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Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation. —Rumi
“Yeah, he left, but Mom did too. When she started up on the drugs. She’s right there.” I jerked my chin at our junkie mother who’d fallen to the ground like a drunk person. “She’s right there but she’s really not.”
He didn’t deserve this shit. He should’ve had a mom who packed him a lunch every day and a dad who watched his soccer games. Not an older brother trying to make up for all of it.
“Where are we going?” Morgan sounded small. Lost. I put my arm around his skinny shoulders. “Home.” “Where is that?” “Wherever we make it. It’ll be like an adventure.”
Not here a day and I’d already needed a man’s help, and he’d gone to find a bunch more men to rescue me from this ridiculous predicament.
“You’re on the island alone?” “Yes, okay?” I spat. “I came here to work on myself. That’s not exactly a team sport. If I’d brought a gaggle of girlfriends, we’d have spent all our time drinking and shopping. Which is exactly what I do in Seattle.
don’t need your help.” I blinked irritably. “You want to wait for Towel Boy?” “I thought you didn’t like me.” “What makes you think that?” “Oh, nothing. Just everything you’ve said to me since the moment we met.” “Maybe you’re growing on me.” I shot her a half-smile. “Like a barnacle.”
“You’re a mysterious person, Asher Mackey.” And you’re making it difficult to dislike you, Faith Benson.
“Shoo.” She waved a hand. “There are other damsels in distress waiting for you to save them. And I have your number if I need you again.” “I didn’t give you my number…” “911?” She arched a brow at me. “You walked right into that one, Asher Mackey.”
“Four days,” she said, “and then I’ll reevaluate my prospects. And I’m not going to sleep with you, firefighter.” “I don’t expect you to,” I said and couldn’t help but grin, “but let’s leave that door open.” “Closed,” she corrected with a sly smile. “But I’ll leave it unlocked.”
had to make an effort. I brushed my hair and contemplated makeup, but why bother? We were just friends. “That less-fun F word,” I muttered.
If Viv was the devil on my shoulder, Silas was the angel.
You, firefighter, are a hulking, manly mass of vice.”
sounds stupid or cheesy, but I feel connected to something bigger when I sit with the ocean. Like I’m a part of something old and deep.” Asher grasped a handful of sand and let it sift through his fingers. “I felt untethered to anything real or permanent when I was a kid. Maybe this is me making up for it. But I’m grateful, and I think it’s the gratitude that makes me feel connected. I’m grateful to the ocean just for being here.”
The laughter was plentiful, and it was becoming hard to imagine that two days ago there was no Faith in my life.
didn’t almost kill myself so that I could watch him suffer. From the moment I opened my eyes to a smoke-filled morning and his scared-to-death expression, he’d become my responsibility. It was ingrained in me, and nothing was going to change that.
“Are we in trouble, firefighter?” I understood her meaning. Because I could read her, and she could read me, and neither one of us wanted to do much else besides figure each other out. “Not yet,” I said quietly. “But we’re getting there.”
Throwing myself overboard and swimming back to shore felt like an easier option than spending one more second in this man’s presence and not doing anything about it.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I kissed the tip of my index finger and touched it to the furrow between his brows. It smoothed out instantly as Asher’s expression relaxed into a kind of mild surprise, his eyes darkening and his breath catching. “What was that?” he asked gruffly. I swallowed hard, scared my voice was going to be high and fluttery like the erratic beats of my heart. “That was a thank you.” “For what?” “Being you.”
But when it came to my feelings for Asher Mackey, there was no solid ground. I was standing on a precipice, about to fall in. Or jump.
“But I can’t help myself around you. I know, rationally, we’re different people. There’s a literal ocean between us, and yet…” He reached across the table to take my hand. “I don’t see how this can go anywhere, but the last fucking thing I want to think about is saying goodbye.”
No man had ever said something like that to me before. No man had looked at me the way Asher Mackey looked at me. I wanted to live in that reflection. Bask in it. Drown in it. So I did the logical thing: I snatched my hand away, stood up, and limped out of the restaurant.
