Holo raised an eyebrow. “Be careful, bro.”
“Always am.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Holo said. “Your definition of being careful is very
different from mine.”
“Let it go. We haven’t been in the same city for more than a couple of days for a
long time, bro. I’m a nice guy. Almost as nice as you.”
Holo smiled, apparently satisfied. “Okay, lecture over. Maybe you’ll see her in the
water on the way back.”
He wasn’t wrong. As they walked back down the beach they saw Brooke, Rick, and T.J. Morris along with a few others in the pro contest in the water, out the back of the waves. “You don’t want to go out?” Kai asked his brother.
“It’s called a rest day for a reason. And anyway, I’m having a session with you,” Holo punched him on the arm.
They watched together for a while as T.J. and then Rick popped up into a tight left-hand barrel that was frothing up over the reef.
“Why are they out there? The contest is surfing the other end of the beach isn’t it?” Kai asked.
“It’s barreling, fast, see, over there,” Holo pointed to the edge of the wave where it started picking up out of the water. And it’s left hand. There’s not usually much over that reef, needs big swell to break. It’s a pretty decent spot to get your eye in for the Freak of the Reef comp next week.”
“You’re not doing that?”
“Nah. I’m flying out that week. Have that sponsorship thing in Australia to do. Sucks though, I’ve never been out there, sounds amazing. Nuts, but amazing.”
Kai looked back out to the ocean and saw Brooke watching the waves behind her.
“It’s getting big guys, come on, call it quits, gonna get messy soon,” Holo said, half to himself. He wasn’t wrong.
The next wave that came was huge and crumbling before it even reached its peak. Brooke let it slide past her and Kai felt his chest expanding as he watched her bobbing on top of the water. But then she saw something she liked. She started paddling, her face a portrait of determination. The wave she’d chosen was huge, and behind it, another beast, white topped and heaving, was already forming.
Chapter Four
Brooke’s heart beat faster than a jazz drum mid set. There was something about this surge that was different, she sensed it immediately. The wave started gaining momentum almost as soon as she put her hands in the water to paddle. As if it felt her determination to ride it and didn’t like it, the water swirled around her: a school of fish in a tank. But she was committed now, if she pulled back, Brooke would get hit by the full force of the wave determined to drag her with it on its path into shore. A path that included ripping over the reef that was just underneath the surface.
Brooke shook her head to get rid of the image of the jagged coral teeth ready to rip her skin to shreds and concentrated on the feel of the water. Energy, movement, flow, she took a breath and paddled harder. Then, there it was, the weightlessness of flying: she’d caught it. The wave buoyed her up, let her take its enormous power and glide over its surface. Making herself let go of everything else, Brooke narrowed her focus, blocking out the roar of the water, the hiss of her fins cutting foam, the burn of her muscles as she bent lower and lower to her board. The wave started to tremble as the barrel began and then, hallefrickenluiah, she was inside, surrounded by a tunnel of glass. The world glowed turquoise as the sun shone through the water and Brooke let out a yell of triumph. This was what life was about. This thrill, this pace, this perfection. And right now, it was all about this break. The left-hand-curling waves were the perfect practice spot for the Freak of the Reef challenge. Everyone had been saying how similar the conditions were. Conditions she was nailing. The barrel started falling apart, the strength literally dripping out of it and she was spat out, still flying high on the power of the wave, howling as the ride went on and on. Then something, a movement perhaps, caught her eye and she turned her head. It was just a fraction, but it was enough to give her a snap shot of the beach loaded up with people. She smirked as she felt all their eyes on her, watching her crushing it. She was about to flick her eyes away when someone fist-pumped the air and gave her a thumbs up. Oh god. Holokai. With Kainui standing right beside him.
