by Eden Butler
“Has it been four years already?” Liam had asked, pulling her toward him in a one arm hug as he led them through the airport. “Damn. I was just getting my gym the way I wanted it.”
“Yeah,” Lily had answered, poking at the thickening waistline. “I can tell.”
Her smile lowered at the thought. Last night, Liam had asked the question Lily wasn’t sure how to answer. “You going to have a break before you get a job? You’ve only been back to the island four times since you started up in New Haven, and you deserve a break.” He took a sip of his beer, rolling the bottle between his fingers as though he thought of something he kept to himself and then he nodded, polishing off the beer before he continued. “That tech company, the one Little Bobbie works at? Anyway, Bobbie says they’re hiring college grads and U of H has a really good graduate programs if you want to do your Masters. Besides, I know Zee and Ellen would love to have you back full time.”
“Just them?” she’d asked, cocking an eyebrow at the omission of himself in that question.
“What? I told you. Your room is mine now.”
He’d laughed, tickled her side in a tease, but Lily hadn’t missed the smile Liam wore the rest of the night. They wanted her home. She wanted to be home, but Stanford had one of the best law programs in the country. Stanford would help Lily land the corporate law gig she’d always wanted. But that meant another three years away from the family, from her island.
“So?” Kiki asked, leaning closer and drawing Lily out of her thoughts.
The particularly fast song ended, and the crowd grew louder—a roar of hums that went timid, a little too intimate for such a large crowd when the tempo shifted and a slow song had couples pushing together like they’d been doused in glue. “My choice and you won’t back out?”
Lily pulled on her bottle, trying to clear Kiki’s nagging voice from her ear. If she went on ignoring her dorm mate, Kiki would have a fit and then the drama would level up. It always did when Kiki didn’t get her way.
“Sure,” Lily answered, not wanting to disrupt the easy, relaxed vibe that had fallen upon her since they’d landed back on the island. There would be plenty of worry and stress when they returned to New Haven. It was what pre-law undergrads did—worry. She didn’t need a preview of that if Kiki didn’t get her way. “Fine,” she said again, polishing off the Blue Moon before she set it on the bar behind her. “Do your worst.”
It was one of those things she’d said just to say. Something to keep her friend happy. Something said that she’d regretted the second the words left her mouth. Kiki Devon always did her worst. She did the things, said the things that no one would, as though it was a mission from God she took to heart. But leaning against that bar that night, with Kiki’s attention on the crowd, gaze shifting over the swaying, dancing bodies, to the outskirts of the dance floor, on the line of onlookers watching the room, Lily thought her friend’s mission would only lead to trouble.
It did.
About five minutes, fourteen seconds after Lily had laid down the “do your worst” challenge.
“Holy shit. That one. He’s perfect.”
The stars aligned. Or, more apt, Lily thought, maybe God was just in a really good mood that night. At least, in that moment. Kiki jerked her chin toward the opening that led to the patio. There were couples milling around, drinking, laughing, talking, and a few stragglers who leaned against the large columns and grass-skirted partition of the main bar and the patio. There were groups of two and three guys pointing out groups of girls, and couples arguing or making out—all part of the atmosphere. All lent to the noise and chaos around the room, peppering the air like the salt water and humidity.
In the middle of all that distraction, Lily spotted him, like some bullshit phantom that stretched forward and descended from one of the million adolescent daydreams she’d had over the years.
“Keilen Rivers.” It came out in a whisper Lily knew no one heard, and she was glad for it. That was a name she’d always kept to herself—like him, the secret she harbored so no one would know how much he’d stayed on her mind. Lily wondered why, as Kiki tugged on her arm—a giddy, stupid gesture that moved her entire left side—he still had the same effect on her. That same rush of fear and desperate, stupid schoolgirl want that had kept her distracted anytime Keilen had moved through the hallways at Kaimuki High School. He’d floated through the crowd of students as if he existed in some world where no one was good enough, strong enough, beautiful enough to touch him.
