he recalled how hard that time had been for him. “His clothes weren’t in his room anymore. And my makuahine sold his car like it was nothing. Then, she took down his pictures and put them all in boxes like it was some sort of sin to be reminded that Luka had ever lived.” He shook his head, the muscles around his mouth hardening. “She pretended like his entire life had been one giant mistake. That’s how she grieved him.
“But I came into this world with him, G,” Kona said, looking back at her. “I shared blood and breath with him. It’s a connection I don’t think anyone can understand unless they’ve experienced it and then one day…that connection is just…severed. I had to learn a different kind of living without Luka. I’m guessing you did too.”
Her life had not been lived, not how it should have been. She’d admit that. She’d owned her mistakes. Her family had often worried, had always tried to fix her. Gia supposed that’s why she’d stayed away from them. If she didn’t have that space, she might be forced to confront what she ran from. She might have to face what Kona led her to right now.
He tilted his head when she didn’t look at him, trying, it seemed to fish out a response from her with just the weight of his stare. “You did learn, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think he’d approve of how I mourned him.”
She didn’t expect Kona’s laugh, but was happy to hear it. It had her glancing up at him, grateful for his smile and the ease in the tension that had taken over her body. The big man leaned an elbow on his knee, watching her with his head resting in his palm. “I…uh… talked to Kai. He said you have a type. I can guess what that type is.” Kona shook his head, concealing that widening grin when she jerked her gaze at his face, her cheeks warming. He didn’t tease her. Kona didn’t seem interested in anything but getting Gia past this hurdle. Like Luka, he wanted her to jump it.
“You don’t have to tell him goodbye forever. He’s never gone from us. Not really. Kaikuahine, he’s everywhere. He’s in our memories. He’s in every smile I catch on my son’s face. It’s…such a beautiful thing…to see how it goes on, how that love just keeps on going. It didn’t end with Luka’s death. It never ends so long as you remember to keep living.”
She hadn’t. Gia realized that. She’d spent twenty years pretending. Existing in a circle of memory. Recalling the touch she cherished, the love she’d convinced herself she could never repeat again. In her mind, no one could love her like Luka. No one would want her like Luka. And she’d tortured herself, and every man who’d tried to love her for making the smallest attempt.
“Tell him goodbye,” Kona said, kneeling next to her, his hand resting on her shoulder. “And remember that what he’d want for you would be everything he can’t have for himself.”
Gia sat there as Kona’s steps became quieter behind her, staring at the gray stone and bold black letters and numbers across it.
Luka Makani Hale
Beloved Brother
Selfless Hero
1977-1997
Her heart hammered fast as she thought of all the things she should tell him, all the promises she would break just by saying this last goodbye.
Slowly, Gia got up, falling to her knees in front of Luka’s grave, the breath still in her throat when she noticed the picture secured in the oval frame in the center of the stone. He was so beautiful. So perfect. So young. She couldn’t look at him or those dates, the final numbers that sealed his fate, so Gia pulled the pig from her pocket and held onto it, cupping it between her fingers.
“I’ve been gone a long time,” she told that marker, feeling foolish but hopeful that somehow Luka would know what she’d say before she uttered a sound. “Because I couldn’t…I didn’t think you’d want me to say goodbye to you.” The wind swept around her, and Gia leaned forward, resting her forehead against the tombstone, closing her eyes, pretending for the smallest moment that he was there, that she could smell that rich, sweet scent that always came off his warm skin. If she concentrated, she could almost feel Luka’s arms around her, his fingers brushing the hair from her wet face.
“You were my forever love. My one and only and I couldn’t…wouldn’t