“Good morning,” Nana said pleasantly, making him look up. I sighed and pushed her forward, unable to remain in the hallway any longer.
“There you all are,” he said, grinning. “Nana, I’m making you a local cure for what ails you. All my friends are drinking the exact same thing this morning.”
“I’m glad to know I’m in good company,” she said with dignity.
He tossed the fruit into a blender with some ice, doused it liberally with rum, and set it to mix. I waited until the machine came to a stop.
“Nice,” I said. “She can’t have that.”
“Live a little, June,” Devon said, winking at me. “You two are on vacation.”
“That’s just what I told her last night,” Nana said, taking the boozy smoothie that Devon had made her.
“Well, what would you like to do today, Nana?” I said, trying to ignore the fact that she was, more or less, sucking down a daiquiri for breakfast. Jail was too good for me.
“I’m going to rest this morning,” she said innocently. “I think I’ve earned that. But I’d like for you two to do me a favor.”
“We can all wait to do something until you feel better,” I told her. “It’s early here. We have the entire day ahead of us.”
“I don’t want to ruin your kids’ fun because I had mine last night,” she said, waving away my concerns. “I want you to go into town and find something pretty for the house, something we can remember this wonderful trip by, June.”
“If you lay off the rum for the rest of the time, Nana, I’m sure you’ll be able to remember things fine on your own,” I told her.
“And I’d like a bouquet of those beautiful flowers I saw on our way here,” she continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “I think a vase of those would brighten up the kitchen table, don’t you?”
“Definitely,” Devon agreed.
“Nana, why don’t we just wait until this afternoon, so we can all go?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave you alone in the house.”
“If you want to hang around here and be bored while I take a nap, be my guest,” she said, slurping her smoothie. “But if I were you, I’d seize the day, girl.”
“Let’s leave Nana to her nap,” Devon suggested, raising his eyebrows at me. “Come on. I want to show you around.”
I didn’t know what to expect after that searing kiss in the hallway, but Devon was a perfect gentleman, introducing me to his friends and exploring the marketplace with me. He selected a delicate purple orchid from a stem, placing it in the rubber band of my ponytail.
“Beautiful,” he pronounced.
“The orchids are very pretty.”
“I’m not talking about the orchid, June.”
I cut my eyes at him. “I’m no Hollywood actress, Devon.”
“That’s why I like you.”
“Don’t.”
I gasped as he pulled me into a side alley, but before I could protest further, he kissed me deeply, just as hot, just as burning as last night.
“What are you doing?” I asked softly.
“Why can’t you accept the fact that you’re gorgeous?” he asked. “Accept the fact that we want each other, June. You know it, and I know it. Just let it happen. Tell me yes.”
I ached for him in places I didn’t know could ache.
“There are people everywhere,” I whispered.
“Then we better be quiet.” He unbuttoned my jean shorts, worked his hand beneath the cotton of my panties.
“They could see us,” I moaned as he found the place where I ached the most.
“Then we better be quick.”
He slipped his cock out of his trousers, and then it was the easiest thing in the world to wrap my legs around him, my back pressed against the backside of some building, and take him inside of me. It was the culmination of long days of tension, hours of need that I had tried to write off as being annoyed at him. With each pump of his hips, I let my head loll back, reveling in that pleasure.
It had been a long damn time for me, and Devon knew what he was doing.
I moaned once, too loud, and bit his shoulder to stymie any other noises. That was the last thing we needed—an audience.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered in my ear, his lips tickling the sensitive skin there. When I shuddered, he trailed kisses down my neck, nibbling the juncture at my shoulder. It was all I could do to stay silent. I wanted to scream my pleasure to the world.
“I could stay inside you all day,” he told me, and it sounded so fucking sexy. I imagined us taking our time, with nothing but sun-soaked hours to take our pleasure in each other. That would be so much hotter than in an alley, but I’d take what I could get.
“You need to come,” I told him.
“Ladies first.”
It was already late afternoon by the time we got back to the cottage, even though it seemed as if no time had passed at all.
“Nana, we’re home,” I said, putting the bouquet of flowers on the table. “Are you awake? Feeling better? Need another hair of the dog?”
She didn’t answer. I went through all of the bedrooms looking for her, but it didn’t really panic until I saw her oxygen tank left on the floor in the entryway.
“Where could she have gone?” I all but wailed, clutching my hair in two handfuls.
“Stop,” Devon admonished. “We’ll find her. We just have to think.”
“Her oxygen tank is right here,” I said, pointing viciously to the floor. “She needs it, Devon. She needs it to breathe.”
“She can’t have gone far,” he reasoned. “We’ll find her very quickly.” How was his voice so calm? Maybe if it were his nana, he’d be more upset. His logic enraged and panicked me.
“How can we find her if we don’t even know where she is?” I demanded. “This isn’t like her to just disappear. What if someone took her?”
“June, no one in this village would take your nana,” Devon said. “Maybe she just felt like getting out and getting some fresh air.”
“But in her wheelchair?” I moaned. “Without her oxygen tank?”
“Come on.”
