Chapter 1
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I found you.” The voice is a little high, very smooth, and attached to a lanky boy with a galaxy of freckles. He drops into the chair across from me and eases my laptop shut with green nail-polished fingers. “I hope you saved whatever was on there.”
“I, uh… yeah?” I have the inventor of autosave to thank for that.
“Great. You’re the Taylor girl, right?” His smile is so warm I glance behind me to make sure there isn’t a nicer, more approachable person he could be aiming at. “I’m Kai. We share a lab bench—technically. I don’t go as often as my advisor would like.”
“Wait, you’re studying marine science too?”
He nods, grin widening. “Yes, ma’am. Fewer classes this semester because I’m on Moku o Lo?e most days for field work.” Another quick once-over, friendly and warm. “Also, I saw you the other day and figured it’d be nice to have someone to talk to in the lab who’s not a complete nerd.”
I snort, latte escaping through my nose in a very dignified manner. “Sorry.” I blot with a napkin. “It’s just… I am the complete nerd.”
I see why he might mistake me for normal.
Well-adapted, even. Today’s outfit doesn’t exactly scream science nerd: a soft white skirt and a thin yellow long-sleeve shirt, currently vacuum-sealed to my curves by humidity.
Normal anywhere else; dubious on a day the island feels pre-boiled.
I still haven’t cracked the local dress code, it seems.
“Yeah, I guessed,” he says, laughing. “I saw the stack of papers you left last week. But you seem fun, too.”
Do I have a clone walking around campus? One who actually socializes enough to be considered fun when looked at from afar? For science, I’d like to meet her.
“Anyway, bottom line.” He taps the table. “We should go to the lab together sometimes. I live for lab gossip. I’ll keep you updated on everything. And maybe you can bully me into working on my thesis.”
That pulls another laugh out of me. Kai is a small sun—too many colors for one outfit, dark skin dusted with freckles, light-brown curls refusing to obey gravity—and somehow the chaos is magnetic.
“I’d love that,” I say. And I mean it. Another friend would not hurt.
We spend the next half hour on the story of how Kai almost lost his snorkel to an octopus—which, in the cephalopod’s defense, would be a solid addition to any benthic home.
He’s easygoing, friendly, and—data point I did not see coming—my first true friend in the program.
When he asks what I’m up to later, I tell him the library is a mandatory stop since Google has officially given up on answering my questions.
He laughs, pulls a turquoise apron from his bag—as if he needed more color—and ties it around his waist.
“I’ll come find you after my shift, then.” I follow his thumb toward the counter.
“You work here?”
“As of yesterday, yeah.” He gives me a boyish grin. “See you later, Taylor!”
I watch him hop the counter and kiss the cheek of the middle-aged woman on shift; she shoo-swats him and turns back to her customer.
Now that was an interesting development.
The library is packed. Where I’m from, sunlight is a campus-sanctioned holiday—you skip class or “study” outside because the next clear day will be a month from never. Here, solar irradiance has zero predictive power on attendance. Just another weekday.
I grab the textbooks that promise to explain scientific writing and why “anyway” is not, in fact, suitable for an academic paper. I’m smart; I just haven’t domesticated my thoughts for public consumption yet.
I weave the aisles hunting a table that isn’t fully colonized by laptops or sticky from someone else’s sugar intake. Slim pickings, until I spot a marginally empty mahogany table near a cracked open window and make for it.
The books touch down, and the table’s other occupant finally looks up.
From a distance I’d assumed two people, given the square footage he commands, but it’s just him.
There’s no mistaking the brown eyes with a faint hazel halo near the center—somehow the prettiest thing in the room.
And there’s an original Darwin under glass at the entrance, so that’s saying something.
His stare isn’t cold, it’s… noncommittal. Forty-three facial muscles and he declines to use even one. If he wants to do the unapproachable-statue-on-a-very-tall-horse thing, fine. I have as much right to this table as anyone.
I take the chair opposite but a little off-center, unpack my notebook and pens. I leave my computer in my bag, because one more hour of screen glare and my corneas will unionize.
I try—really try—to focus on what I came here to do, but his gaze is singeing my left temple. My peripheral says he’s grading; my trigeminal nerve says Superman is powering up his laser eyes. I refuse to look. I do not need visual confirmation of the disdain I can already model.
