by Eden Butler
She jabbed his side, then kissed him in the center of the chest, inching closer to steal a kiss. “Fine, but I’d rather be at my dorm when all the debauchery happens in there.” She straddled him, smiling when he rested his palms against her bottom. “Claire took off with Mimi for her aunt’s in Lafayette. Last weekend before finals. You and me all alone.”
“I like the sound of that. Just give me—” Luka stopped when his cell rang and sat up, grabbing the phone when he spotted Keira’s number. “Just a second, baby,” he told Gia, hoping his smile kept her from being irritated at the interruption. “Hey, you,” Luka answered, frowning when the call immediately ended.
“What’s wrong?” Gia asked, her face pinching up as she frowned.
“I don’t know.” He waved the phone, tapping it against his knee. There wasn’t much he could tell Gia that wouldn’t keep her from getting in trouble. If she knew Kona had been juicing, she might be obligated to disclose that detail to her uncle. Their coach. Who’d then be obligated to inform the athletic director. It didn’t matter if Kona had quit. It didn’t matter if Gia would keep silent. Luka didn’t want to put her in that position. But he had to tell her something.
He landed on the partial truth.
“Kona can be careless. Nothing worth talking about, but I told Keira if they get in a tight spot, to let me know. It’s no big deal. They’re probably just away from a cell tower.” That sounded more like a dead battery situation, not a steroid-selling drug dealer situation and he hoped Gia bought it.
“Call her back,” she said, her voice laced with concern.
He nodded, hitting the redial button, his worry sinking like a stone in his gut when the phone went on ringing. Luka tried to keep the worry from his face. He tried laying back, pulling Gia close again, pretend that things were fine, but he didn’t think she bought it.
“Think she’ll call back?” she asked against his chest as she ran her fingers down his arm.
“I’m sure it’s no big deal, nani.”
“You’re worried. I can tell.”
“You know me so well, huh?” Luka smiled when she shrugged, turning her to face him. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of her smile or the perfect curve of her top lip. She’d be going back to New York soon. They hadn’t discussed it. Christmas had come and gone and she’d missed the holiday to stay with him. But now, the semester was ending. They were running out of excuses to delay her trip back home. The holiday reminded Luka of the gift he had wrapped in his closet back at his mom’s. He grinned, wondering what she’d say when she saw it.
“What’s that smile?”
He shook his head, kissing her slow and long, just enough to steal her breath. “I have something for you I’ve been meaning to give you.”
“You’ve given me plenty…”
“No, baby. I’ve only started. That’s a promise. This is something…” His cell rang again and Luka grabbed it, sitting up when Keira’s number shot across the screen. “Hey,” he said, frowning when Gia kissed his cheek, then moved from the bed.
“Hey,” Keira started. “It’s me. I really need your help.” Luka’s stomach dropped and his heart began to jackhammer for a reason that had nothing to do with the girl moving around his room trying to dress. “Can you meet me outside your house in an hour?”
“Um…yeah,” he told Keira, not liking the sinking feeling that intensified as a dozen scenarios of the shit his twin had landed in began to shoot through his head. “You okay?”
“I am, but…Luka, Kona’s gone to North Rampart.”
Gia stood in the middle of Luka’s room in only her bra and panties. There was a sliver of light from the bathroom peeking in through the crack between the door and the wall and it cast her body in a beautiful silhouette. Luka let that image catch in his mind, his nani Gia smiling, sweet and flushed from how he’d loved her.
She was Luka’s completely, and he’d never seen anything more beautiful. She turned to face him, holding her jeans in front of her as she caught Luka watching her, pausing only a second before she smiled.
God, how he loved her.
“I’ll be there,” he told Keira. “I’m on my way.”
INTERLUDE
Luka
Everything was dimming around him.
Despite the burn in his stomach, he felt cold, but Kona held him. Luka had never seen his twin look so scared.
“No, Luka! We have to get our rings first.”
What a funny thing to say, he thought. Of course, that would happen. There would be time. Kona would do so many good things. He would have such a beautiful life.
Luka saw it so plainly now.
Above him, his twin panicked, crying to Keira, their voices screaming and worried, but Luka felt oddly calm.
Everything began to stretch out before him like a web, all gold and expansive. It went on forever. Time and space moved in front of him endlessly, held together by small bundling knots. Inside each, Luka swore he saw everything and everyone who had made up his life—the face of a father he didn’t recognize, so similar to his own. A face that smiled at him. It was a good smile, and Luka instantly liked him; his mother, how she’d been once, young, beautiful. She smiled too, but didn’t look at Luka, not yet. She would, but it wasn’t time. His Kuku and Kona, did not watch him either, they looked away, as though they waited for something Luka couldn’t see.