Devon led the charge out the front door of the cottage, laughing shortly as he pointed at the wooden steps. I followed his finger to see some black streaks of rubber on the edges of the stairs.
“Goddammit, Nana,” I muttered. “Could you picture her taking the stairs like this?”
“Yes, yes, I can,” Devon said, chuckling. “Looks like Nana just wanted a little adventure. She wasn’t about to be cooped up in here all day long.”
“She’s the one who sent us on the errand,” I moaned. “Why would she do that if she wanted us to take her out instead?”
“The beach,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “That’s where we’ll find her.”
I took off at a dead sprint, Devon on my heels. It made perfect sense. Nana had gushed about the beach scene in his movie, about how gorgeous it was, how badly she’d like to visit it. That’s why we’d come all this way, after all, no matter what Devon’s intentions might’ve been. It was so Nana could see the beach. I just didn’t understand why she didn’t wait for us, for me.
The path down to the water was treelined and littered with rocks, and I cringed when imagining her braving it by herself. I hoped she’d have accepted someone’s help to navigate down to the beach, but if she’d cruised down the stairs by herself, I wouldn’t put the rest past her.
“She’s there!” Devon shouted. He stood behind me but taller, able to see through the clearing before I could.
“Thank God,” I panted, grateful beyond measure that Devon had seen her and been struck by the notion that she was here in the first place. She was going to get an earful from me. This was insane, unacceptable behavior. Nana knew her limitations. It was the whole reason I lived with her and helped her. She needed me. She couldn’t be on her own.
“Nana!” I called, wading through the sand toward her wheelchair, my sneakers slipping on the surface, forcing me
to lope. “You’re in trouble!”
My relief at finding her was lessened with the understanding that something was very wrong. Her oxygen tank wasn’t mounted on the back of her wheelchair like we usually had it rigged up. I wondered how she even got down here—how long she’d been here, alone on the beach.
“Nana, you’re grounded,” I told her as I jogged up. “Seriously. We’re going back to Dallas this instant. You scared the hell out of me. You couldn’t have even left a note? We would’ve taken you down to the beach, if you’d just told us you wanted to go.”
I said all of this, knowing it was still wrong. Knowing that I was talking to myself.
I knew it was wrong from the way her head lolled, liked she’d gone to sleep, but more permanent.
I slowed in my approach, ignoring Devon’s attempt to hold me back as I walked around to her side.
Nana’s eyes were closed, and she was smiling. Her faced was turned upward to the sun that was slowly sinking toward the horizon, but she wasn’t Nana anymore. Her toes were buried in the sand, the waves washing up just shy of them, but her hands were too cold.
“June, baby, she’s gone,” Devon said gently, putting his hand on the small of my back.
I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, what I was feeling, as my hands grabbed at hers, squeezing them, trying to rub some warmth back into them, trying to call her back to me.
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t happen. She needed me, and I hadn’t been there. She needed me, and now she was gone.
I needed her, and now she was gone.
Chapter 6
The gray ash faded gently into the tawny sand, and when the wave lapped the shore, I couldn’t tell one from the other, the water darkening them both, making them one.
“Would you like to say something?” Devon asked me, but I couldn’t turn to him, couldn’t look at him. I was mesmerized by the dust blending into the sand.
“It’s all right,” he said after I didn’t answer him. “We don’t really need words, do we? The waves say whatever we need.”
My eyes fluttered closed as the last of the gray became lost in the wet shoreline, and I listened to what Devon was hearing. Every time a wave came ashore and then was sucked back into the ocean, it was like a long sigh. I tried to breathe in time with the movement, tried to let the waves do my breathing for me, say the words I should’ve been able to say, but it was so hard.
Everything was hard.
It had been hard to find Nana on this very beach, dead, smiling at the very wave that moved now.
It had been hard to make a decision about arrangements, much easier to sit back and nod wordlessly as Devon made gentle suggestions.
It had been hard to come back here, at his suggestion, and harder still to open the cap of the urn and let Nana’s ashes vanish into the surf.
“I think she would’ve thought this was right,” Devon said gently, taking the urn from me, recapping it, and slipping his hand into mine. “Nana loved this place.”
I shook my head. This was too hard.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, my words quieter than the waves that soaked our feet. He heard me anyway.
“That’s fine,” he said. “You don’t have to. Let’s go back to the cottage.”
But the cottage was just as unbearable. I remembered Nana on her last morning here, being sassy and drinking an alcoholic smoothie to help curb her hangover from the night before. I’d been shocked at her behavior, then. It had been completely out of character for her.
Now, though, it was starting to make sense. Maybe Nana just wanted one last hurrah.
“June.” Devon was at my elbow, waiting. Watchful.
“Can we just go somewhere else?” I asked him, still unable to meet his eyes.
“Of course,” he said easily. “Get in the truck.”
He drove and I lost myself in emotions. Losing Nana was like losing my parents and my grandparents all at once. She was all I had. There wasn’t anyone else in the world looking after me, now—even if I’d been the one looking after Nana recently. She had raised me, and I treasured her enough to come to Hawaii with Devon for her—not because I had wanted to.
