Chapter 4
Kekoa
“I haven’t been here since I was a kid,” I said, looking around in awe. “My brothers leapt off the top into the water and nearly gave our mom a heart attack. I’ve never been scooped up so fast as when I tried to run up that trail and do it too.”
“Same,” they chorused.
P?gat Rock Arch was a gorgeous rock formation that offered a thirty-foot drop into gorgeous blue waters and a lightly foaming surf.
“My mom had a colony of gray hair by her left temple that she swears all came from me,” Lani said.
“My mom’s are bunched together on the left side in one long swath.
It’s the only place she has them, just right there in the front, and she loves telling people that my siblings and I are the cause of exactly three of them,” Nyx explained.
“She says the rest belong to our dad. He had some close calls over the years that left her thrilled when he retired.”
“You said he was an aviator, right?” I said. “Did he fly jets or Hueys?
“Hueys, or more specifically, Seahawks, mostly on rescue missions. He was deployed overseas a few times and had a rotor engine blow that sent him into a spin. They landed rough on that one, and he got hit with shrapnel when the rotors splintered against the ground. Mom claims that each of us was the result of him being home nursing an injury. It got to be a running joke after Mom announced she was pregnant with my twin sisters. Dad had been home rehabbing a knee injury, the result of his war with a gopher.”
“The ugg, rodent?” I asked.
Their answer was to snicker at me.
“I guess not,” I muttered.
“The gopher was a member of the flight crew who could be a bit overeager when doing his job,” Nyx explained.
“To the point where my dad tripped over him and hurt his knee. Mom always said that was the only injury she could laugh about. Dad claimed it was the only one he didn’t earn.
It ended up being the one to retire him, though that would come several years later when it started bothering him so much he had to have knee replacement surgery. ”
“Ouch,” I said. “So how many siblings did you wind up with?”
“Six,” Nyx replied. “The last two, the twins, came after Mom had retired. “They were actually her second set of twins.”
“I can’t decide if your dad was the unluckiest Seahawk pilot ever or the luckiest.”
“If you ask him, he’ll tell you it depends on the week and which of us needs help getting out of whatever mess we’ve gotten into,” Nyx explained.
“Oh, so you’re a troublemaker?” I teased. “Exactly how much trouble have you been in?”
“Not me; that was mostly my brothers. Aside from a few dustups at school, I rarely found myself in the hot seat,” Nyx explained. “You’ve got to worry about that one over there. He’s the troublemaker.”
Lani didn’t even pretend to look ashamed when Nyx pointed at him; he just whistled and looked the other way as he slowly slipped off the rock he’d been sitting on and into the water.
“Okay,” I said, “so how much trouble did you get in?”
“All very minor offenses that were the result of bad timing and misunderstandings,” Lani said, waving at the air between us as if to clear the question from the conversation.
I turned to look over at Nyx, who shook his head and stage-whispered some weren’t so minor.
Water flowed around us, a few waves sending up a spray of water when they hit the rocks, while Lani whistled the tune from Dragnet. Oh yeah, it was going to be fun getting to know them. I was definitely getting to the bottom of the mystery too, no matter how many methods he used to stall me.
Stalking towards him to the surf, I decided to try flirtatious persuasion first, circling him when I neared so I could run my fingertips up his back. “So, tell me more about these misunderstandings.”
I never stopped touching him as I spoke; I just alternated between feather-light and teasing and pressing my palm to his shoulder and rubbing my way up his neck.
“They were all so ridiculous,” Lani grumbled.
“This one time I seriously got detained because a store owner freaked the fuck out when I walked into the shop. He accused me of holding the place up the week before. There was a lineup and everything, and then my lawyer asked him what hand I was holding the gun in when I was supposedly pointing it at his face.”
Snickering, I ran my hand beneath his hair to rub the back of his neck, picturing how the whole mess played out.
“Yeah, you know where the rest of the story is going,” Lani said as he grinned over his shoulder at me.
“Pretty much.”
“And you’d be right. He described the whole thing as going down with me holding the gun in my right hand, only I don’t have a right hand. There was a whole lot of backpedaling after that, and of course, the charges were dropped. You’d best believe I never went into that shop again.”
“I still say you should have sued him,” Nyx said as he rolled over to float on his back.
