Meet Me in Hawaii by Georgia Toffolo (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📗

‘For everything,’ she murmured, wrapping her arms tight around herself as she looked out at the rolling waves in the distance, to the sheets of rain breaking the surface of the pool, and feeling the same unsettled force inside her chest.

‘You don’t need to apologize to me.’

Malie turned into him, her eyes on the crisp white collar of his shirt, his perfect bow tie, his cologne soothing her as she breathed it in and gathered the confidence she needed to be honest with him.

‘I never should have said what I did about your father. I didn’t… I wasn’t… I was upset, and I lashed out.’

He wrapped his arm around her back pulling her up against him gently. ‘I know you were.’

He tucked her head beneath his chin and held her, the strength and warmth of his body forming a protective shield that she wanted so much to lose herself in.

‘You’re not mad with me?’ she whispered, her lips brushing against his shirt.

‘I was.’ His voice was low, husky with his own pain as it rumbled through his chest beneath her ear. ‘But I know you’re hurting too.’

‘Truth is, I didn’t realize just how much…’ She took a shaky breath. ‘It still doesn’t excuse what I said, it still doesn’t excuse the fact that I did it purposefully… to hurt you.’

She felt him tense beneath her and squeezed her eyes shut, hating her own honesty even though she knew it was the right thing to do.

‘Why would you?’

‘Because you scare me.’ She opened her eyes and made herself look up at him, to hold his gaze. ‘I needed to push you away before you… before you hurt me.’

She felt her eyes prick, the burn of tears so quick to return as she looked up into the eyes of the man who had come to mean so much to her and still, she couldn’t let herself have.

‘I would never hurt you,’ he said thickly, ‘surely you know that by now.’

‘I know you wouldn’t intentionally.’ She wet her lips, blinked back the tears so that she could see him clearly. ‘But I don’t feel strong enough to take that risk.’

He pressed his forehead to hers. ‘But don’t you see, Malie, together we’d be stronger?’

She closed her eyes again. ‘I don’t see, I’m too messed-up to see. In there, with Tara’s parents, I realized just how much I am to blame for what’s happened with my parents.’ She shook her head still feeling his own pressed reassuringly against her. ‘And I know you are right, that there are things I need to do, changes I need to make, to stop holding myself back from living my life.’

She felt the tears escape her lids, felt Todd’s fingers gently caress her chin as he raised his head and lifted hers to look at him again. ‘There’s time for all that, Malie, you can change things for the better, still live your life to the full.’

‘To big wave surf?’ She gave him a weak smile.

‘Precisely.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I’m going back to England after New York. I’m going to suggest to my father that we get our hands dirty together.’

‘DIY?’

He nodded, his eyes raking over her face, his hand on her back taking up a dizzying caress over her skin. ‘I think you’re right, it’s time we spent real time together, it’s time I gave up trying to change him and accept him for who he is.’

A bittersweet warmth ran through her as she lifted her hands to his face, her thumbs caressing his cheeks as she held his gaze; a thousand wants, a thousand words, so much trying to get out and not being able to voice a single one. Instead she kissed him – light, uncertain, testing his response – needing him to want her like she did him.

But he didn’t respond, he didn’t reject her, but he didn’t kiss her back either and she dropped back, her eyes searching.

‘And what of us, Malie,’ he said so softly she had to strain to hear. ‘Where do we stand?’

The one question she couldn’t answer, fear and love combining to keep her tongue-tied. She tried to kiss him again, telling him with her silence because she wasn’t ready to give that answer.

His body stilled, his head lifted further away. ‘Malie?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head, her eyes pleading with him to understand. ‘I’m not ready for this. I just know I don’t want you to go, I don’t want to be apart.’

‘You could come with me, you wouldn’t need to worry about money, I could recruit someone to cover for you here, I could…’

She was shaking her head all the more now, resisting the urge to cover her ears and block out his words, to be tempted by them.

‘It’s not the money, the school, that worries me, it’s… it’s me, it’s this—’ She pulled his hand from behind her back and rested it over her heart. ‘Losing Koa…’ her voice cracked, ‘to almost lose my friends, too, I don’t think I could love you and survive if… if…’

‘Oh, God, Malie.’ He crushed her to him, his mouth feverish as he claimed her almost painfully, but she craved it, every nip of teeth, of the invasion of his tongue as he duelled with her own, the press of his fingers as he clung her to him. So desperate, so pained. She was drowning in him, in the sea of emotion, of everything she felt for him and more.

He broke away, his voice ragged. ‘Can’t you see I feel the same for you, that the idea of losing you would kill me, but to walk away and never see you again, to leave tomorrow and for that to be it…’ He shook his head, his eyes clamped shut and when he opened them again, she could see the torment firing in his glittering black gaze, feel his pain like her own. ‘That would be worse.