Then she’d sent us out on errands. The sexual tension that had been building between Devon and me came to a head while we were out, walking around, alone with each other. We’d stolen away from prying eyes and handed ourselves over to blind passion—in an alleyway, of all places.
I felt guilty—and I thought it was reasonable to assume that I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life—that we’d been gone so long. We hadn’t gotten back to the cottage until the afternoon. I wondered whether we would’ve been able to catch Nana before she left the cottage, if only we’d been a little bit earlier in arriving.
She’d sent us away from the cottage just so she could slip off and die.
“June, we’re here.”
I looked over at Devon, who was staring at me expectantly, and I wondered how long the truck had been stopped. I’d had no memory of the directions we’d taken, no knowledge of where we were in this moment.
He got out of the car, purposeful, and I followed, dutiful. That’s all I felt that I could do right now—try to mime the words and actions of a person who wasn’t hurting as badly as I was. I felt as if a limb had been torn from my body. That’s how deeply I felt Nana’s loss.
I followed Devon around the truck and paused for a moment, my breath catching in my throat. He was leading us into a dense forest unlike anything I’d ever seen growing up in Dallas. It was a little daunting to be so small compared to the trees that towered around us, to be willing to toss ourselves into the small path hacked through the encroaching flora.
“What is this place?” I asked, feeling tentative, wondering if maybe I should just force myself to go back to the cottage, ghosts and guilt be damned.
“I came here a couple of times when I was shooting that movie Nana liked so well,” Devon explained. I flinched when he said “Nana.” I wasn’t ready to hear her spoken out loud. “It’s nice and quiet. A good place to get away from things. To clear your mind.”
If only I could escape the fact that Nana was no longer here.
“Are you all right?” Devon was looking at me, his brows drawn together.
“I’m fine.” It was the furthest thing from the truth.
He turned after a moment and led the way into the foliage, holding branches so I could pass by without getting scratched.
We walked for a long time, the only sounds the crunch of the ground beneath our feet, the birds winging from tree to tree overhead. It wasn’t a strenuous path, but I had to concentrate on not tripping over roots and rocks that crossed and dotted the trail. I welcomed it. This kind of focus eliminated all other thoughts, banished my grief through necessity. I didn’t know where we were going, where we would end up, but part of me wished we could walk for the rest of the day, the rest of our lives, even. After a while, all that mattered were my steps, my breathing, and the prickle of sweat across my body. It was an existence boiled down to just the basics of survival, and I found it much preferable than the existence I’d had earlier today, scattering Nana’s ashes at the beach, consumed with sadness.
Devon stopped and I ran into his back.
“This is it,” he said, both of us breathing hard. “Ready?”
I had no idea what he’d planned, or where he’d taken us to, but when I stepped around him, around the branches he was holding back for me, and saw a waterfall thundering down into a pool below, something inside of me broke open.
I cried like I hadn’t before, not at discovering Nana, lifeless on the beach she loved so much, not during all of the preparations and arrangements I’d muddled through, with Devon’s help, and not even this morning, when I’d let Nana go from that urn, leaving her there on the shore forever. I cried at the unexpected beauty of this moment, the way the spray left all the plants around here lush, green, and speckled with dew. I cried for the sole fact that things could
still be beautiful without Nana in this world anymore.
Devon simply held the branches back so I could gaze upon this view and cry. It wasn't until I turned to him that he let the plants fall back into place, taking me into his arms, holding me until there were no tears left inside of me.
When I was done, he led me farther down until we were by the pool, our bodies cooling from our long hike thanks to the mist generated by the falls. The water was mesmerizing to watch.
“I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, June,” he said after what could’ve been five minutes or five hours. It was so hard to gauge time here. “I feel that Nana’s passing…that’s my fault.”
I looked at him sharply, torn from my meditations on the falling water.
“That’s ridiculous,” I told him. “Why would you think that?”
He shrugged, looking out over the pool. “I was the one who wanted you both to come here. And you know that it was just an excuse to…try to impress you. If I hadn’t been such an asshole, you and Nana would still be in Dallas and she would be okay.”
There were a lot of things going on here. “Nana was never going to be okay,” I informed him. “Her health was worsening all the time, and for every medicine they prescribed her, I sometimes wondered if it was just prolonging her suffering.”
Sitting there beside the majesty of that waterfall, in the middle of the forest, I had a revelation that made Nana’s death not cut so deeply.
“She chose this,” I said. “She was the one who picked a time and a place. She went out on her own terms. She chose the way she wanted to die, at a location that made sense to her. And I guess if we feel anything, it should be admiration. Jealousy, maybe. We don’t all get to pick how we die.”
Devon studied me, those brown eyes shimmering with an emotion I couldn’t put a name to.
But I wasn’t done yet. That was the pleasant part of my revelation. Devon wasn’t off the hook.
“But now that you’ve gotten what you wanted, I should probably go,” I said, eyeing him.
He wrinkled his nose. “What are you talking about? Go where? Back to the cottage?”
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