And Gia, that sweet smile, that beautiful face. She didn’t see him. She couldn’t, but Luka saw everything in front of her. He saw the long roads she would walk and how she’d take them alone. His heart broke for her. He wanted to be at her side. He wanted to help her but as he watched closer, focused on that path, Luka relaxed, spotting the end, seeing at the end that someone waited for her.
“Lu, come on.”
Kona. His frantic cry almost pulled Luka back into the world. His brother was desperate. He was angry. Kona would hurt, Luka knew.
Inside that web, Kona made up the largest knot. He was Luka’s better half. They were brothers. They were twins. Kona wouldn’t recover from him. Not for a long time.
Luka hated to leave him.
He didn’t want to go.
But the web thickened, and it wrapped like a cocoon around him. It felt so warm, like it was part of him. Like it would heal him, and Luka wanted to be healed.
The light grew dimmer and the warmth from the web consumed him. He thought he was moving. He swore he heard Keira’s voice, the helpless tone in her words.
“I’m so sorry, Luka.”
But he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
He was safe now. He was warm and the last thing in his mind before everything went dark was Gia’s face, the music in her laughter and the feel of her soft lips on his skin when she kissed him. She’d stay with him forever.
ELEVEN
Gia
No one ever knocked that early in the morning.
It was Gia’s first thought, followed by a smile that took hold of her mouth as she realized Luka had taken longer than he thought and was only just now getting back to campus.
“Five in the morning, Luka?” she fussed, throwing back the covers from her bed as she moved to her door. “I should ignore you banging on my door—”
She wanted to eat the words, bite back each syllable just to keep her uncle from hearing the small confession they made. Gia expected him to yell at her. Issue more Italian curses and threats that her father would hear that she’d given her virginity, which had long ago been lost to someone else, to some strange Hawaiian boy in New Orleans.
But when Uncle Mike looked down at Gia, his skin pale, eyes puffy and red, she realized he hadn’t come to her dorm at five a.m. to lecture her about pre-marital sex with a college linebacker.
“Uncle Mike?”
“Cara, mi amore…”
She opened her mouth, willing the words to leave, petrified of what he’d say next. Mike had not called her darling or referred to her as his love since she
was six years old. Something was wrong.
“What?” she said, pulling him inside. “Is it…Mama? Papa? One of the boys?”
“No, sweet girl…”
He didn’t fight her when she grabbed him, when she tugged him to sit on her bed, clinging to him as he fought to get the words out.
“Tell me…”
“Your family is well, Gia. No one is hurt in New York.” He grabbed her hand, holding both between his big fingers but didn’t seem able to look at her. “But…last night.”
Mike shook his head and Gia thought she’d never breathe again, not until he finished speaking, not until every word was exhausted. When they came, they lifted from him like a fog, clouding in Gia’s mind, consuming her reason. She only heard sounds, small phrases she pieced together that made sense of what he said.
“There was a shooting.” Every syllable he made sounded thicker. Each more muted than the next. “Kona was mixed up with a fella dealing steroids to athletes. Keira and Luka were worried and went to find him. They got caught up in the middle of something bad.” Bile moved up Gia’s throat and she went still, know there would be something bad, something horrible coming next. Something…impossible. “Luka…I’m sorry, but Luka was shot. He…didn’t make it. He’s gone.”
EPILOGUE
New Orleans Steamers
Corporate Offices, 2017
The figurine was small. White with gold trim. The belly round, the face grinning and sweet. But the wings were massive in comparison to the pig’s stature. They stretched out as though the small creature was ready to take flight. It was a symbol of the impossible. Sweet but fearless. A boundless hurdle jumper. Like Gia was supposed to be.
The gift had come two months from the last day she’d seen Luka. Uncle Mike had brought it with him from New Orleans to her parents’ lake house. Until then, Gia had promised she’d never go back. Her days at CPU were done, she’d told him.
“Find another water girl.”
“You were more than that, cara,” he’d promised and because she hadn’t believed him, because it seemed that Luka was still trying to watch over her, get her to jump those hurdles from wherever he was now, Mike had chosen that moment to leave the box. “This came to you at my office.” She barely glanced at it, more interested in the three fingers of bourbon she’d swiped from her papa’s liquor cabinet. It was St. Paddy’s Day. Even Italians can pretend to be Irish if it meant getting blinding drunk. “It’s from…Luka’s grandfather. He said the boy…he meant for you to have it.”
