girl moving around his room trying to dress. “Can you meet me outside your house in an hour?”
“Um…yeah,” he told Keira, not liking the sinking feeling that intensified as a dozen scenarios of the shit his twin had landed in began to shoot through his head. “You okay?”
“I am, but…Luka, Kona’s gone to North Rampart.”
Gia stood in the middle of Luka’s room in only her bra and panties. There was a sliver of light from the bathroom peeking in through the crack between the door and the wall and it cast her body in a beautiful silhouette. Luka let that image catch in his mind, his nani Gia smiling, sweet and flushed from how he’d loved her.
She was Luka’s completely, and he’d never seen anything more beautiful. She turned to face him, holding her jeans in front of her as she caught Luka watching her, pausing only a second before she smiled.
God, how he loved her.
“I’ll be there,” he told Keira. “I’m on my way.”
INTERLUDE
LUKA
Everything was dimming around him.
Despite the burn in his stomach, he felt cold, but Kona held him. Luka had never seen his twin look so scared.
“No, Luka! We have to get our rings first.”
What a funny thing to say, he thought. Of course, that would happen. There would be time. Kona would do so many good things. He would have such a beautiful life.
Luka saw it so plainly now.
Above him, his twin panicked, crying to Keira, their voices screaming and worried, but Luka felt oddly calm.
Everything began to stretch out before him like a web, all gold and expansive. It went on forever. Time and space moved in front of him endlessly, held together by small bundling knots. Inside each, Luka swore he saw everything and everyone who had made up his life—the face of a father he didn’t recognize, so similar to his own. A face that smiled at him. It was a good smile, and Luka instantly liked him; his mother, how she’d been once, young, beautiful. She smiled too, but didn’t look at Luka, not yet. She would, but it wasn’t time. His Kuku and Kona, did not watch him either, they looked away, as though they waited for something Luka couldn’t see.
And Gia, that sweet smile, that beautiful face. She didn’t see him. She couldn’t, but Luka saw everything in front of her. He saw the long roads she would walk and how she’d take them alone. His heart broke for her. He wanted to be at her side. He wanted to help her but as he watched closer, focused on that path, Luka relaxed, spotting the end, seeing at the end that someone waited for her.
“Lu, come on.”
Kona. His frantic cry almost pulled Luka back into the world. His brother was desperate. He was angry. Kona would hurt, Luka knew.
Inside that web, Kona made up the largest knot. He was Luka’s better half. They were brothers. They were twins. Kona wouldn’t recover from him. Not for a long time.
Luka hated to leave him.
He didn’t want to go.
But the web thickened, and it wrapped like a cocoon around him. It felt so warm, like it was part of him. Like it would heal him, and Luka wanted to be healed.
The light grew dimmer and the warmth from the web consumed him. He thought he was moving. He swore he heard Keira’s voice, the helpless tone in her words.
“I’m so sorry, Luka.”
But he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
He was safe now. He was warm and the last thing in his mind before everything went dark was Gia’s face, the music in her laughter and the feel of her soft lips on his skin when she kissed him. She’d stay with him forever.
11.
GIA
No one ever knocked that early in the morning.
It was Gia’s first thought, followed by a smile that took hold of her mouth as she realized Luka had taken longer than he thought and was only just now getting back to campus.
“Five in the morning, Luka?” she fussed, throwing back the covers from her bed as she moved to her door. “I should ignore you banging on my door—”
She wanted to eat the words, bite back each syllable just to keep her uncle from hearing the small confession they made. Gia expected him to yell at her. Issue more Italian curses and threats that her father would hear that she’d given her virginity, which had long ago been lost to someone else, to some strange Hawaiian boy in New Orleans.