Chapter 34
I haven’t regretted giving our relationship a chance once—not even for a second.
Maybe because the emotional labyrinth of the last few months finally collapsed, leaving behind something simple and honest. Or maybe—fine, definitely—because I find it wildly attractive when he defends us. What can I say? I’m just a girl.
Case in point: two weeks ago, I was on my way to his office when I heard Brad’s unmistakable nasal voice echoing down the hallway.
He was talking to another guy, complaining about how I’d “probably slept my way into the Galápagos trip.” Which, first of all, I earned my spot on that trip, and second, Brad can’t spell platypus. So.
I was just about to unleash a full verbal dissection when Holden stepped out of his office, the picture of calm superiority.
“O’Hara,” he said, not even blinking, “still blaming your inadequacy on others, I see?”
Then, to the guy next to him: “In case you’re tempted to entertain any of this nonsense, I suggest reading one of his lab reports. If you find a full paragraph without a syntax error or a completely fabricated fact, I’ll personally buy your textbooks next semester.”
Brad’s face drained. The other guy looked like he wished he were anywhere else. Case closed.
What gets me isn’t just that Holden shuts down the bullshit—it’s that he’s never once downplayed my work, and never once boosted it either.
Since the moment our feelings came out of hiding, he’s been unwavering.
No special treatment, no blurred lines. I still get the same disinterested scowls he throws at everyone in lecture.
Still get my work returned bleeding with red-pen notes.
Still get called out when I mislabel a diagram or forget to clean my station.
He keeps his hands to himself during office hours, even though I know he very much wants to let them roam.
And thank God, after this semester… I won’t be his student anymore.
I reluctantly separate myself from him—partly because Holden himself feels wildly inappropriate in daylight, all corded forearms, sun-warmed skin, now kiss-swollen lips, and partly because we have somewhere to be.
He frowns, just a little, but lets me go, catching my hand instead as we make our way to his truck. I climb in and immediately spot the usual suspects: his rolled-up charging cable, his black water bottle, and now—my blue one in the second cup holder.
I take a sip as he backs out of his parking spot, one arm slung behind my seat, the other steady on the wheel as he looks over his shoulder.
“You know you have a reversing camera, right?” I say, pointing to the screen with my water bottle.
He shoots me an incredulous look. Eyebrows raised, pure Holden. “Yes. But I learned to drive without them.”
“Old man.”
He shakes his head, but there’s the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “From the girl who parks halfway on the curb, I’ll take it.”
I gasp, mock-offended. “That’s how we do it in Canada!”
He snorts—which, coming from him, is rare enough to make me laugh. “No it’s not.”
“Okay, it’s not,” I admit, leaning back in the seat. “I just don’t like driving your monster truck. I prefer Alana’s car.”
He chuckles, eyes still on the road. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s a hybrid, and not the fuel-guzzling beast you think it is?”
I shrug, sipping again. We fall into an easy conversation about the presentation—my answers during the Q&A, the one question I didn’t know how to answer, the moment someone in the back yawned loudly enough to make half the front row turn.
He gives me a perfect mix of praise and precise feedback, both gentle and honest, and I soak it all in, grateful and mildly obsessed.
It’s really unfair, the way he can make my heart race with a casual note on vocal pacing.
We wind down the coastal road past Diamond Head, the ocean shimmering to our right, until we reach Hawai?i Kai—where he and Theo live.
It’s my first time seeing his place since we’ve always met at my dorm or in his office, which are conveniently just minutes apart.
He pulls up in front of a small, beautiful house with an orange tiled roof and white brick walls, parking on the street since the two-car driveway is already full. I spot Alana’s white Volkswagen and Kai’s dusty blue Corolla tucked in tight.
We step out and I pause, taking it in. It’s not a big house, not by any means, but it feels grown. Put-together. Adult. Nothing like the cramped chaos of Maya and my dorm, or even Alana and Soren’s off-campus apartment.
He catches me staring and rubs the back of his neck, like he’s unsure how I’ll react. “Stacy’s a real estate agent,” he says. “She helped us find it a couple years ago.”