Brooke blinked to block them out then turned her head away for good measure, but the tiny movement changed the placement of her center of gravity. It was enough to make her need to shift her back foot forward and with that, everything started tumbling down. The wave should have lost most of its power after the barrel filled out. But it hadn’t. She should have been close enough to shore to have missed the worst of the reef. But she wasn’t. The wave behind shouldn’t have had so much power in it. But it did. There were a lot of shoulds in that miniscule moment. But none of them panned out the way they should have.
The wobbles in her legs came first, then her arms started flailing to try and keep her upright. Recognizing she was going down, Brooke tried to duck down and ride it out laying on her board but she was too slow. Her board tipped, she fell, and the water came up to meet her before she finished her exhale.
Under the surface, the wave’s power was still at play, and combined with the monster coming in after it, the water down below swirled round like a washing machine in overdrive. It caught Brooke up, ripped away her board, and spun her so she had no idea which way was up and which was down.
Then, a thud. A noise she would never forget. Bone on stone. Her shoulder and a rock hit with the full force of the water behind them. Then blackness.
Blackness swam around the edges of her vision as Brooke came back to consciousness laying on the beach. It was closely followed by a searing pain that ripped up her arm and drew a tight band across her chest. But in her fingers, nothing. “Oh shit. My arm. I can’t feel my fingers.” Then she moved and the pain surged everywhere, nausea crushing out every other sensation. She cried out then felt a small jab before…quiet, drifting, no more pain.
The next time she woke, Brooke’s shoulder was tightly bandaged and the pain was bearable. The beach had been replaced by a hospital room. A doctor stood over her and smiled. “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”
Brooke shook her head to try and lift the fog. “Groggy. Where am I? What happened?” But as soon as she said it, it all came back. The wave dragging her down, the tumble under water, the crack of bone meeting rock. “I got dumped. I remember. Shit. And I’d smashed that wave too.”
The doctor’s smile broadened. “By all accounts you did indeed smash it. And then, it looks like it had a good go at smashing you.”
He asked Brooke if she remembered her name, her age, where she was from, and seemed satisfied with all her answers. Her shoulder had been dislocated in the fall and she’d ripped up the skin of her hands, but incredibly, she hadn’t broken anything.
“So, I can go? I’ve got a contest to win.” Brooke struggled to sitting but then the room spun, bright white light sparking out of everything she looked at, and she had to fall back into the pillows.
#
Back in her hotel room the next day after finally being released, Brooke tried and failed to get her girlfriends to back the hell off. “Honestly. I’m fine. Dislocated shoulder is all.”
“Dislocated shoulder is big, girl. It’s us, you don’t have to put on a brave face.” Summer sat on the edge of the sofa opposite where Brooke was propped up in bed.
“She’s right. Stop trying to be a hero. We all saw you smash that wave. And now everyone’s seen it. It’s online. With you looking hot by the way. Thanks for pulling your pretty face rather than your fuck off face.” Maya said with a grin. “Do you ever stop working?” Summer asked.
Maya shrugged. “She does look hot, see.” She found the SurfsUp website that had been covering the Indonesian contest on her tablet and turned it around to show them. On the screen, Brooke was in full motion, carving into the heart of the wave just before the barrel let her inside.
“
Okay. She looks hot. You’re not wrong,” Summer said. “But shut up already. You’re here as her supportive friend, not as her PR bitch.”
Maya was the PR manager for both Summer and Brooke, and since they had placed in the finals of every woman’s event so far in the WSL circuit, with Summer even smashing it at the Open event, they’d both had photographers clicking their every move. It was Brooke’s dream come to life.
But none of it mattered until she won an event. That’s when she would cement her dream and know that this wasn’t just a one off. And that was when the sponsors would know it too. She needed a long-term sponsor so she could afford to do this without working every waking hour at the shoe store back home. And so she could come out from under Ashton’s shadow for good.
“Okay, no shop-talk,” Maya said. There was a pause. “Can I just ask one thing?”
Summer groaned but Brooke just laughed and nodded.
“What the hell happened? You already had that wave in the bag. It looked like you got spooked.”