Eventually he returns to his work—or at least I think he does. But there’s only so long I can fake-study with an extremely inconvenient variable occupying half the table. Test, not thrash, right?
I risk a glance. He’s grading with precise, controlled strokes of an angry red pen, dark hair slipping over his forehead. Damn. Why are the assholes always the gorgeous ones?
“You know, I’m not trying to annoy you,” I say, chin propped on my fist, watching the red pen march. Why I chose this moment to speak is beyond me; consider it a tiny public-health intervention against the miscommunication epidemic.
He doesn’t look up, just flips the page, jaw ticking. “You have a strange way of showing it.”
My jaw drops a couple centimeters. Who does he think he is?
The ridiculous part is I’m not trying to make his life difficult.
I’d actually like to learn from him—ask questions, understand how he got here.
And yet, for reasons known only to Holden’s tightly-wound nervous system, my presence seems to offend.
If it were the local/not-local thing, I’d get it. In Hawai?i, “not from here” isn’t necessarily neutral—it comes with history and damage and a steady stream of people who arrive, take up space, treat the place like a backdrop, and leave. I would’ve understood an instinctive flinch.
Except my shameless professional background search from week one says he isn’t from Hawai?i either. So what is this, then? Did he hear I’m here on a scholarship and decide I’m not worth the time? As fun as spiraling is, asking him outright seems like the only way out.
“Why is it that every ti—”
“Bro, she just told me mozzarella and cheddar are the same cheese. I’m recusing myself from that conversation.
” A tall blond drops a hand on Holden’s shoulder and folds into the chair beside him.
It takes him one heartbeat to realize the table is no longer a Brooding-Only Zone and that I’m occupying the opposite hemisphere.
“Oh. Hello there.” The smile is bright enough to trigger photosynthesis. Sun-bleached curls skim his ears; T-shirt over long sleeve; jorts that would be awful on anyone less genetically blessed. Devastating, but in a cheerful, surfer-adjacent way.
He glances from me to Holden. “You’re not going to introduce us, are you?”
Holden sets down his pen with a sigh, leans back, and gestures between us. “Theo, this is Coralie Taylor. Coralie, this is the most moronic TA at UH.”
Was that—humor? Also, how did he nail Coralie on the first try? I didn’t even know he remembered my name, if I’m being honest.
“Only brainless when compared to him,” the blond—Theo—says, offering his hand. I take it and he lifts it to his lips, which prompts my cardiovascular system to reroute all available blood to my face. Treacherous organ.
“I made it this far for a reason.” He continues with a wink. “What brings you here, Coralie?”
“Um—nice to meet you. I’m doing my master’s.”
“Aaand you lucked out with this guy as your TA?” He tilts his head at Holden.
I smile, mostly because Holden looks like he just bit a lemon. “Something like that.”
Theo chuckles and elbows him. It’s obvious they’re friends, but the contrast is hilarious.
Theo is what I would assume California’s mascot would look like—he probably ferments his own kombucha and names his boards.
Holden is the dark-mode version of a person.
But, hey, if Wednesday and Enid can do it, these two can, too.
I drag my attention back to my textbooks while Theo briefs Holden on Mystery Cheese Girl.
It’s a normal conversation—no molecules, no salinity, no Latin binomials.
In a parallel universe I’d get butterflies at the sight of Holden behaving like a non-robotic human.
In this one, I avoid eye contact and deploy chocolate.
Cocoa equals methylxanthines plus a nudge to the brain’s reward system; so judge biochemistry, not me. It’s evidence-based coping, thank you.
A large hand crosses the table and raids the control snack. Theo snaps off a square and whistles as it melts in his mouth. “I’d need sweet bribes too if I had to read this.” He taps my open text. “Holden, your student’s a smart one.”
“I know,” Holden says.
My head whips over. I—sorry, what?
“Coralie, right?” Theo asks, still smiling. “Where’s the accent from?”
“The… accent?”
“Yeah. That soft, sing-song thing you’ve got going.”
“Oh. Um, Canada.”
Theo grins and helps himself to another square. “This is stupid good.” He angles toward Holden. “You should try again. Palates evolve.”
“No, thanks.”
Theo stage-whispers across the table, leaning in until we’re shared-air close. “He hates chocolate. Between us, I suspect he sold his taste buds for extra IQ points at some point during his childhood.”
