it will go on hurting a long time.” He hated himself, just a little for loving how she smelled, for wanting to kiss her. For wanting to disappear into every curve of her body and every crevice she’d let him uncover. Gia swiped her thumbs under his eyes and pressed her forehead to his. “If you want to cry, you do it. It’s nothing I haven’t done a million times since I was eighteen.”
Kai let her move him, let the tears flow as she pressed him close—his mouth against her neck as he mourned Keeana, his fingers clinging to her back as that heavy weight threatened to keep him chained to the floor.
“Live your dream, koa la koa. Be bigger than this island,” Keeana had told him. “We’ll always be yours no matter who you become.”
She’d worn pigtail braids when he met her and cursed more than any other boy in school. She cursed so much the day Keola was born her mother had to leave the room and pray some place she thought God wouldn’t hear her daughter’s mouth.
And when she held Keola in her arms…
Kai couldn’t hold back anymore. His control failed him and he wrapped his arms around Gia, burying his face against her shoulder, letting her thick, soft hair soak up each tear as they came.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t sure who that apology was meant for. “I couldn’t…I’m so sorry…”
“Shh, Kai…it’s okay. You’re okay,” Gia told him, moving her arms around him, pressing against him, giving him warmth and gentleness and release with every healing touch she made against his neck. “You’re okay…” She angled her head, brushing his temple with her lips, whispering against his ear, rubbing his shoulders, stroking his hair and he held onto her. “Shhh…” she continued, slowing to kiss the top of his head. Then Kai began to ease; the comfort she gave him filling the dark, desperate spaces that had only grown since the second Nalani called him to deliver the worst news of his life.
He loosened his touch, closing his eyes against her lips kissing his skin, and her nails moving across his forehead, until she held his face again, smoothing her thumbs back over the contours of his jaw and the slope of his cheeks, soothing, calming with her mouth pressed in a gentle, soft kiss against his.
Kai blinked at the touch, moving his hands to her arms, holding her still, wanting her mouth to stay there, to move deeper, fuller. She gave so much to him, just with that one kiss—all taste and touch that he’d missed and craved and needed right then.
Gia began to pull away from him, releasing a small gasp when she opened her eyes to find Kai watching her, likely seeing every dark and desperate thought that filled his head about her, only her, when she looked at him.
“Kai…” she started, reminding him of the same warning she’d given him that night in her apartment when he’d been so desperate to taste her everywhere.
There was so much he wanted from her. So many things he craved from Gia alone. But this moment, this precise second wasn’t about either of them. It was about pain and loss, something he knew she remembered. Something he understood she was trying to help him see his way through.
The look she gave him said a lot, things Kai hoped she’d remember later, but the shift in her expression moved quickly and the pulse of whatever had her kissing him, looking for all the world like she wanted him too, left her eyes.
Kai wanted to cry for a wholly different reason. Instead, he let Gia rub his cheek again, let the warning pass and took the small movement of her head for the refusal it was.
“Come on,” she told him, pulling Kai to his feet. “You’re exhausted.
The defeated man followed Gia to bed.
THEIR BREATHS HAD EVENED out and settled. From the opened window above them, Kai could make out the slow crash of the waves as they moved against the beach and the tinkering music of a wind chime glittering against the breeze. The moon was bright and made the bedroom a hazy gray through the cotton drapes as they brushed against the window. Kai couldn’t sleep, not for the distraction of his broken heart or the rustle of the island life around him.
It was Gia.
Always, Gia, it seemed to him, that broke apart his good sense and eradicated his patience. She lay next to him