Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
MIA
“He was my husband then,” Mia clarified, realizing how her words might have sounded. Here she was holding the hand of this man. Yes, it was to combat their shared grieving, but there was more to it. She knew it. He knew it. “He’s my ex now.”
She saw the tension in his body flee as his hand settled into hers once more.
“After my parents…they were my everything. And I don’t think I even realized how bad my marriage was until they weren’t there. I know it sounds crazy….”
“Doesn’t sound crazy,” Koa said as he squeezed her hand.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely before taking a deep breath. She wasn’t sure why she was telling him all of this. The much easier answer to his question would have been that she wanted a fresh start. Period. Do not pass go.
But, for better or worse, she craved letting him in.
She’d thought she would only ever want to be friends with men, especially so soon after her divorce.
But she’d come to realize it wasn’t that she never wanted to date again, she just never wanted to date a man like her ex again.
And Koa was nothing like her ex. With him, she felt safe and at peace.
With him, she wanted…more. Feeling what she felt for Koa went against all logic.
It should have felt so wrong. And yet it didn’t.
“He wasn’t good to me. Oh, he loved me. At least that’s what he professed with his words all the time.
I’d never been so complimented in my life.
The gifts, Gucci purses, Louis Vuitton shoes, diamonds.
It was so much, I didn’t have a chance to think.
And then he’d get angry. It was my fault.
Always my fault. If I had said it in a different way.
If I’d been more understanding of his feelings.
If I wasn’t so selfish. He’d say I asked for the gifts when I hadn’t ever.
But I’d start to wonder if I had. He was so adamant.
His outbursts would scare me, and he could feel me pulling away.
As soon as he did, he’d talk about how much I meant to him.
I was his world. He needed me. But more importantly, I was nothing without him.
He was the reason I deserved every gift and compliment.
His twisted reasoning became my truth. Looking back, I can now see the pattern he created.
It started from the very beginning. I mean the minute he met me he was trying to buy me diamond earrings. ”
Mia remembered the twisting in her stomach when he’d first showered her with gifts. She’d felt undeserving. And then when he told her she was undeserving, he’d only voiced her own thoughts, so it had to be the truth. Her trust in him started from such a contorted place.
“But he knew my parents were watching him, so he was charming when he needed to be. We never fought in public. He’d point out how embarrassing it would be if my parents ever found out what happened behind closed doors. Because it was all my fault.”
Mia’s voice broke. How could she have believed him for so long? He’d made her feel so small. So incapable. Before her ex, she’d always been independent. Her dad had called her his sunshine. She came from a happy home. Women like her didn’t fall for men who didn’t treat women well.
That was the lie she’d told herself for too long.
Koa emitted a sound, causing Mia to look at him. The smile on his face was rigidly in place but beneath that he was all sinew and anger.
“I’m sorry,” he spoke. “It’s just, men like your ex…you don’t believe it was all your fault do you?”
Mia considered. No one had asked her that.
“In my case, it took two people to create a bad marriage.”
Koa began shaking his head.
“It did. I could have left. He wanted to control me, and I let him. Standing up to him wouldn’t have been easy, but I could have left.”
“Except that you had to cross an ocean to make your fresh start. That alone tells me how leaving went. Maybe looking back now, you think you could have left earlier. Maybe you didn’t do everything right.
But if needing to get everything right is the requirement for not having a bad marriage, then only two perfect people could create a good marriage. And I know that’s not the case.”
His brothers were fools on the best of days, and they had two of the most beautiful marriages Koa had ever witnessed.
“It was not your fault,” Koa said each word slowly. Mia knew he was hoping she would really hear him.
Mia pursed her lips, blinking fast.
“Okay,” she finally spoke, realizing Koa was right. She didn’t cause her bad marriage. She could have prevented it if she hadn’t married her ex, but her mistakes weren’t why things had gotten so out of control.
“And in the end, you left,” Koa squeezed her hand.
Somehow, during the course of their conversation, he now held one of her hands between two of his own. It shouldn’t have made her feel so safe, yet it did.
“Thanks to Nat,” Mia had to give credit where credit was due. “My best friend. If I would have let her, she would have put my ex in the hospital on the way out of my marriage.”