“Yeah, I think I’d have sued,” I admitted as Nyx kicked water over us as he started backstroking away.
I splashed him in response, igniting an out-and-out war and so much laughter that it wasn’t until it had all died down that we realized that Lani had gotten caught in the crossfire and now stood drenched with his hair plastered to his forehead.
“You two are not funny,” he grumbled as he brushed hair and water out of his eyes.
“Oops?” I muttered.
“Sure,” he said, drawing out the r.
“I mean, you were gonna swim anyway,” Nyx said, shrugging with a big-ass grin on his face. “So there really isn’t anything to be upset about.”
“Are you sure we’re not just a little bit funny?” I asked.
“Ha. Ha.” Lani replied. “And I’m not upset.”
No, he didn’t look upset at all, not with that sly-ass look on his face as he ducked under.
Nyx bounced around, frantically trying to avoid him, only to finally be yanked under.
He came up to the left of me, and Lani came up to his right, with an interesting trophy too, as he spun Nyx’s boardshorts around on his finger before letting them fly off and into the water, forcing Nyx to retrieve them and treat me to a view of his glutes flexing when he lunged before they could be swept past him beneath the arch.
He had a heck of a time getting them back on too, floundering a few times, one foot kicked up into the air as he fell over backward with them hooked around his ankle.
We were laughing so hard by the time he managed to get back into them that we were ill-prepared for the retribution to follow.
If I thought the first splash war was epic, I was wrong; it had nothing on the one that erupted after Nyx sent a wave of water our way.
We flung water everywhere until we were blinded by it and grasping for whatever we could grab onto so we could orient ourselves.
My fingers slid over skin, and I found myself hauled against a firm chest, Lani blinking down at me, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes, bringing out the sparkle in his eyes.
“Are you going to splash me some more or let me kiss you?” he asked.
That was a no-brainer. I kissed him and slid my fingers into his hair, arching him against me as we made out.
“See, now isn’t this much more fun?” He asked when we finally came up for air.
“Maybe,” I teased, prompting him to send a wall of water hurtling my way.
I ducked just in time for it to hit Nyx in the face, then accidentally tripped him up when I swam between his legs in an attempt to get out from between them. I popped up to see Lani standing there shaking his head at us.
“What a way to wreck a beautiful moment,” he teased.
“Me?” I squeaked. “You were the one who reignited the water war after pleading for a truce.”
“It was more like a temporary ceasefire,” he insisted, grinning as he shrugged.
“Real damned temporary,” I replied.
“Almost suspiciously temporary,” Nyx pointed out.
“It’s not my fault you think everything is a plot,” Lani said, feigning a bored expression.
Snickering, I glanced back and forth between them as Nyx’s eyebrows shot up.
“Judging from that expression, I think you are one hundred percent the reason he thinks everything is a plot,” I remarked. “Which makes me wonder how many he’s fallen for over the years.”
“Too many,” Nyx replied. “Way too many.”
“Any of them lead to more of his bad timing and misunderstanding issues?” I asked.
“Oh no, nope, I’ve seen some footage though. If I’d been with him, I’d have at least tried to head things off before some of them got as far as they did. So far he’s been determined to only get into trouble when I’m not around.”
“First of all, I’ve never been determined to get into anything,” Lani protested. “It’s always come along and bitten me on the ass, and secondly…”
The whole time he’d been speaking, Nyx stood there grinning like a cat who’d just happened upon a bowl of sardines, until Lani finally realized that he was being fucked with.
I was going to have to be on my toes around these two, who clearly loved to give each other shit.
It seemed like a healthy part of their relationship.
I couldn’t wait to have enough background and memories built up with them to be able to give them the same kind of grief.
Our days were sure to be lively; in fact, I was already looking forward to it.
“What made you pick this spot for us to come to today?” I asked, “Besides the view, a chance to do some cliff jumping, and skinny dipping clearly being your thing when no one else is around.”
“And it’s not yours?” Lani asked.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” I said. “I’m just curious.”
“Hmm,” Nyx hummed. “You know what they say about curiosity, right?”
“It’s about to bite me on the ass, isn’t it?”
“Well…” Lani hedged.
“Pretty much,” Nyx admitted. “The reason we choose this spot instead of our usual cove is because we live not too far from here, and so do our folks.”
Screech.
Total brain-stop with grinding gears and everything.