Between Hello and Goodbye(89)

“You were. You are. But not like this.”

“You love her,” she said, gesturing at a photo of Faith.

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I’m in love with her and she—”

“Isn’t here,” Chloe snapped. Her voice cracked and tears flooded her eyes. “You’re grieving and in pain and she’s not here. But I am, Asher. I’m right here and worse…” Her jaw quavered. “I always have been. Always.”

My head bowed. I’d been so stupid. So careless.

“I’m sorry, Chloe. I am. But I can’t be what you want me to be. I appreciate everything you’ve done but…I have to fix what I broke.”

“And Kal? Suddenly you can manage him without help?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll figure it out.”

Lightning crashed and a few seconds later, thunder boomed, shaking the house.

“I’ll go,” Chloe said.

“No way. Not now. Not in this storm. Let me check on Kal and we can talk more and just…give me a minute, okay?”

She nodded reluctantly, hunching deeper into her sweater. “Sure. Fine.”

“Thank you.”

I took the stairs up to the second floor and knocked on Kaleo’s door. No answer.

“Hey, Kal?” I cracked it open. “It’s getting pretty gnarly out there. You doing okay?”

I pushed the door open all the way. His bed was empty. Desk chair, empty. The room was empty, but the window was open, and Kal was gone.





I’d seen plenty of rain in Seattle, but a tropical storm was another beast altogether.

The rental car guy at Lihue Airport tried to talk me out of driving, especially as someone who’s not used to the weather, but I turned on my considerable charm to convince him and hit the road.

“Because I have considerable charm…for a lunatic.”

My nerves were already shot as it was, wondering how Asher was going to react to seeing me. I drove with white-knuckles, hands at ten and two like they taught us, and took the rain-slicked highway up to Anini Beach as fast as I dared.

Which wasn’t much.

The rain lashed the windshield as if someone were throwing buckets of water at the glass instead of rain drops. My wipers could barely keep up.

“The crazy shit people do for love,” I muttered and then I could’ve wept with relief as my GPS told me Anini Beach Drive was just up ahead.

Even so, I nearly missed the turn through the torrent. But I was going about eight miles an hour (with no one behind me, thankfully, because no one else was dumb enough to be out in this mess,) and I found the drive.

I crept the car along the private road to Asher’s huge place and parked, relieved to see lights on. Because I had rushed out of Seattle with only a small bag of luggage and no raincoat, I hurried up to the front door in jeans and a sweater and was soaked instantly.

“This is it. The rest of my life starts now.” I heaved a breath and knocked.

Footsteps approached and my nerves became half-anxiety, half-excitement. No matter what happened, I was going to see Asher. Even if he kicked me right back out into the storm, I could tell him one more time that I loved him and that I—

Chloe Barnes opened the door.

We stared at each other; she looked about as horrified to see me as I was to see her. She glanced behind her and crowded the door so I couldn’t see in, and no one could see out.

“Chloe,” I said stiffly, mustering my pride, even though I must’ve looked like a drowned rat. “What are you doing here?”

She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up. “I live here.”

“You…live here.”

“With Asher, yes.”

“Oh,” I said, and lightning crackled in the sky. Or maybe it was my heart cracking right down the middle. “Okay.”

So that’s that.

I waited for the relief to find me. I wouldn’t have to give up Seattle. Wouldn’t have to trade a cosmopolitan life for an endless vista of greenery in the middle of an ocean.

But it never came.

Numbness washed over me, wiping me clean of thought and feeling, leaving only the instinct to flee from the pain as fast as possible.

I nodded absently. “Right. Well. Sorry to bother you.”

And then I turned and walked back to my car, the rain drenching me to the bone. I wished it would just sweep me away.





I came thundering down the stairs, my heart pounding in abject terror. “Kal? Kal, where are you, buddy?”

But I knew in my gut he wasn’t here.

Because he’s gone home.

I hit the living room just in time to see Chloe close the front door. I rushed to join her.

“Do you see Kal? Is he out there?”

“What, no…”

I pushed past her and threw open the door. “Who’s there?”

“No one,” Chloe said, her voice wavering. “Kal’s not in his room?”

I squinted through the dark and the rain and by the light of a lightning flash, there was Faith. I thought for a second my brain must’ve finally snapped, but it was her, golden-haired and beautiful in the rain…

Already bombarded with a thousand emotions per second, I could’ve cried. For the first time in weeks, I felt something besides pain. Relief. As if my beleaguered heart was finally going to catch a break.