Brooke adjusted the sling holding her arm before she answered. “I saw Holo and his brother on the beach.”
Summer’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And I made a complete fool of myself last night.”
“With Holo?” Summer didn’t let up.
“With his brother.”
Both women looked at each other. “But you’ve been crushing on Holo forever.” Maya said.
“Yep.” When she didn’t say anything else Summer narrowed her eyes. “Details. Spill.”
Sighing, Brooke told them the whole, cringeworthy story. Even telling it, a surge of embarrassment swept over her. All she left out was the way his hands on her had made her feel: so alive, so desired, so sexy.
Luckily Summer jumped straight in when she finished. “Douche bag.”
“I know right?” The relief that someone wasn’t about to question what the hell she had been doing there in the first place was immediate and total. But Maya didn’t say anything for a moment. When she did speak, she was careful. Gentle. “I dunno. It sounds like he thought you knew who he was,” she said.
“Why would she? She’s been surfing with his brother all this year. Kainui turns up out of the blue and appears at his brother’s place? I call douche bag for sure.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. You should be focused on getting better and getting back in the water. Boys can wait. Right?”
Brooke nodded at Maya and felt moderately better. Her friend was right. Get better. Get back in the water. She’d come all this way. A little injury wasn’t going to get in the way of her dreams.
She spent the rest of the day in bed but nothing was going to keep her away from the contest the next day. Determined to at least watch the contest even if she wasn’t in it this round, she sat on the sand and gazed at the forms bobbing in the water. The sun was good on her skin and the sand under her bare, undamaged legs was a reminder that things could have been so much worse. She closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sky. She was here. In Bali and nothing was broken. Down but not out. She reassured herself.
A shadow passed over her and she opened her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
Brooke opened her eyes and squinted up into the face of one of the contest organizers, standing over her.
Brooke shrugged, then winced. “I’m fine. Just have to keep my shoulder strapped for a couple of days. Use the sling, you know. Then I’ll be back in the water.”
The organizer frowned and squatted down beside her on the sand. “That’s not what I heard. I thought you dislocated your shoulder?”
“I did. But they popped it back down on the beach. Muscles didn’t get a chance to go into spasm so they didn’t get torn.” She smiled, trying desperately to ignore the growing frown on his face. “It’s going to be fine. No drama, be back in the water before you notice I was out of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to happen,” he said. “Dislocated shoulder takes weeks to recover from. Months even. I thought you were out. I’ve taken your name off the board.” He pointed up the beach and Brooke turned to follow his finger. With a start, she realized that it was true. Her name had been rubbed off the contest board. “You can’t do that. This is it for me. I have to make it.”
The man pulled his cap off and pushed his fingers through his hair before putting it back on. He grimaced. “It’s not it. You’ve done well this season already. Give yourself time to heal and you’ll be fighting fit for the next challenge at the end of the month. You’re here anyway, so you can watch the contest, analyze your competitors, get a real edge. No one usually stops long enough to do that. Might do you good. You’ve got real talent, missing this one contest doesn’t change that.” And he walked away.
An image of Ashton laid up in bed after his accident flashed into her mind. The crushed look he had about him when the doctor had delivered the news that his leg was so badly busted up he’d never surf competitively again. The way he’d held on to her hand as if she was the only thing keeping him afloat. Brooke had to blink hard to stop the world spinning.
She was not her brother. This was not the end. She was not going to be a postscript to Ashton’s injury story.
Of course she’d known she would need time to recover. Of course. She’d listened to the details of what had happened on the beach when she’d been in hospital but had been lost in her own thoughts when the doctor had talked her through the rehab process. She’d got hurt, she’d get better. That was all that mattered, Brooke figured. She was a quick healer, always had been. She had to be.
Then, as if he was tuned in to turn up when she was at her most miserable, Holo appeared by her side and squatted down on the sand next to her. “Hey lady. Shitty luck about your shoulder.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she forced herself to smile. “Shitty just about covers it. They’ve taken me off the board.”
