14. Sebastian
Aria had become a ghost.
Two days since the locked room, and I'd barely caught a glimpse of her.
She slipped out of the restaurant before I arrived.
Vanished around corners when I appeared.
At dinner last night, she'd eaten so fast I wondered if she'd even tasted the food, then mumbled something about an early morning and was gone before dessert.
She was avoiding me. I couldn't blame her.
I moved through the days without really being present.
Meetings with staff. Tours of the grounds.
Conversations with Mr. Kahale where I said words that must have made sense because he nodded along.
But my mind kept drifting back to that dusty room.
The weight of her on top of me. The way she'd kissed me like she was trying to consume me whole.
I'd stopped hating her somewhere along the way. I couldn't pinpoint when it happened. Maybe when she laughed about the hermit crabs. Maybe when she defended her charity work with that fire in her eyes. Maybe long before that, and I'd just been too stubborn to see it.
Whatever had replaced the hate was worse.
I wanted her. Not just her body, though that occupied more of my thoughts than I cared to admit. I wanted to know what went on behind those blue eyes when she stared at the ocean. What made her laugh. What kept her up at night.
The wanting was the problem.
Wanting things made you weak. I'd learned that watching my parents circle each other like polite strangers, my mother pretending she didn't know about the affair, my father pretending he wasn't living a double life.
I'd learned it again with Caroline, letting myself believe we had something real, only to come home to an empty closet and a lawyer at the door.
Better to keep people at arm's length. Safer.
But Aria wouldn't stay at arm's length. Even when she was hiding from me, she was everywhere. Her perfume on the breeze. Her laugh floated from across the pool. Her silhouette on the shore at dawn, too far away to reach.
I was heading down to the beach when my phone rang. Isabelle.
"Hi dad,” Evie's voice came through the line, not my sister's. "When are you coming back?"
"Soon. About a week."
"Okay. Aunt Isabelle's been cool. We've been doing stuff."
"Good."
"Yeah." Another pause. "Priya let me help with the database. And I went to a community health thing with Nalani. It was... I don't know. It was good."
I waited for more. She didn't offer it.
"I'm glad," I said.
"Okay. Here's Aunt Isabelle."
Rustling, then my sister's voice. "She's been great. There was a lipstick incident, but we've moved past it."
"Do I want details?"
"Absolutely not." She paused. "You sound tired."
"I'm fine."
"That's not what I asked."
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "It's complicated."
"The hotel? Or the woman?"
I didn't answer. That was answer enough.
"Be careful, Sebastian." Her voice softened. "You're not as cold as you like to pretend."
"Thanks for watching Evie."
"Call if you need anything."
I hung up and kept walking.
The beach was nearly empty. A couple walking hand in hand near the water. An older man reading in a lounge chair. The sun hung low over the ocean, turning everything gold and orange and pink.
I found a spot near the water's edge and sat. Sand on my linen pants. Salt spray on my face. The waves rolling in and out, in and out, steady as a heartbeat.
I was falling for her.
The thought surfaced without permission. I tried to push it down, but it wouldn't go. It just sat there, undeniable, while the sun sank toward the horizon.
I was falling for Aria Kealoha, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
Movement down the beach in my peripheral vision. Dark hair, yellow sundress, bare feet in the sand.
She saw me at the same moment I saw her. I froze. She turned and started walking the other direction.
I was on my feet before I could think. "Aria."
She walked faster.
"Aria, wait."
She broke into a jog. I lengthened my stride, sand kicking up behind me, and caught her arm.
She spun around, yanking free. "What?"
"You've been avoiding me."
"So?"
"So stop."
"Why should I?"
"Because—" I didn't have an answer. Because I can't stop thinking about you. Because I'm losing my mind. Because I need to know if you feel it too.
I said none of that.
"Just walk with me," I said instead. "Please."
She stared at me. The sunset painted her face in shades of gold. I watched her weigh her options—run, stay, tell me to go to hell.
"Fine," she said finally. "But only because I was already walking."
We fell into step along the water's edge. The waves soaked our feet, retreated, soaked them again. Neither of us spoke. The silence was heavy, but not hostile. Just... waiting.
"I'm sorry," she said.
I glanced at her. "For what?"
"For kissing you. I was the one who said it shouldn't happen again, and then I just—" She waved her hand vaguely.
I found myself almost smiling. "Climbed on top of me?"
Her cheeks flushed. "You don't have to put it like that."
"It's what happened."
"You're insufferable."
"So I've been told." I let the almost-smile fade. "You don't have to apologize. I was there, too."
She didn't respond. We walked a little further, the sun sinking lower, the sky deepening to purple at the edges.
I didn't plan what came out of my mouth next. It just surfaced, like something that had been buried too long.