He’d scared her so much that she’d never said more than two words to him, usually “yes” or “no,” but inside that fear was a harbored secret that Lily would never tell—how she thought of him; all the disgusting, wonderful things she’d equally wished she’d had the stomach to do to him and with him, and those thoughts she hoped would never repeat in her mind.
“So, do you know this one?”
Kiki’s voice pulled Lily from her thoughts. Then, the reality of the bullshit bet she knew she couldn’t talk her way out of set in.
“God, Ki, I dunno. Couldn’t we…”
“He sure is staring at you hard enough.”
And he was, Lily realized, between the breaths she took and the words she tried to form to convince her friend to pick another target.
“You do know him, don’t you?”
“Not…not really,” she managed, inhaling as she made weak attempts not to stare at him. He was larger now than he had been in high school, unbelievable as it seemed to her. It had been his size that had attracted her—tall, massive frame, shoulders that stretched beyond anything an eighteen-year-old kid should manage; his body had been a wonderland that dirtied up even Lily’s filthiest thoughts. Now? That frame, that shape, was wider, somehow, larger.
A small crowd was gathered around Keilen, but they ignored him. Most of the attention in the bar had shifted to Keilen’s cousin, Kona Hale. Lily knew Kona and his twin Luka, had been introduced at parties, at local events her friends forced her into when she was a teen. She had even spent more than a little time with Luka one drunken night that she’d tried to put out of her memory since. If she thought about it, in fact, she’d spoken to Kona and Luka more than Keilen, on the few occasions the big Hawaiians visited, but she’d never bought into the hero worship that tended to follow Kona and Luka.
Lily shuddered, pushing back the sadness that fell over her when she glanced at Kona. He’d lost so much since the last time she’d seen him. Death had hit him hard—it always did when you loved someone—she could see that plainly in his face. His smile wasn’t as broad. Of course, that might have been from the few months he’d spent in prison back in New Orleans, something that had nearly derailed his NFL draft. It hadn’t, and the crowd knew it. They surrounded Kona like a swarm. Stupid. Considering the man next to Kona. To Lily he’d always been more, a lot more to her than Kona was to everyone else. Keilen was a lot more of everything to Lily.
He wore loose-fitting charcoal shorts and a casual quarter-sleeve white shirt with the top two buttons unfastened. Dark tribal tattoos peeked from beneath his thin shirt. The ink was black, set in the Samoan pattern Lily had seen her entire life living on Oahu. But she’d never seen Keilen with those markings. She’d never gotten close enough. Every mark had a purpose; each line and loop told a story, and on Keilen that story was likely rich, maybe as dangerous as the glint of menace in his eyes and the hard edges of his fine features.
“Well, he’s looking at you like…”
“I see that.”
And she did. For some reason that gaze was sharp, the slight angle of the right side of his mouth was tilted upward. Keilen downed his beer and tapped Kona on the arm before he walked toward Lily, pausing to deposit the empty bottle on an unoccupied table and moved through the crowd.
The air around her seemed to grow thick, and Lily’s heart pattered and thumped as though she’d run a marathon. Without realizing she’d done it, she gripped Kiki’s wrist because it seemed like the only thing that would
keep her grounded.
“God, Lil, you’ve lost all the color in your face.”
She could only nod, inhaling again as Keilen came within feet of her. “Ki…I don’t know if I can…”
“Oh no you don’t.” Kiki moved her attention back to Lily’s face, releasing a low, highly amused giggle before she joined her friend watching Keilen’s movement toward them at the bar. “This guy is perfect. The way you’re all flustered and nervous, hell, I’ll be fifty bucks richer inside of two minutes.” Ignoring Lily’s glare, Kiki gave a forceful nudge with her shoulder and then motioned for Kai to get her another drink.
In a classic Kiki move, she executed a subtle turn, seeming to focus her attention on the bartender, but Lily knew full well, her friend’s ears were tuned in for the impending conversation between her and Keilen.