He sucked in a breath. “Oh man. That blows.”
They sat in silence for a moment and Brooke did her best to not look at his broad chest, or at the face that had filled her dreams for the past few months. Then he patted her on her good shoulder. “You’ve got real talent though, so you don’t need to sweat it. You’ll be back on the board before you know it. Chill for a bit, watch the event, eat some good food.”
It was an echo of what the contest organizer had said. Almost exactly. Brooke did a double take and saw that Holo was looking down at her with a mixture of compassion and sympathy in his eyes. There wasn’t even a remote hint of heat. Of desire. Of lust. He saw her as a competitor. Someone who shared his love for the ocean. Nothing more, nothing less. She hadn’t thought her ego could have got any smaller, but right then, she felt herself shrink and harden. Small and hard as a grain of sand.
There was never any chance with him. It should have made her feel better, but just like conversations that start with it’s not you, it’s me, all she felt was the emptiness of being made the fool by her own emotions.
He interrupted her pity party. “Hey, I do know a great physiotherapist though. The best actually. He flew out here as a favor to me, but I’m sure he’d be sweet taking on a new client. A few treatments from him, some time in the water and I’ve never felt as good. I’ll clear it with your manager, shall I?” And just like that he was gone.
Holo asking his personal physio to help her out was nice. Wasn’t it? Just a shame it didn’t come with a personal massage from him too. She sighed and tried to concentrate on the competition. It was okay, the only way from rock bottom was up. Right?
Sitting in one of the WSL tents eating eggs an hour later, Brooke’s phone pinged. Her manager sent her an SMS message telling her that Holo’s physiotherapist was indeed next in line to God when it came to injury rehabilitation and she was damn lucky he was available. They’d been lucky and he’d scheduled a quick intro meeting with him at one to work out a plan. Brooke set down her phone and gazed down the beach as the crashing waves she was missing out on. For a moment she fel
t the weight of despair threatening to crush her with the thought of having to do any sort of rehab, but she shoved it aside and took another bite of eggs. She had a plan. The ocean was going to be there tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. She’d been right, the only way forward was up from now on.
But when Brooke turned up to the medical tent at one, her heart did anything but float upwards. In fact, if it could have, she was pretty sure it would have made a nice home for itself in her stomach.
“You?” Brooke would have stood with both hands on her hips, super hero style. But with one arm strapped in a sling, the effect wasn’t so much righteous indignation, more stroppy teenager. She forced her hand off her hip. The face she’d seen for a brief moment when she’d turned to look back at the hot tub with the kitchen light shining through the open kitchen door was right in front of her. The face she had kissed, the lips that had captured hers. The face that had imprinted itself into her memory with a double helping of shame and frustration. The face of Holo’s brother.
“I’m not sure,” Kainui said. “Were you waiting for someone else?”
“I was waiting for Holo’s personal physio—” she stopped herself. “You.”
“If this is going to be a problem, then you should see someone else. But just so you know, there’s no hard feelings my end. You’re injured. My job is to help heal injuries. If you’d like my help, that’s great. But if you’d rather work with someone else I won’t be offended. Well, not too much anyway.”
God damn, did he have to be all reasonable and calm about this? Brooke couldn’t help herself checking out Holo’s brother now she had the benefit of sunlight and sobriety. Surrounded by the white walls and sterile equipment of the medical tent, he didn’t seem as dark and dangerous as he had that night. He was just as tall as Holo. Just as broad too. But where Holo’s eyes were jet black, Kainui’s were the fierce golden amber of an eagle. There were stronger lines around Kai’s eyes too, she noticed, and right then, when he noticed her checking him out, they deepened as he broke into a broad smile. Holyhawaiinhotness. The smile softened his jaw, opened his eyes further and, man, was she crushing on her crush’s brother? For real?
The Wrong Brother for Brooke (Hot Tide Book 3) Page 3