Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
COLTON
It’s been two whole weeks since Kairi broke up with me—or rather, fake broke up with me since we were never really dating.
The first few days were the hardest. I wanted to stay locked away in my room and wallow, but Gabriel doesn’t allow sick days, so I forced myself to keep showing up for practice and talking to her between sets as if nothing changed.
I’ve given myself a hard time every single day since admitting to her how I feel. I shouldn’t have risked it; I don’t even know why I did. But Kairi was clear from the very beginning that we couldn’t be more than friends, and I still allowed myself to be selfish by wanting more.
Now all I want is to repair everything that I broke between us, because I refuse to lose Kairi, even if that means I’ll only ever get to have her as a friend. I’ll learn to live with it. It’s better than not having her at all.
And the only way I know how to repair things, is to help her get who she’s wanted all along—Zale. The idea makes me sick to my stomach, but I know it’s the only way to show her that I can put my personal feelings aside and still show up as her friend.
I want Kairi to be happy, even if it’s not with me.
But unfortunately, she won’t be able to find true happiness with Zale shadowing over all the potential matches.
So, while I plan to help her win him over, it’s only so that she can see with her own eyes that he isn’t at all the person she’s looking for.
It’d be easier to tell her all the reasons why I don’t think he’s right for her, but seeing as I don’t like the guy and I just recently confessed my own feelings for her, I can see how my opinion might come off as biased.
This is the only way, I think to myself. It’s now or never.
“I have a date tonight,” I announce nonchalantly, rubbing my towel against my wet hair.
We’ve just finished a gruelling surf practice with Gabriel to prepare us for the competition in two weeks. A few feet away, Kairi stops drying herself and looks over to me with a shocked expression.
“With who?” Koa asks, roughly drying his own hair after crashing our practice today.
“Some girl I matched with on a dating app last night,” I shrug.
Kairi stands up straighter and I instantly feel like an ass for lying, but this is all part of my big plan to win her back.
“Wait,” Zale says with a frown as he joins me and Koa. “You and Kairi broke up?”
His eyes narrow as they bounce between me and her suspiciously.
I nod. “Kairi broke up with me two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks?” He looks so happy it makes me want to smack that smirk right off his face. “I knew she’d come to her senses soon enough!”
I force a laugh. “You were right,” I say. “She really is too good for me.”
“Colton,” she hisses, and I finally allow myself to look at her, seeing the hurt and the guilt reflected in her eyes.
“I just meant that you deserve someone better than me, Kai,” I say gently. “And definitely someone better than this guy.” I jerk my thumb at Zale.
“The hell does that mean?” he snaps, smacking my thumb away. “If anyone is good enough for Kairi between the two of us, it’s me.”
I look at him with a smirk. “Prove it.”
He frowns as he stares at me, but I see the suspicious confusion in his eyes and I wonder if he’s catching on to what I’m really trying to do here.
I don’t think he’s good enough for Kairi, not in the slightest, and I doubt he ever will be. He loves being single too much, and he’s even gone as far as declaring that being single and childless is his life plan.
Once Kairi learns about that, I don’t think she’ll stick around long. She wants a husband, a litter of children, and the white picket fence life. But according to Zale, that would be his nightmare.
“Kairi,” he calls out to her, falling for my bait. “Are you busy tomorrow night?”
She looks at him, stunned. “N-no, I’m not busy.”
“Great,” he says, brightening as he looks from her to me. “Let’s go on a date.”
She doesn’t answer right away, returning her gaze back to me. I give her a small, discrete nod and her eyes widen just a fraction.
“Okay,” she says, turning her attention back to Zale with a small forced smile.
“Great,” he replies, rubbing his hands together excitedly before walking off.
Koa glances between Kairi and me, noticing the tension that pulls between us, and begins to walk toward the house with the other members.
“I’ll see you later.” he calls out to me, and I nod, waving him off.
Once everyone is inside, leaving Kairi and I alone on the beach, I take a few short steps toward her, closing the space between us.
“I thought I put an end to you being my love coach,” Kairi says, eyes never leaving mine.
“That wasn’t me being your love coach,” I say. “That was me being your friend.”
She studies me for a long while but doesn’t argue. Instead she looks away with a heavy sigh. “Well, thank you then.”
“I thought you’d be happier to be going on a date with Zale.”
“It’s hard to be happy when I don’t believe he’s actually interested in me.” She shrugs, looking out at the waves rolling in. “I think he’s just trying to prove that he’s better than you.”
Knowing Zale, there’s a high chance that she’s right.
But that only supports my opinion about Zale not being the right person for her, because the right guy wouldn’t be going on a date just to prove he’s better than someone else.
He’d be taking her out with genuine excitement because he can't think of anything better than spending time with her, one on one, and getting to know more about her.
The sooner she realizes Zale isn’t that type of guy, the sooner he stops being an obstacle in my mission to find her a soulmate.
“Anyway,” she says, disrupting my thought. “I have to go and get started on washing and detangling these curls before they tangle beyond repair.”
She begins walking away, but I instinctively reach for her wrist without thinking it through. Kairi stops and turns to look down at where my hand is wrapped around her skin, goosebumps rising up her arm.
I quickly let go and clear my throat just as she looks up at me. “Can I help?” I ask, desperate for more time with her.
She furrows her brow. “You want to help me…with my hair?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Why not?”
She puts her hands on her hips, lifting a questioning brow. “Don’t you have a date to get to with a girl from your dating app?”
She looks annoyed—jealous even—and I can’t hold back my crooked smirk.
“That wasn’t real,” I say. “I just said that so Zale would know you and I are over.”
Relief flashes across her features for a moment before the furrow between her brows grows deeper.
“Wait, so you…played wingman for Zale?”