“Shit…” Lily mumbled, bringing her face to the right, gaze flicking the left to watch Keilen’s approach. She managed what she hoped was a nonchalant maneuver, for as long as it took for him to get to within five feet of her. She took a large guzzle of the beer Kiki handed her and let it dangle from her fingers before she whispered the small prayer because she needed all the strength she could muster.
“Lily? Lily Campbell?”
Lips pressed together, she swallowed the remainder of her beer before she faced him.
Be cool. Act as though you don’t care.
That had been a prerequisite the two dorm mates had decided upon as freshman inventing the stupid bet. That would be the only way to be convincing.
Shoot for bored, but engaged. You’re trying to seduce with the most outlandish lines. They have to be believable.
“Do I know you?” She was an idiot, that much she decided when Keilen stared at her, moving his jaw around as if he needed to hold back the insult that worked inside his mouth. “I’m sorry. There’s just a lot of people here, and I’m terrible with faces.” She moved her fingers in a graze, touching his wrist in a small gesture of apology.
I’m a liar! Total fake!
“Come on, you know me,” he said, his features relaxing when he glanced down at her hand grazing his arm. His skin was warm, and Lily’s fingers tinkled when she drew her touch along his skin before she dropped her arm to her side. Keilen followed the movement with his steely gaze. “We went to high school together, yeah? At Kaimuki? Your locker was by mine during my senior year.”
Lily waited a beat, tilting her head, squinting her eyes as she watched his fine features. His full mouth looked swollen, caught in a smile she wasn’t sure was genuine, and his bottom lip had a bead of moisture right in the center, likely what remained of his beer. Fleetingly, she thought of how much she wanted to lick that beer from his mouth before she drew her eyebrows up, feigning recognition that pulled Keilen’s half smile into something wider. Something that made Lily’s heart race even more.
“Oh, God,” Lily said, adding a whisper of awe in her tone. “Keilen Rivers.”
“Yeah, that’s me.” He leaned next to her. “Thought you’d let that fancy mainland school erased me from your memory. That’s a little ego crushing.”
“I remember you.” This time when she grazed his wrist, there was a slight tremble in her fingers, something she tried to control by brushing her long hair off her shoulder. “It hasn’t been that long.”
“No, it hasn’t.” His tone went soft, like there was something playing around in his mind that felt sweet, a memory he kept to himself, but then Lily had always been a little too hopeful, too stupid when it came to him. Keilen, for his part, didn’t share whatever it was he thought and leaned against the bar, gaze sharp as he watched her profile. “What…ah, what do you remember about me?”
Kiki cleared her throat, and Lily bit her bottom lip, realizing now was the time to deliver the blow. “I remember being scared to death of you.” That wasn’t a lie, she reminded herself and tried to affect more cool and calm than she had at the moment by moving a fingertip over the lip of her bottle before she drank. For a second, she thought the fake cool was working. Keilen watched the movement of her bottle, how she licked her bottom lip. “You were so…so damn big.” She forced a laugh, something she released with a breathless, easy sound and moved her fingers next to his arm on the bar. The surface was damp, and she flicked spilled water or beer or whatever it was from her fingernails. It was a distraction she hoped would give her a second to slow her heartbeat. “So scary.”
Keilen flexed his hand, as though he had to restrain himself from touching her. He swallowed and worked that jaw again. “Scary?”
She nodded, playing the part.
“I’m not scary.”
“You were.” She reverted just then, but kept her cool, letting an honest confession burst from her mouth as she fiddled with the damp label on her bottle. It was that label, not his face, that she stared at when she spoke. “I was petrified any time you came within ten feet of me.”
He nodded, just once, and there was curve along the corner of his mouth, as though she hadn’t been the first person to make that confession to him. But Keilen didn’t seem so concerned with the past, not just then, and he moved closer, his large arms gliding smoothly against the bar. His voice dipped low. “And do I scare you now, Lil?”
