Blooming in the Wild Page 0,99
one of Leilani’s famous smoothies, Nani.”
He left the room, and Daro sat, holding her hand. “I called your mother,” he said. “The news crews are all over Na’alele. Big drug shipment gone bad, the police are calling it. With a group of innocent campers caught in the middle. With the, ah, storm, it’s the Hawaii news story of the decade.”
Bella squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, Dad. I know I caused a lot of it. I was strung out on Kona Kula. Turns out you really did pass on ho’omalu powers to me.”
They shared a snort of laughter and then both sobered. Bella supposed she wore a guilty look identical to his. But they were survivors. She hadn’t been the cause of the whole incident, just the unwitting conduit, and she was glad to be alive. She was even more grateful that Joel and Frank were okay.
“I have to go to Joel,” she said. “And see for myself that he’s all right.”
Daro looked disconcerted. “Ah, you may want to wait a few days.”
“Bella!” The happy cry cut through the quiet room, and Bella turned to see Melia in the door way, her pretty, freckled face alight with joy. “Oh, sweetie, we’ve been so worried.”
Footsteps thudded in the hallway, and Claire looked over Melia’s shoulder, their blonde hair mingling. “Bells! You’re awake.”
Daro rose courteously. “Come in. I’ll go see if your smoothie is ready, Nani.”
Bella’s best friends stepped in to let him go by and then hurried to climb on the bed with Bella, hug her and exclaim over her, and cry a little. Melia settled on the other pillow, and Claire sat cross-legged on the end of the bed.
“You look…stunning,” Claire said wonderingly, wiping away her tears. “Different.”
Melia nodded, sniffling. “You do look different.” Her expression turned solemn. “Passing through Pele’s chamber has that effect on you, hmm?”
Bella nodded, and Claire echoed her agreement. The three of them clasped hands.
“Who would ever have thought,” Claire murmured. “The three of us, here…and all that’s happened to us.”
“Did you know before you left for Na’alele, about your powers, I mean?” Melia asked reproachfully. “You never said anything.”
Melia did not like people to keep secrets from her. In fact, after returning from her honeymoon to find Bella was a Ho’omalu, she’d made her two best friends promised they would share all important details of their lives with each other.
Bella shook her head. “No, honestly I didn’t. When I was here for your wedding I felt…I don’t know, happy, alive in the forest, as if I couldn’t spend enough time there, but nothing like what happened this time.”
“We want to hear everything,” Melia told her. “But not right now. My gosh, you haven’t even had breakfast. Or coffee,” she added longingly, stroking her still-flat belly, where David’s baby grew.
“More importantly,” Bella said, as another need became apparent, “I haven’t been to the bathroom. Be right back.”
She slipped out of bed and reached for the red shorty robe hanging nearby. Someone had dressed her in her usual tank and boxers, she noted. The last thing she recalled wearing was nothing—but that had been in Pele’s cave.
Claire gasped, and Bella turned to find both of her friends staring at her, their faces shocked. “What?”
“You—you have tattoos,” Claire managed. “Like the Ho’omalu men, where they’ve been wounded.”
“I do?” Bella looked down at herself.
“Your arm,” Melia whispered. “And your leg. And, I’m pretty sure I saw some ink between your shorts and top. Oh, honey, what happened to you out there?”
“Close the door,” Bella said.
Claire leapt off the bed in a flurry of long limbs. As soon as the bedroom door closed, Bella ripped off the robe and then yanked off her tank and boxers. She stared at herself in the mirror hanging by the bathroom door.
Delicate tattoos marked her left thigh, her right forearm and the slope of her right hip.
David had several tattoos, and Daniel even sported tattoos on his bearded face. Homu and Hilo had many as well.
Hers were intricate, swirling designs, tribal yet feminine. Very different from those her male cousins bore but tying her to them with invisible strands of shared victory.
“That’s where she shot me,” she remembered, stroking her fingertips over the tattoos. Now that she knew they were there, she realized that the skin there itched and even burned a little.
“Aloe cream works great on the irritation,” Claire said, touching her own arm. She’d had a small, pretty wave inked on her upper arm to cover the scar of a wound received