“Ransom, please rete…stop.” She sounded a little breathless, fighting something she kept to herself. “Wanting each other has never been the problem.”
I pushed back and stared down at her because I didn’t believe she was serious. “You think all I want is to get inside you?” I hated that one look from her filled me with so much doubt. “Aly, I can get that anywhere with anyone.”
“Why don’t you?”
“They aren’t you.”
Aly’s mouth hung open for a different reason then, but she recovered, sliding away from me and I let her go, not wanting to push her more than I had. But if I wanted her to believe me, I had to explain what these few days and seeing my mother laying in that bed had given me.
She stretched her neck, moved around the studio as though she was looking for something that would distract her from my gaze. Finally, she sat on the floor and pulled her knees against her chest.
Silence echoed through the studio. Aly just sat there with a suspicious squint in her eyes. Finally I scraped my fingers through my hair in frustration before I started to speak.
“I’m Haku.” Aly’s frown was quick and I knew a question would come, but I shook my head, stopping her before she could ask me. “When my folks got married I spent a lot of time with the Hale family in Hawaii, with my great aunt Malia especially.” Aly didn’t loosen her shoulders as I spoke and I hope she’d hang on, just one more time so I could explain myself. “Malia told me stories, folktales from the island, legends I’d never heard before.” I stopped right in front of Aly as she stared up at me and moved down on my haunches wanting so much to touch her again. “The past year and a half I spent a lot of time on my own.” I shrugged, knowing that keeping myself from the people who loved me had been a selfish, stupid decision. “I kept wondering what it would take, how in the hell I could somehow make up for what I’d done.”
“Ransom…” there was tension in her voice, impatience, but I moved closer, sitting next to her on the floor.
“I remembered one of the legends Malia told me about. Haku, a warrior who challenged every man on the Big Island. He was proud. He was vain and any time word came to him of another battle, some brave warrior who’d defeated his enemy, Haku would find him. He’d challenged the warrior and strike him dead.” The tension had eased on Aly’s face and she didn’t try to avoid the brush of my leg against hers. “This went on for decades until finally, Haku thought he had killed every threat, until he was the fiercest, the strongest. He grew lazy, became too confident by all his victories and one day, a strange warrior challenged him, someone no one knew. Someone without any people at all. The challenger sent his servant to call Haku out in front of his family. ‘Meet my master at the top of Mauna a Wākea and he will destroy you.’ And so Haku, still vain, still arrogant, climbed for days to Mauna a Wākea, battling beasts and storms, boasting and patting himself on the back every time he conquered another hurdle that tried stopping him from reaching the top. And when he had bled and battled, when the earth or the weather could not keep him from his final challenger, Haku climbed on his hands and knees, his boasts fainter, his ego dimmed but still firm, and he stood in front of his challenger and looked into his eyes, crying out in fear.”
“Why? Who was it?” Aly asked, eyes wide, curious.
“Haku looked at the man before him and was filled with regret. He looked at his younger self, the fetch of who he was, the only challenger he could never defeat.” Aly’s mouth had no tension just then and I wondered if she understood my point, if that stupid folklore made any sense to her. “That was what my guilt was. All this time, that’s what was holding me back—myself. It weighed me down just like Haku’s arrogance. No one could touch me. No one could challenge me because that heavy guilt had me trapped.” Aly didn’t frown, didn’t flinch from me when I moved my hand closer to hers. “All I had to do was look at myself, see that I was the enemy. I was the one threatening everything I wanted for myself.” She looked down at our hands resting side by side, silent, breath even and I wondered what she thought. I wondered if she understood that I wanted to jump off that mountain, be free from all the guilt weighing me down.
“You were right,” I said, voice soft. “That day here at the studio, you were so damn right. I wanted to stay there in the past with Emily and I think it was because I couldn’t let go of what I’d done. Because even though it was awful, it was familiar, and I was scared of what might happen if I let myself feel again. But, with my mom almost…God, I can’t even say it, but seeing her there on that bed, watching my father fall apart completely from the fear he felt, I understood what all that hiding did to me.”
I came close enough to Aly that I felt the faint hairs on her arm brushing against my hand, but she still made no move towards me, and I didn’t feel as if it would be right to reach out and touch her, not yet. “It weakened me, blinded me, so that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.” When Aly looked down at her fingers like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to listen to me continue, I slipped my hand over them, bringing her attention to me. “I don’t want to be blind anymore. I don’t wanna be weak and God knows I don’t want to keep lying to myself.”
“Lying to yourself?”
“About you.” My fingers went to her face like they moved on their own, brushing the small curls from her eyes. “About what I feel when I’m with you.”
“Ransom, it’s not the same. What you said to Kona, it opened my eyes. You still love her, I understand that. She was your first love. You never really get over your first love.”
“No, it’s not the same. I do love her. I’ll always love her, but with you it’s different.”
“How?”
She didn’t stop me when I leaned in so that her mouth was just there, close enough that her breath warmed my bottom lip. “I don’t ever want to stop loving you.”
Aly’s eyes unfocused and it took her a second to let my words penetrate. I saw how she opened her mouth but didn’t seem able to speak. Finally, through an exhale, she whispered my name. “Ransom, it isn’t that simple.”
“No,” I said, moving my forehead against her. “No, it’s not.” When Aly frowned, I held her face, needing her to hear me, to understand. “I only know you take my breath away. I only know that you make me want to try. You make me want to stop drowning in the shit I did to myself.”
“It’s not…”
“Aly…” One head shake and I tugged my shirt over my head, reached for the bandage on my chest and Aly stopped fighting me. The spot was still sore, still ached from the work I’d had done that morning. It had taken three hours away from my family. Three hours to undo something I thought I’d never wanted to be rid of. Until Aly.
She leaned closer, narrowing her eyes as she looked at the cover-up tattoo. It was simple, something that meant more to me in that moment than the memory of my first love. A large hibiscus covered the angel and the initials of my parents, my siblings edged the leaves. “I only know that I love you,” I told Aly and she snapped her gaze to me, those beautiful features softening as my words penetrated the stubborn hold on her argument. “I never want to stop feeling that. I never want to stop trying to be everything you need.”
She hesitated for a second, keeping her gaze on my face and then, Aly took my lips. Her touch was firm, strong and I loved the strength of her hands on my neck, pulling me closer. I closed my eyes, relaxing against those hands that went to my back, up to my shoulders, just so Aly could scrape her fingernails over my skin.
Aly touched me like she never wanted me to back away from her, like my lips on her neck, working on her shoulder was some kind of bliss she’d never stop wanted.
“Ransom,” she said so quietly I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a sigh.
I leaned back, smiling when Aly touched my face. “What do you need, baby?”