"I never thought I'd be divorced."
Aria's steps faltered. She looked at me, but I kept my eyes on the horizon.
"Four years. That's how long we lasted." The words felt strange, saying them out loud.
I never talked about this. Not to anyone.
"I thought we had something solid. A plan. A future. Then one morning, I woke up and she was gone. She’d packed a bag while I was sleeping.
Left a note saying she couldn't do it anymore. "
The waves rolled in. Rolled out.
"I got served papers that night," I continued. "She'd had them drawn up weeks before. Maybe months. I never asked." I picked up a shell, turned it over in my fingers. "She said motherhood wasn't what she’d expected. Said she wasn't built for it. I think she meant it. Some people aren't."
"Sebastian..."
"Evie was three." I threw the shell into the water.
"She doesn't remember much, but she remembers enough.
Kids always know when something's wrong, even when you try to hide it.
" I finally looked at Aria. "Our relationship suffered.
I didn't know how to be a father on my own.
So I did what I always do. I kept my distance.
Buried myself in work. Let the nannies handle the parts I couldn't figure out. "
Aria was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"The foundation changed things," I said. "Working with you, with your team—she started opening up. Started talking to me. Started being herself instead of a silent shadow in the hallways." I paused. "I have you to thank for that."
She was quiet for a moment. Then, "I shouldn't have judged you. That day in the principal's office. I saw one moment and thought I understood everything."
"You weren't entirely wrong."
"I wasn't entirely right either." She turned to face the water, her profile sharp against the fading light. "Being a single parent isn't easy. You're doing better than you think."
I didn't know how to respond to that. So I didn't.
We walked in silence for a while. The sun touched the water, then began to sink beneath it, the sky a riot of color.
"May I tell you something?" she asked.
I nodded.
"The real reason I do this. The charity work." She hugged her arms around herself. "It's not just about wanting to help people."
I waited.
"My father grew up poor. Really poor. The kind where you don't know where your next meal is coming from.
" Her voice had gone quiet. "He doesn't talk about it much.
It took years before he told me the whole story.
But there were times when his family had to rely on charity just to survive.
Food banks. Clothing drives. Organizations that kept a roof over their heads when everything was falling apart. "
She looked at me.
"Those organizations saved his family. And when he told me that story, I couldn't stop thinking about all the people out there in the same situation.
Who was helping them? Who was making sure they didn't fall through the cracks?
" She shrugged, but there was nothing casual about it.
"I decided I was going to give back. For him. For everyone like him."
I stared at her. The last of the sunlight caught her face, and something in my chest turned over.
"You're remarkable," I said. "You know that?"
She laughed, shaky. "I'm just doing what needs to be done."
"That's what makes you remarkable."
The sun disappeared below the horizon. The sky faded from orange to purple to deep blue. Stars began appearing, one by one, scattered across the darkness.
"I think about you constantly."
The words came out before I could stop them. Rough. Raw.
Aria went still.
"I try not to." I stared at the waves, unable to look at her. "I tell myself all the reasons I shouldn't. But you're there. Every minute. And I can't make it stop."
"Sebastian..."
"I know you said it can't happen again. I know all the reasons you're right." I turned to face her. "But I need you to know it's not a game. Whatever this is. It's not a strategy or a competition or any of that."
She was staring at me, lips parted, eyes wide in the dim light.
"It's just you," I said. "I want you. And I don't know what to do with that."
Silence. The waves kept their rhythm. The stars kept multiplying overhead.
Then she reached out.
Her hand found mine. Fingers sliding between fingers, warm and certain.
"I think about you, too," she whispered. "I hate that I do. But I do."
I couldn't breathe.
We stood there on the shore, hands linked, watching the waves roll in and out. Neither of us spoke. There was nothing to say. Just this. Just us. Suspended in the moment before everything changed.
Later, walking back through the gardens, I stopped her in the shadow of a palm tree. The fronds blocked out the stars. The landscape lights cast soft pools of gold around us.
"Aria."
She looked up at me. Moonlight on her cheekbones. A question in her eyes.
I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her.
Not like before. Not angry, not desperate, not trying to prove anything. This was slow. This was soft. This was something I didn't have a name for.
Her lips parted beneath mine. Her hands came up to rest on my chest. I kissed her like the world had stopped spinning, like nothing existed beyond this moment, like I was trying to memorize the feel of her.
When we finally pulled apart, she didn't step back. Her forehead rested against my chest. My arms wrapped around her.
"What are we doing?" she murmured.
I pressed my lips to her hair. "I don't know. But I don't want to stop."
"Me neither."
We stood there in the shadows, wrapped around each other, while the palm trees rustled overhead and the waves crashed somewhere in the distance.
Everything had changed.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a disaster.