Koa smiled. “I like her already.”
“She’s the best. And the only reason leaving Washington was hard.” Mia sighed. “So after all of that, to answer your initial question,” Mia said with a self-deprecating smile, “that’s why I moved to Maui. And somehow it already feels like home.”
As Mia said the words, she felt their truth. Maui had connected to her the moment she had stepped foot off the plane—a piece of her that had been missing was now found.
“Thank you,” Koa’s words were like a balm on her still-open wounds. “I know that couldn’t have been easy to share, I know that I don’t deserve to know, but I’m grateful.”
The funny thing was, sharing her story had been much easier than she’d anticipated. Before that day, she hadn’t spoken her full truth to anyone. Nat had lived it with her, and she hadn’t felt the need to unload her whole past onto anyone else.
But with Koa….
Maybe Koa could be her Maui brother…ugh even just thinking those words made her want to throw up. What she felt toward Koa was far from brotherly.
And yet, she knew more couldn’t happen between them. Sure, she felt his attraction toward her. And holy yes, she was attracted to him. But that wasn’t enough to base a relationship on. Mia knew that from experience.
And it was too dangerous to test the waters between them to see if there could be more just for the fun of it.
Because Mia needed this home. Now more than ever.
And with Maui’s horrendous rental market, Koa’s home was apparently her only option on Maui, and she couldn’t leave this island.
Not now that it was engraved in her soul.
“Thank you for listening,” Mia said as she pulled her hand away, the appendage already as bereft as her heart.
Koa stood. “And Mia, you don’t have to worry that you’ll ever end up with a man like your ex again. You now have a whole family here on Maui who won’t ever let a guy like that get past our safeguards. The man you end up with…we’ll make sure he’s good to you.”
Mia’s stomach flip-flopped, feeling both thrilled and devastated at the same time. That wasn’t the kind of thing a man who wanted to date you said. That was the kind of thing a man trying to put you in the friend-zone would say. A really kind man, but the friend-zone nonetheless.
But wasn’t the friend-zone exactly where she wanted to be? Yes. Then again it was one thing to place herself there and a whole other to have Koa put her there.
However, in the end, it didn’t matter who put here there. Just that it was where she needed to be.
So as she walked back to her room, she replayed in her mind how sweet Koa had been, how he’d been there for her—he’d been the best kind of new friend.
And somehow that only made her feel worse.
“Shhh,” Mia shushed Nat as she took her phone off of speakerphone.
“I want him to hear me,” Nat bellowed but she was thankfully no longer being broadcast through Mia’s room.
Mia didn’t even know if Koa was home that morning, but she was pretty sure she’d heard some movement out in the main living area, and even if it was Tutu overhearing all Nat had to say, Mia would have been mortified.
“Mia, the man is so into you. I wish you could see it,” Nat said, her voice returning to a normal tone. Mia tucked the phone between her shoulder and her cheek as she folded laundry on her newly decorated couch.
Mia had finished the final touches on her room the night before and loved its hominess.
She sat on the loveseat that she’d covered in coral and teal pillows giving the room a beachy vibe.
A white-washed dresser that doubled as a vanity was at the opposite side of the room.
Next to her dresser was her twin bed. It wasn’t the largest sleeping area but plenty big for just Mia, and it gave her so much more space in the rest of the room to play with.
A big window sat between her couch and her closet, the open jalousies letting in the Maui breeze.
“Maybe if I speak loud enough, he’ll hear you’re interested and ask you out,” Nat continued.
“I thought you were against me dating again,” Mia said quietly.
The sound of pots and pans as well as the drifting smell of bacon helped her to conclude that whoever was out there was now in the kitchen, and even though there was no way anyone could hear her through her door and all the way into the kitchen, Mia was playing it ultra safe.
“I am against you dating the kind of man you were married to ever again. I’m totally for you dating a man who saves your life, promises to protect you, and is a hero to little girls.”
Mia rolled her eyes. That was a stretch. Granted, Koa had saved her from drowning, he had promised to make sure she ended up with a good guy, and he had helped Angel. Maybe it wasn’t that much of a stretch.
“Not to mention the tender way he caressed your cheek…”