I laugh—traitor—and glance at Holden. He’s finally looking at me. For a man anti-cocoa, his eyes are a study in it: espresso at the rim, lighter honey near the center. Maddening, for a girl who loves chocolate.
“I’ve read somewhere that people who openly hate chocolate are on a CIA watchlist,” I say.
Theo snorts. “As they should. Indicates a fundamental wiring issue.” He tips his chin toward Holden like he’s submitting Exhibit A.
There. Holden’s mouth quirks up. I catch it. My smile happens on its own, less because Theo’s got banter—though he does—and more because of a new development: Holden’s limbic system can indeed process a joke, an outcome I had previously filed under null.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect universal likeability.
People run on different frequencies; not everyone tunes to mine.
It’s plausible—upsetting, but plausible—that Holden doesn’t vibe with me.
What grates is the refusal to even sample.
From day one—first lecture, first question—he’s behaved like my presence is a contaminant to control for.
Most people would call me low-noise unless you bring up marine science.
Being this irritating on sight feels new.
And, well, I’m not sure even an octopus would know how to handle something like this.
When I look back up, the zygomaticus-major event is over. His face resets to baseline boredom, and the red pen resumes its patrol.
Theo and I continue our small talk which, for the record, I always believed to be people just pretending they don’t Google oddly specific things at 3 a.m. He’s good at it, though.
In a few easy beats I learn he’s in marine engineering, also working on his PhD, and that he and Holden go back to undergrad.
His charm is low-tide steady; making my shoulders drop an inch and relax, just a little.
It almost drowns the current coming off the grumpy corner of the table. Almost.
“Are you TAing this year?” he asks, thumb drumming my chocolate wrapper.
“Not this semester. I’ll see for the next.”
“Smart. TAing is the worst part of the machine unless you’re courting tenure.”
“You don’t like your students?”
He shrugs, thoughtful. “I don’t really clock them as students. More like peers with questions. My job is to help them ask better ones.”
Did I say I liked the guy? Because I do.
Another half hour slips by and I surrender to not-studying.
The opportunity will circle back; it’s not like my calendar is overcrowded with anything else but school.
It’s oddly nice to sit beside Holden and not be scolded.
He isn’t talking to me or looking at me or even reacting to anything I say for that matter, but he’s here, and he’s tolerating my airspace.
For now that counts as progress. If he’s going to be my TA for the next year, I’d really prefer he not try to ship me back to Canada.
Not long after, a lanky streak of orange, blue, and unreasonable yellow drops into the seat beside me. Kai sets a latte by my elbow like a bribe and promptly turns his attention to the two TAs.
“Oh my. Taylor, premium seating today.”
My cheeks heat to second-grade fever. “We’re just… sharing a table. This is—”
“Oh, I know who this is. Theo Anderson and Holden Wilkes.”
Holden’s eyes lift, flicking from Kai to me, as if trying to understand something that eludes me completely.
“Am I famous?” Theo leans back, laces his fingers behind his head. “How do you know us if we’re not your TAs?”
Kai mirrors the pose, unabashedly appreciative of the handsome male in front of him. “Duh. Everyone saw your Ehukai clip last year—the one where you saved your board and the camera and still stuck the ride. Half my lab group thought it was edited. I’m honestly surprised you’re enrolled here, too.”
Theo laughs. “What, I can’t surf and have a brain?”
Kai considers him, takes a slow sip of the latte he brought me, and smirks. “Apparently you can.”
Theo’s grin tips toward the other, much less enthusiastic man. “And him? He’s not exactly on the circuit.”
“He’s Holden Wilkes,” Kai says with a shrug, like that’s a full sentence.
“I’m right here,” Holden mutters, uncapping again. The pen hovers, then lands—one clean correction, margin neat as a cut reef. He slips a binder clip from his pile, sets it on the loose stack I pulled out without looking. “You’ll lose those.”
Am I the only person on campus who didn’t know his mythology before existing in the same space?
Apparently. Now I watch the way the room recalibrates around him.
Theo’s banter sharpens like he’s sparring.
Kai sits a hair straighter. Holden keeps rejecting attention like it’s a spill to be contained—cap, align, strike, turn.
His very own version of going tall and dark.