I nod, quietly impressed, as we walk to the front door. I’ve wondered what Holden’s place might look like—too many times, if I’m being honest.
First, I pictured black walls and steel furniture, plus an aggressively drooling dog snarling at strangers. Then I revised the mental image into something more… minimalist and sterile. Emotionally bare, like he sometimes seems.
But none of those came close.
Because when I step inside, the house isn’t dark or hollow. It’s warm. Lived-in. Full.
The walls are a soft, clean white—but nearly every inch of them is claimed.
Right by the door, a long, beat-up blue surfboard hangs horizontally on the wall, covered in signatures.
Someone’s drilled through the tail and fin to attach wooden hooks for jackets and keys.
It’s the kind of thing that only makes sense when it’s real, right in front of you.
The hallway stretches long, framed in mismatched memories.
Photos of Holden and Theo—shirtless at the beach, in graduation gowns, grinning through sunburns.
There’s one of Penny, curled on a blanket.
One of Theo mid-air during a surfing competition.
One of the coastline at golden hour, the sun dragging its belly across the water.
The whole house feels like a conversation—between old friends, between brothers, between versions of themselves that lived here at different points.
Even the furniture tells a story. The couch is worn in the middle, all cushion and comfort, and the low coffee table is crowded with books—marine biology, physics, one with a broken spine and a post-it that says “return to Nate.”
Everything in here feels intentional without trying to be. Like the kind of place you build slowly, without realizing it, until one day you look up and see a life.
We make our way through the length of the house until we reach the open kitchen at the back—its windows spilling light and salt air, its view split between the glittering ocean and something even better: all my friends.
Alana’s perched on the counter, dipping a carrot into what looks like ranch, narrating some wild story to Theo, who’s leaning beside her with that soft, captivated look only she can pull from him.
Soren’s near the sliding doors, deep in a debate with Kai that seems to involve whether M&Ms belong in popcorn.
Maya is by the wireless speaker, scrolling with purpose.
As soon as we step in, they all look up—like something in the room just clicked into place. The chaos halts just long enough for a chorus of congratulations to crash over me.
“I heard you killed it,” Theo says, grinning as he lifts me into a quick, celebratory spin.
I squeal, breathless with surprise. “How could you have possibly heard that when it ended, like, thirty minutes ago?”
He taps something on his phone, then turns the screen to me. It’s a photo—me on stage, mid-talk, mic in one hand and the other pointing confidently at the stats behind me, grinning like I know exactly what I’m doing. It’s taken from the back of the crowd.
My jaw drops. I turn to Holden. “You sent him a picture?”
Before he can answer, Kai calls out from the other side of the room, “He sent it to me too. Group chat’s blowing up, FYI.”
The others all nod, not even pretending to be subtle about it, and when I glance back at Holden, he just shrugs, hands tucked into his pockets.
“What?” he says, completely unbothered. “I’m proud of you.”
My heart stutters—one of those offbeat, too-full moments—but Maya doesn’t let me sit in it for long. She appears at my side, one arm slung around my shoulders, her other hand jabbing at her phone like she’s on a mission.
“I made a playlist for this moment,” she says, eyes gleaming.
She holds up the screen: Coralie is a genius—a playlist stacked with songs I already love and others I know I’m about to. As Just What I Needed by The Cars starts to play through the speakers, she presses a kiss to my temple.
Laughter bubbles up in my chest as the kitchen comes back to life around me—music, voices, crumbs on counters, mismatched conversations all blending into one messy, perfect rhythm.
We eat and laugh and talk for the next little while, the sort of easy joy that only happens when the air is warm and no one’s pretending to be anything but full and happy.
Theo, always on some kind of mission, tries to prove he can eat an entire triple cheeseburger without breathing. He does it. Barely. Soren times him with her phone and declares him both disgusting and impressive in equal measure.
Kai, perched on the arm of the couch with a soda in hand, casually mentions a new student from Italy who’s been coming into his coffee shop almost daily.
“He’s doing a semester abroad or something,” he says, trying—and failing—to sound chill. “He ordered in Italian and I literally stuttered.”
The group goes quiet for a beat, then collectively gasps.
