The Summer Between Us (Love in Hawaii #1)

Prologue

Rowan Delaney was going to win.

The heat clock ticked red numbers down the scaffolding, each second sliding beads of sweat down her spine.

The North Shore’s winter swell marched in steadily.

The set of waves rose beyond the outer reef, then unfurled its weight across the inside bowl, throwing plumes of salt into sunlight.

The announcer’s voice crackled from the beach, tinny over the PA.

Rowan adjusted her leash, rolled her shoulders, and tried to shake the feeling that everything—her board, her body, her name stitched in black across her yellow jersey—was under a spotlight.

The new sponsor patch increased the pressure for a solid win.

It had only been a few weeks since her father passed, but they’d been training for this competition together, and she wasn’t about to let him down. Her fingers pressed against the tattoo near her heart for reassurance, fighting back tears. Today was her day. She’d make her father proud.

Settle. Read the ocean. Block the rest out.

Leilani straddled her board five yards away, face tipped toward the horizon.

People called them rivals because it made for a better headline, but rival didn’t fit the way they’d shared hotel rooms and poke bowls and late-night laughter since juniors.

Their friendship carried a kind of push-pull that defied the usual category.

Leilani had lined up against her in final after final and forced Rowan to carve herself sharper just to survive it.

It wasn’t cruel—Lea didn’t do cruel—but it wasn’t soft, either.

It was precise, the way she’d paddle for the inside position with a glance that dared Rowan to draw blood from water.

The wind had gone slack. A wall of flags and spectators packed the sand. Rowan waited for the horn. The scoreboard glowed numbers in the haze: She had a pair of fives—decent, but not enough. Leilani sat on a seven-point-something. Two scoring waves each. The clock bled toward ten minutes.

“Priority: red,” the loudspeaker crackled. The marshal’s voice carried faintly across the water.

Leilani drifted a few yards off, still watching the horizon.

A ribbon of hair slipped free of her bun and stuck to her cheek.

When she tucked it back behind her ear, she looked sixteen and mischievous.

When she rolled her shoulders and fixed her gaze on the swell line, she looked like a woman who’d learned to read water before she could even write her name.

Rowan picked at a bead of wax on her deck and tried to quiet her head.

Sponsors with smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.

Lea’s foot pressed against hers on a shared hotel bed during one sleepless night when jet lag turned enemies into confidants.

The way a heat could feel like a conversation no one would ever speak aloud on land.

A dark line thickened on the horizon, shouldering into three waves.

She felt it more than saw it, the way the ocean shifted its mood.

The first pulse rose, the second followed, and the third built behind it.

The smart call was to wait for the second or third—let the first unload on the shallow inside reef, then take the cleaner face behind it.

The first wave steepened. Leilani’s eyes flicked sideways, daring her.

Don’t. The whisper in her gut seemed resolute. Better to wait.

Heat scraped up her spine. She’d lost a final once by holding back and watching Leilani build an entire campaign off the first bomb. Rowan swore after that not to be polite anymore.

Today, she intended to win.

She slid forward, pivoted, and paddled. Her arms cut through the water and the world narrowed. The swell lifted beneath her and the tail of her board rose. For one perfect breath, she was body and balance and intention.

Until she saw it. The lip thickening and the telltale feather across the top. The wave was about to pitch heavy and hollow. A clean barrel if you made it. An explosion if you didn’t.

Too deep.

Abort.

But she couldn’t. Not now.

Rowan dropped in. She shifted her weight, grabbed the rail with her left hand, crouched low—pig-dogging the takeoff to stay tucked under the curling lip.

The nose bit in. The board locked to the face.

For one perfect flash of a moment, she was where she’d chased all her life—inside the fury, perfectly calm, framed in a window of moving glass.

Then it shut.

It happened quietly. The lip threw farther than expected, folding over itself. The water ahead went dark. She had two choices: straighten out and take the hit, or pump once more and try to slip through a closing door.

She pumped. The board answered too late. The lip clipped her shoulder. The tail drifted, then grabbed. Her back foot slid, and her body went forward while her leg stayed behind.

The twist came with a pop, and her knee burned with a lightning pain that stole her breath. A bloom of nausea rose in her mouth.

Then came the tumble. The world erased into white roar and pressure. She tucked her arms over her head, trying to protect the knee, but it was too late. The leash stretched and then yanked her backward. Agony ripped through her as the joint moved in a way no joint should.

Her lungs screamed. She counted like always—one, two, three—and kicked for air. It was an eternity before the ocean loosened her grip, and when she finally broke the surface, she caught the sound of the crowd’s collective gasp before the next wave detonated on her head.

Rowan tried to kick toward her board, but her left leg hung there helpless. The next hit spun her sideways, slamming the board against her thigh. Something cracked.

She screamed.

When she surfaced again, the rescue Jet Ski was already there. The marshal angled close, calm but urgent. “Grab the handle! We’ll get you in. You okay to climb?”

She gritted her teeth and reached, but the damn knee buckled. The marshal pulled her onto the sled with careful motions. “Don’t move it,” he said. The Ski roared, accelerating toward shore. Every vibration rattled her bones.

Flags waved merrily. The crowd was a blur of color and noise. Rowan tried to keep her face calm since there was always a camera.

She’d seen it before—the moment a surfer’s career cracked open mid-heat. Friends had torn things and returned different. One had cried when the doctor showed her the X-ray. Rowan told herself that wouldn’t be her. She wasn’t just careful, but lucky.

Today, luck had run out.

Leilani paddled through the impact zone. Their eyes met for half a second. Rowan saw the horror, then the gleam of emotion; a fierce, sisterly love that had nothing to do with medals.

Rowan shoved down the burn. Lifted her chin. And mouthed, Go.

Lea gave a tight nod, turned, and paddled into the next set with purpose.

By the time they reached shore, hands were already lifting her onto a stretcher. The medic’s fingers probed her knee, and his expression said everything. “Could be ACL,” he said. “Meniscus, too. We’ll know after scans. I’m sorry.”

Rowan turned her face away. The medic wrapped until the tape made a white exoskeleton. The ice bled cold into her skin, and the pain dug in to stay.

She lay there and pictured what was ahead: the surgeries, endless PT, the slow, small victories, the nights awake with ache and questions.

The pity of everyone around her. The sponsors’ sympathetic excuses for pulling out and seeing how things went.

She thought of her father, who was supposed to be watching from above in protection, but had gone quiet and eerily absent.

Her world narrowed to the lagoon-green water glinting just beyond the tent. She could still see the peaks breaking, the crowd cheering as Leilani flew down another perfect face.

The horn blared. The heat ended.

Her career was over, and her father was gone.