I shake my head. “I did it for you, Kai.”
”Why?” She asks, unable to hide the surprise in her voice. “Why would you do that if you really do love me as much as you claimed to two weeks ago?”
I take a deep, grounding breath as I hold her eye contact. “It’s not without its challenges,” I admit with a toothy grin, rubbing the back of my neck. “But I just want you to be happy, Kai. Even if it’s with some other guy out there.”
Her eyes widen in surprise, but I can’t take the silence anymore. I want to get off this beach, and go somewhere more private to talk to her.
“You never answered,” I say, holding her gaze. “Can I help?”
She studies me, eyes narrowing slightly, but whatever she sees must be good enough for her because she nods, one side of her lip lifting into a smile.
“Sure,” she says. “Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.”
“Maybe,” I murmur, locked in on that smile.
I’ve missed seeing it, almost as much as I’ve missed her.
Kairi walks into my room holding a blue wide-toothed comb, a tub of hair product, and a towel piled atop her head.
“I washed my hair and did a deep conditioning mask in the shower so hopefully that makes this a lot easier for us than it normally is,” she says, placing everything on the bed next to me. ”Do you have a pillow I can sit on?”
I grab the pillow I sleep on without a second thought and hand it to her. She pushes my knees apart and places it on the ground between my feet before taking a seat in front of me.
“You can help with the part I hate the most,” she says, untying the towel. “Detangling my hair.”
Her beautiful curls tumble down her back, still damp and potent from her coconut vanilla shampoo. For the next ten minutes she shows me how to section off her hair into parts so that it’s easier to work through.
“Remember to start from the bottom and work your way up,” she says as I grab the comb.
I do exactly what she showed me, careful not to pull too hard when I find a tangle, chipping away at each section one by one. I notice that whenever I finish a section, she grabs onto it and applies a thick layer of leave in conditioner before splitting the section into two and twisting it.
”Do you have to do this after every practice?” I ask.
“Yup,” she replies while lathering another section. “It’s the worst part of my day most days.”
I run my fingers through the section I just finished combing, waiting for her to finish the twist she’s working on before I hand this one over.
“That sounds so tedious,” I mumble distractedly.
I think of all the products I’ve seen on the shelf of our local surf shop, and how they all only cater to straight hair. I think of the sponsor that shut down working with Kairi after noticing her curls.
“Very tedious,” she confirms, taking the section from me. “I asked Gabriel if he could find a brand that makes products for curls so that I could try and get a sponsorship through them, because hair products are expensive and I go through them like crazy.”
”Any luck finding one?” I ask, picking up the final section of her hair and beginning to comb through it.
”Nope,” she replies. “I’m not surprised though. Like I said, poster girls don’t look like me.”
It’s like a lightbulb goes off in my head and I slow down combing her hair until I completely stop—mulling the idea over in my head.
”Have you ever considered collaborating with a big brand instead?”
“Collaborate?” she asks, turning to look at me over her shoulder. “Like work with a brand to create a collection of products?”
I nod. “I mean if you can’t find a brand that already carries the products surfers with your hair type need,” I shrug, “then why not work with one to make it happen?”
She bites her lip as she falls into a deep thought while I take the time to admire her. Even with her hair half done, she looks stunning.
“That’s not a bad idea actually,” she finally murmurs, looking back at me.
“It’d get you on the posters that matter,” I wink.
Her cheeks flush delicately and she quickly turns around so that I can’t see.
“Thanks,” she whispers, continuing the twist she was working on. “I‘ll speak to Gabriel about it.”
When we finish her hair a few minutes later, she ties the twists back and stands with a sigh of relief.
“I don’t know how we finished that so quickly,” she says. “Normally it takes me an hour or two to get through that.”
I grin. “Four hands work faster than two, I guess.”
“Yeah.” She nods. “I guess so.”
A beat of silence passes between us, and as much as I don’t want her to go I know I should probably send her on her way.
“Off to bed?” I ask, picking my pillow up off the floor and tossing it back onto my bed.
“Actually,” she hesitates. “I wanted to ask you for a favour.”
I quirk a brow curiously at her. “Go for it.”
“I haven’t forgotten that I fired you as my love coach,” she says, cheeks turning a dark pink. “But I‘m kind of freaking out about my date with Zale tomorrow and you definitely did not prepare me enough for it.”
“I prepared you plenty, Kairi,” I scoff. “You’ll be fine.”
She puts her hands on her hip and stares at me with a raised brow. “You took me on like one practice date.”
I frown. “Two.”
She frowns back. “The drive-in movie doesn’t count.”
”Why not?”
Her whole face flushes and she looks almost offended. “B-because it doesn’t,” she stutters. “That was hardly a practice. We…we had sex and stuff.”
I swallow, remembering the little whimpering sounds she made that night. I haven’t been able to get them out of my head.
“So you want to go on another practice date before the real thing tomorrow?”
She shakes her head. “I want you to come to the real thing, sit somewhere he can’t see you, and help me if I get stuck.”
I stare at her, stunned, my lips slightly parted.
She gives me a desperate look. “Please,” she begs. “I don’t feel ready for it. This feels like some final boss level type of date and I’m way out of my depth here.”
It’ll crush me if I go on this date and it actually goes well. I’ll have to hold myself back from picking a fight with Zale anytime he touches her. But how can I possibly say no to her when she’s looking at me like that? When she’s standing in front of me, desperately asking for my help.
“Of course I’ll come, Kai,” I say, my voice sounding weak.
She looks so relieved as she rushes toward me and wraps her arms around me in a hug, her body pressing into mine.
“Thanks Colton,” she mutters into my shoulder.
I wrap my arms around her, closing my eyes as I bask in the feel of her. “What are friends for?” I whisper.