“No,” she said, voice low with a sultriness she wasn’t sure she pulled off. Internally she wished the earth would open and swallow her whole. Fifty bucks was fifty bucks, and Kiki was too damn smug, but that didn’t make this easier for her. Lily inhaled, swallowing away the thickness in her mouth. It was time to release the saucy shock. “Now…” She moved close enough that Keilen had to lean in to hear her confession. “Now you make my nipples hard.”
A few things happened at once: behind her, Kiki whispered a clear “holy shit,” and Kai, the cute bartender, joined in her friend’s disbelief with a loud, sharp laugh. Keilen, though, lost a bit of his cool, slipping as though someone had pulled the bar from underneath him and didn’t quite recover instantly. Lily stood straight, holding the confident, seductive smile for a silent count of five, and then she gave up, hoping her own laughter and easy expression would take the sting out of her little prank.
She moved a hand over her shoulder, waggling her fingers in Kiki’s direction. “Pay up, lady.”
“Damn.” She leaned over Lily glaring at Keilen. “You could have at least been cool.” She slapped the money into Lily’s waiting palm and made for the direction of the bathroom.
“That was…a bet?” he said, recovering from his small slip by waving Kai over to order a couple of shouts. His face was relaxed, but those impossibly black eyes kept flicking between Lily’s face and the bartender, as though he wasn’t quite sure he followed what had just happened between them.
“It was,” Lily said, pushing away Keilen’s cash and handing Kai a twenty. “Sorry.” She picked up one of the shots and offered it to Keilen. “The least I can do is pay for your shots.” It was a distraction, something to quell her nerves. They hadn’t left her, despite the teasing bet. She’d pulled one over on him but that didn’t mean it hadn’t taken a mammoth effort on Lily’s part.
“So,” he said, shooting back the vodka. “This is what you and your lolo friend do? Try to shock some poor bastard with…with…” He let the question drop off, head shaking as he brushed a hand over his face, rubbing his chin.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” She downed her own drink, loving the warmth she felt and how the liquor relaxed her, especially since she was still stupid with nerves at just talking to Keilen. “But we also buy them a drink afterward. Well, the ones that don’t get all offended.” He nodded and the tightness around his eyes relaxed. Lily took the opportunity to order four more shots, paying again before Keilen could argue. “You’re not, are you?”
He nodded a thanks when she slid two shots in front of him. “I’m not what?”
Keilen tapped his small glass to hers when Lily offered it and they both drank again. “Offended,” Lily hissed out, the vodka burning her throat when she slammed t
he second shot down.
“I can’t speak for those mainland boys, but I’m made of stronger stuff.” Keilen took to leaning against the bar again, this time on one elbow and his face toward her as though he wanted to keep her attention. “Besides, that was hot, especially coming from you.”
For a second, Lily could only stare, mouth dipping open as Keilen’s features relaxed. She waited for his own laughter, some small cue that he was messing with her as payback, but none came. She could only manage to swallow, inhaling to steady her waning nerves as she watched the smile that was not a smile, that was its own small seduction.
“Why me specifically?”
“Because, Lil. You scared me too.” His mouth drew up on one side. “Back then.”
“I did?” Lily’s heartbeat quickened at his admission and it took effort to keep the tremble from her fingers.
He nodded and there was no tease in his expression. Keilen fanned his fingers though his hair, something she’d seen him do a dozen times in high school, and Lily was hit with the sweet smell of clean soap and the slightest hint of beer, both intoxicating to her.
“And…what about now?” she asked, swallowing to clear away the knot that had formed in her throat.
He waited a second, watching her with a slow gaze shifting across her face as though he wanted to make sure she saw the way he focused on her, how sincere each look was. “I’m not trying to win a bet.”
“Oh.”
No one was as smooth as Keilen Rivers. She’d seen it a hundred times when they were kids—the way he commanded attention, how a crowd could be controlled, could be mesmerized by the flick of his chin or the low, sweet hum of his voice. It had to be a family trait. Kona and Luka had behaved the same way. There was something written in their DNA that demanded attention, like a crowd was a plaything. Like their approval, was something they’d win without doing anything at all but smiling or laughing or just existing.