Maya clutches her heart. “You? Stuttered? That’s serious.”
Alana leans forward, eyes wide and wicked. “That’s love at first sight.”
Theo, ever the opportunist, pouts dramatically. “You never stuttered around me.”
Alana doesn’t miss a beat. She tilts her head, blinks slowly, and says, “You-you-you’re not that-that cute.”
The room erupts. Maya’s laughing so hard she has to wipe tears from her eyes.
Soren nearly chokes on a chip, and Holden’s shoulders shake beside me, a soft, low laugh escaping him.
The sound of it, paired with the ocean breeze drifting in from the back doors, feels like something I’ll want to remember forever.
When everyone’s full and sleepy and starting to sprawl out like sea lions on the deck, Theo and Alana turn to me with matching grins—concerningly so. It’s the look of co-conspirators who are either about to announce a surprise party or a group hike at dawn.
“Girl,” Alana starts, her voice softening, “we know it wasn’t easy for you to… you know, leave your family and your… snow, to come here.”
Maya snorts. “And we might have made your transition a little more chaotic than necessary.”
I laugh. “You think?”
“Shut up.” She grins, flicking a paper napkin at me.
“What the lovely ladies are trying to say,” Theo says, stepping in smoothly, “is that we’re really damn glad you ended up on our little island.”
Soren and Kai nod, Maya throws an arm around me, and then Theo bends to pull a small, wrapped package from under the couch.
“You’re my girl now, Freckles,” he says. “I mean—” he glances at Holden, who raises a brow, “—you’re his girl, but you’re ours too. And we’re lucky to have you.”
Alana takes the package and passes it to me, eyes bright. “So… we got you a little something.”
Suspicious, I eye them all as I peel back the Mānoa green wrapping. It takes less than two seconds for the tears to blur my vision.
Under the paper is a painted rendering of a Day octopus—mid-transformation, arms unfurling in motion, shades of electric blue bleeding into burnt orange and vivid purple.
Its eye is caught in a sidelong glance, sharp and skeptical, exactly like Damon’s always was when I got too close to his tank with the wrong kind of snack or too many questions.
I blink, trying to focus, but it’s impossible. My chest tightens, my throat thickens. I recognize the artwork immediately.
Theo took Alana and I to that tiny coffee shop months ago, the one near Waikīkī with mismatched chairs and the sunset painted on the outdoor brick.
This octopus had hung on the far wall inside, half-obscured by a stack of prints and framed photos.
I stood there too long, staring at it, completely frozen by how much it looked like Damon—same poise, same cocky tilt of the head, like he knew something you didn’t.
I hadn’t said much at the time, just mentioned offhandedly how uncanny it was. How maybe I’d come back to buy it some other time. But I’d thought about it again and again since. The resemblance had gutted me then. Now, without Damon here, it hits like a wave to the sternum.
“Guys…” My voice catches, thick and unsteady. But the words don’t matter—because they already know. They see it in my face, the same way I see it in theirs: how much I love this place, these people, this life I’m finally, fully, building.
When I first arrived in sun-soaked Hawai‘i, my greatest fear wasn’t the coursework or the dives—it was not knowing who I was beyond the title I was chasing.
Outside of “future marine biologist,” I worried there might be nothing else.
I’d wrapped so much of my identity around achievement, around meeting the expectations of my scholarship and proving I deserved my spot, that I never stopped to ask what was left when the lab coat came off.
In hindsight, I think I clung to the science so tightly because it gave me permission not to look too closely at the rest. It was easier to focus on plankton samples and reef formations than to admit I wasn’t sure who I was outside of the ocean.
But now, I know this: I still want to be a marine biologist—badly.
I still want to be great at it. But I also want to be a full person.
A woman with friends who debate on the best cheeses and build playlists like they’re fragile works of art.
A woman who can sequence DNA and still not understand how one island needs this many ABC stores.
Someone who calls home to check on her mom’s tomatoes and her dad’s arthritis, and who answers honestly when they ask how she’s doing.
I can be the woman who commands a stage with research on octopus cognition—and also the one who falls, completely and unapologetically, for a man who sees every version of her and never flinches.