city. Fewer with delicately tapered fingers who would wear bright red leather gloves.
The train lurched forward, finally resuming motion, and the tourists at the other end of the train car cheered, but Likotsi gripped her phone, staring.
This time the dialogue box offered a video, and Likotsi accepted with a mix of dread and, frustratingly, hope.
It was a short clip, starting with a tight shot of Likotsi through two smeared and scratched sets of subway train windows, her posture stiff and the shaved side of head exposed because she’d absentmindedly pushed her locs to one side while examining the photo she’d received. As the camera zoomed out, it became clear that the phone was recording in selfie mode. Out the shot pulled, revealing the stretch of smooth dark skin over high, sharp cheekbones. Out, revealing red-painted lips and familiar deep brown eyes.
The woman raised her pointer finger and brushed in front of the phone’s camera—a swiping motion.
“Fabiola C, located, like, two feet away from you, has swiped right. Again,” she said before flashing that wicked smile of hers.
Likotsi almost dropped the phone but managed to hold on to it—even a shock to the system such as this couldn’t make her careless with her technology.
She stared at the paused image of Fab, with herself unfocused in the background, as if someone had managed to capture her state of being for the last seven months and three weeks. That was the version of herself she’d vowed to walk away from, and now the woman who’d caused her dejection had chosen today of all days to step out from her past.
She didn’t tremble, and tears didn’t prick at her eyes, but Likotsi felt slammed by the unfairness of it all. Her chest ached, and for a moment she hated everything that had brought Fab into her life the first time, and now the second.
She sucked in a breath against her own sacrilege—Ingoka makes no mistakes was a central tenet of her religion, the very root of everything Likotsi believed in. Still, she wished the goddess could exercise a bit more caution with Likotsi’s feelings than had been taken of late.
The door separating one car from the other opened just as the train barreled into the darkness of the subway tunnel. The roar of the wheels on the tracks filled the car, and Likotsi’s head whipped toward the noise. The train rocked back and forth as it sped toward Canal Street, but Fabiola C strolled in like a sailor used to rough seas, unbothered.
She looked . . . different. During the time they’d spent together, she’d been dressed in meticulous pinup-girl style, but now that the initial shock was fading, Fab was beginning to come into focus.
Instead of a bright bandana or carefully set pin curls, Fab wore a blue knit hat with the white symbol of one of the sporting teams people in New York fought over. Her hair peeked out from under the cap, the tight curls framing her face by nature and not design. Her coat was of the knee-length down variety, black, and she wore jeans tucked into tan ankle-high work boots. She was still beautiful, but she was dressed . . . practically. It jarred Likotsi.
“I mean . . . hi?” Fab grabbed the pole over Likotsi’s seat and looked down. Her eyes were wide, displaying her emotions like a mega-screen at Forty-Second Street, and what they advertised was shock and, more surprisingly, uncertainty. Fab’s mouth twitched, but then she pressed her lips together.
From this angle, Likotsi could see Fab’s earrings nestled beneath her curls: finely spun metal shaped into three-dimensional teardrops. How appropriate.
“Fabiola.” Likotsi leaned back in her seat insouciantly, though she’d spent most of her train ride perched on the edge of her seat to avoid dirtying her coat unnecessarily. She refused to crane her neck up, though, and she didn’t trust her ability to stand just then.
“The one and only,” Fab replied with a mock curtsy. The overwhelming familiarity of her voice drove the cactus thorn deeper into Likotsi’s heart.
Goddess, Likotsi loved a woman with confidence. She loved this one in particular. But love didn’t change the fact that this woman had hurt her—that she could do the same if given another chance.
“Out of all the train cars in all the world you had to walk into mine.” Likotsi switched up which ankle was resting on which knee, the action forcing Fab to take a step back, then tilted her chin toward the doors separating the cars. “You’re only supposed to use those in case of emergency.”
“I’d say that seeing you a few feet away counts as an emergency.” Fab slipped gracefully into the empty seat next to Likotsi, crossing her own legs so that the toe of her boot almost grazed the sole of Likotsi’s brogue.
She wasn’t dressed in her usual style, but she smelled the same—like rosewater and orange blossoms and vanilla—and Likotsi wanted to hug her tightly and inhale, to fill her lungs with that scent she’d imagined waking up to every day.
Fab just looked at her, her expression so earnest that Likotsi started to wonder whether they really hadn’t spoken for months. If, perhaps, there had been some misunderstanding when Fab had ended things.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Likotsi had imagined what would happen if she ran into Fab, especially since Naledi had mentioned how often she randomly encountered people she knew in this city teeming with strangers. Likotsi had fabricated a million droll put-downs. She’d mentally practiced the iciest cut direct known to humankind, one that would make everyone in the vicinity wince for Fab’s bruised ego.
She would be angry.
Instead, she was confused. Nothing felt different. Now that the initial shock had faded, Likotsi found that the chasm of months that separated them felt no larger than a crack in the sidewalk. She wanted so badly to smile, to ask Fab how her day was going or why she was wearing a horrid mass-produced hat and coat.
She’d thought that Fab had smashed their connection like a smartphone beneath a car tire, but all their data had been saved on a cloud drive somewhere, it seemed, and w
as happily downloading and ready to resume where they’d left off.
No. She couldn’t do that to herself again. Her official title was Advisor Most High, and she knew what pithy aphorism she would impart upon anyone who came to her with this problem: bind the finger before it is cut.
“That was very cute,” Likotsi said, forcing steel into her tone. “The video and the swiping again. If this was a dating app, I would have had to swipe right, too, for you to continue the conversation.”
Fab winced, but Likotsi paid the motion no heed. She’d had her day all planned out—it was a new year and she was wearing her walking shoes and she was going to be done with this—and now Fab had barged in, stirring up the emotions that Likotsi sought to settle.
“What are you in town for?” Fab asked, ignoring Likotsi’s jab. “I didn’t expect you to be in the ‘exes I awkwardly run into’ category.”
“You didn’t awkwardly run into me. You spammed my phone with unwanted photos and videos to get my attention,” Likotsi corrected. “How did you even know which phone was mine?”
“I mean, DandyQueen is pretty obvious.” Fab was looking at Likotsi with an intensity that didn’t match her tone, and when she spoke again her voice was strained. “What are you doing here?”
The question held a timbre of sadness and regret, one Likotsi had heard from Fab before.
“Why do you have to leave so soon?”
The irrational desire to hug Fab shoved at Likotsi again, but she held fast. She reached for her determination to move on, donning it like a sleek cape that would protect her from the pull of nostalgia.
“My job temporarily relocated to Manhattan. I’ve been here since September.” Likotsi’s voice was cold as an ice flow in the river. “You would have known that if you hadn’t ghosted me.”
Likotsi hadn’t understood the term when Ledi and Portia had first explained it to her in terms of the dating world. Ghost was a noun, not a verb, but she’d supposed it had a certain poetic ring to it—disappearing like a ghost. It made more sense now that she put it in the context of having Fab this close to her again. It wasn’t just the disappearing, but the grief as real as any loss.