“This…chaos I’m feeling? It’s only my body telling me that I’m about to combust if I don’t have you. Isn’t that why I can’t stop thinking about you every minute of my life? I wake up from dreaming about you, spend all day with you in a ridiculous bliss, then go to sleep every night hoping to dream of you some more.” “It’s the same for me, Faith. Exactly the fucking same.”
“Feel that?” Asher said thickly, when he wrenched his mouth away, his breath coming hard like mine. “Yes…” He pressed in closer. “That’s what it will be like when you’re in my bed, Faith. It’s going to feel like that while I’m fucking you.”
“What are we?” I breathed. “Don’t know. But it scares me too.”
I’d felt lust before, plenty of times. But this was…more. A desire that went beyond my body.
“Everything you do and everything you are, Asher, just makes me want you more.”
I’d had dozens of women in my bed, but she was the only one I wanted to stay there.
Men liked to think they conquered women. What a crock. We were the weaker sex, helpless in the face of our lust. Brought down by a look, a whiff of perfume, the hint of a collarbone on a graceful neck…
Faith’s a Level Six, five alarm, code red inferno.
“Momi is mana wahine,” Nalani said with a proud smile. “A powerful woman. A keeper of traditions.”
“Aloha means to hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, to know the unknowable.”
He saved me and ruined me at the exact same time.
my front door opened and Asher barged in. My heart pounded as he joined me on the lanai. He sat on the other chair, arms on his knees. “Hey.” “So that’s it?” I asked, my voice trembling. “You just walk in the door without knocking? Like we live together or something?” “No,” he replied in a low voice. “Because we don’t live together, Asher. Do we?” He sighed. “No, we don’t live together. But I always just walk in. Because you leave the door unlocked. For me.” “Well, that’s…stupid,” I said, my eyes filling. “And unsafe. To let anyone bust in and…and hurt me.” “I’m not anyone,” he said. “And I’m
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The airport in Lihue was fifteen minutes away. We made it in twenty, because Asher wasn’t driving at breakneck speed but taking his time.
“Okay.” I kissed my finger and pressed it to that worry line. “Aloha, Asher.” “Aloha, Faith,” he said. “Till we meet again.”
My heart ached, because being with him again was perfect…and temporary. “Asher? Remember back at your friend’s restaurant when I asked if we were in trouble?” “Yeah.” He sighed, his chest rising and falling under me. “I know.”
With that kiss, I knew, without a doubt, that whatever we had, it wasn’t a fling or an infatuation.
Faith and I were new, but how I felt about her seemed like it was set deep down in me. As if it’d been there forever and had just been waiting for her.
“We’re stuck, aren’t we? Trapped somewhere between hello and goodbye.”
I loved my job, but the conflict in my heart was no longer about control. I had none. Because I’m in love with Faith Benson.
His breathing calmed and he began to cry in earnest. I gathered him to me, hugging him, and suddenly, I was back in the trailer with Morgan at eleven with smoke all around him and tears in his eyes. Needing me to fix everything. To put it back the way it was, but I couldn’t because it was ruined.
“You’re going to move to that tiny island for that man?” “I’m going to move there for the love of that man. I’ve never felt anything like this in my life and I’m not going to give it up. I can’t. It might be a huge mistake, or it might be everything I need but I won’t know until I stop being so damn afraid of how much I love him.”
More than I wanted cocktail hour and city streets and shopping sprees, I wanted to love him and be loved by him.
Oh, my boy.” Momi patted my hand. “I wish I were strong enough to help carry your burdens, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t let me. The only thing I can do is give you our words and I want you to listen.” “Our words?” “Mine and Morgan’s.”
You’re my hero.” “Me? I thought only firefighters like Uncle Ash could be heroes.” The tears threatened again but I forced them back. “They are. He is. But brave little boys can be too. One hundred percent.” Brave little boys who lose everything and keep going.
And I smiled because he was with her again and they were home.
