It would come, though, so he needed to mentally prepare for that. She’d turned down his offer to stay on Oahu, flat. The offer had been part charity, part selfishness. He could help her, and he wanted to, especially if she might be in his life for a while longer. Her negative reaction stopped him cold. That meant that no matter how charming, sexy or wonderful Paige was, he couldn’t let himself get wrapped up in this. It was just a fling. That’s all he wanted. He just needed to keep reminding himself of that when he was around her.
Mano’s phone chirped again, but this time it was a text. He pressed the button to have the phone read it aloud.
It was Paige. “You snuck out on me! I thought we were spending today together.”
He laughed as the phone’s voice read Paige’s text aloud. He hit the button to dictate a response. “It’s still early, pulelehua. We have plenty of time to be together yet, today.” The phone repeated his words back to confirm the text before it sent his response.
It chimed again. “Okay, but if we’re going all the way to the North Shore and back today, we shouldn’t get too late a start.”
Mano’s brow raised curiously at her response. The North Shore? They hadn’t even discussed that possibility. “Is that what we’re doing today?”
“Yes. We’re getting garlic scampi shrimp and sticky rice from a food truck and eating it on the beach.”
Ah. She’d been reading some of the brochures he’d given her for sights around the island. “I hope you’re driving,” he replied and got a smiley face in return. “I’ll reserve a car from the hotel fleet.”
Mano got up to talk to the head of hotel transportation with a smile on his face. He knew exactly which car they needed to take out—the cherry red convertible roadster. The little BMW was one of the special touches he’d added to the hotel for exclusive guests to use to see the island. His teenage heart wished he could be the one to drive it—it was the car he’d dreamt of when he had turned sixteen—but he’d settle for riding shotgun. Being beside Paige was enough to make his heart race and his adrenaline rush through his veins.
They’d take this trip so she could experience more of his home, but he was far more interested in coming back to the hotel so he could have her again. Unless, of course, they could find a secluded enough spot on the North Shore...
* * *
This was potentially the messiest and best thing she’d ever eaten. An old white food truck in a patch of dirt off the highway had just served her a plate of shrimp so divinely garlicky and buttery, she had streams of butter and olive oil dripping down her forearms as she tried to eat. Mano had opted for the spicy shrimp, and she could already see beads of sweat forming on his forehead from the hot chilies. They’d taken their order to go and found a piece of rocky secluded shoreline a few miles away, where Paige spread a blanket out on a dry stretch of sand for them to have a picnic.
The sea was wilder here on the North Shore, less manicured and tourist friendly than Waikiki. The sand was decorated with chunks of black volcanic rock and large pieces of driftwood from trees that had fallen. The deeper water was a stormy blue, but the shallow tide pools just beyond them were perfectly clear. She was certain she would put her feet in them before they left. They called to her.
“This is a beautiful spot,” she said, immediately feeling guilty that he couldn’t see it. “It’s such a nice day.”
“I always liked it up here,” Mano said as he sipped his drink. “When I was a teenager, some of the guys and I would come down here to pretend like we could really surf. I’m surprised none of us got killed. The waves out here are for professionals, but we wanted to show off for the girls.”
“I can’t believe you’d risk that just to impress a girl.” That seemed crazy, but she’d seen boys do plenty of daredevil stunts to get a girl’s attention.
“One girl in particular,” Mano admitted. “We dated for two years. Jenna.” He winced as he said her name, as though it pained him. “I was a fool for her. I would’ve done any stupid thing she asked to see her smile and beam at me with pride.”
“What happened with Jenna?” She felt like she shouldn’t pry, but at the same time, she wanted to know since he had brought it up.
“Like most things in my life, the accident happened.”
Paige was afraid of that. “Will you tell me about it now, since you wouldn’t last night?”
Mano sighed and set down his carton of food. “Do you really want to ruin a beautiful day on the beach in Hawaii with my sob story?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged and leaned forward to pick at his food with a fork. “My brother, Kal, was playing football at the University of Hawaii. My parents and I were driving to the stadium to see the game. On the way there, we came upon one of the little pop-up rainstorms we have around here. It wasn’t a big deal, they disappear in minutes, but an oncoming SUV was going too fast through a curve. I was in the backseat, so I’m not entirely sure what happened, but the police seemed to think the SUV hit a pool of water and hydroplaned into us at full speed.”
Paige held her breath as he told the story. She knew it wasn’t going to end well, and yet she kept hoping she was wrong.
“They had to use heavy machinery to extract us from the car, but I don’t remember anything about it. I woke up in the hospital a couple days later and started screaming because I couldn’t see. They had to drug me and restrain my arms because I just went completely berserk. I didn’t even care that my arm was broken. I accidentally hit a nurse with my cast and blackened her eye. I didn’t know she was there, but in the moment, I just didn’t care about anything but my s
ight and when it was coming back. It wasn’t, of course.”
Mano shook his head and frowned. “I was such a mess that they didn’t tell me my parents were dead for almost a week. I missed their funeral while I was in the hospital. Kal and my grandparents had to face all of that on their own.”
“I’m sorry about your parents. I didn’t know about that.” Paige never dreamed the story would be worse than she imagined. He hadn’t mentioned his parents very often, though, so she should’ve anticipated it.
“Yeah. The hardest part for me, I think, was that I never really got to mourn them. I just snapped my fingers and they were gone. Once I got out of the hospital, I was in and out of rehabilitation and training for my new disability. I had to learn braille and adapt every aspect of my life to being blind. Technology is better now, but even just a decade ago, there was a steep learning curve. There wasn’t really time to think about losing them and what it meant for my life.”
“What about the rest of your family?”