The gift he’d meant for her had come in a black box. A small, white flying pig nestled in velvet with the last corny note Luka would ever write anyone.
Gia-
The size of your wings doesn’t matter as long as you’re using them to fly.
Yours forever, - L
It took Gia a year to return to CPU. Another six months after that, she realized she couldn’t finish there. There were other sports management programs in other universities, none with uncles willing to put in a good word. In many ways, it was the best path, certainly the hardest, but Gia took it.
She cleared those hurdles one by one.
And now here she stood, staring out of the window of her new office, overlooking the city that had stolen so much from her. There were a lot of demons she’d never faced in New Orleans. There were a lot of goodbyes she never said. She hadn’t made it to the funeral. She’d never been to his grave. Gia promised herself she never would.
Her heart had been a great expansive thing that Luka let float into the ether with him. There Gia had let it stay. At eighteen, she’d learned life was a journey, the road paved through minefields and love was a gamble with too high a risk.
“Miss Jilani?” She heard, turning to greet her assistant, Cat, as she came into the office. “I have your schedule and the itinerary for this morning’s staff meeting. The owners will be by at noon to bring you to lunch and I have the tape on…” She looked behind her, as though checking to see if anyone could hear her. “The girl.”
Gia smiled, wondering if her new assistant was always this discreet. Gia intended to reward her if she was. “Thanks, Cat. I appreciate the update.” The girl in question had done some hurdle jumping herself. Gia hoped she wouldn’t mind a few more.
“I can get rid of these boxes for you,” Cat started, reaching for the flying pig, still sitting in the black velvet box.
“No.” Gia stopped her, picking it up. “This stays with me.” It was still pristine, just as flawless as it had been the day she got it. “This doesn’t leave my desk, okay?”
“Understood, ma’am.”
“Good,” she told Cat, her grip relaxing around the box as the woman walked away.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the assistant said, turning on her heel to face Gia once more. “Coach Mills wanted you to meet with Pukui, the new linebacker. He has a custody situation and wants to discuss an extended vacation.”
“Why doesn’t his manager contact me?” Gia replaced the pig on the table, flipping through the itinerary Cat had given her.
“It’s Mr. Pukui’s assertion that the discussion shouldn’t take more than a half hour of your time, if you wouldn’t mind and he’s very much opposed to giving his manager two hundred dollars for a half hour conversation he can manage on his own.”
Gia couldn’t blame him. “Fine,” she said, rubbing the inside of her ankle before she dismissed her assistant. “Set up a time…”
“Oh, he’s here now.”
“Wait…”
But the woman was out of the door and Gia spotted her depositing the flattened boxes she’d grabbed from her office and nodded as she spoke to someone she couldn’t see on the other side of the partition blocking her office from the waiting area. Linebackers. Players. Gia swore she was cursed by them. That mess had started early, at eighteen if she was honest with herself, but by now, she’d learned how to handle them.
Most players were all the same. They wanted field time and they wanted to be paid well for it. They wanted endorsements and they wanted the support of their fans and faculty. Most of all, they wanted loyalty.
Gia respected that, understood it, knew how to handle these guys when they came to her angling for extended vacations or pull with the coaches on who played for how long.
Two quick knocks on the door and Gia waved the guy in, frowning when her shoe slipped from her foot. She stood, trying to work her heel back in, her attention on her shoe and not the tall form walking toward her. Two awkward steps and she was around the desk, offering her hand to the linebacker, only just looking up at him as he took her hand in his.
“Mr. Pukui…”
“Miss Jilani,” he greeted, voice thick and so deep Gia swore she felt it rumble inside her gut. The man watched her, his attention on her fingers, then up her arm before he brushed a thumb over her knuckles.
It took Gia two full seconds to realize she hadn’t released his hand or been able to stop staring at his face. She’d seen handsome men before. Plenty of them. But she’d never seen one like him. Round, thick lips, a mild cleft chin and deep dimples in his cheeks.
There was something about this man Gia couldn’t quite place. Something she knew would leave her distracted if she let herself focus on it.
“So, Mr. Pukui,” she managed, forcing a smile. “Please, have a seat and we’ll discuss this vacation.”
He nodded, sitting straight, body relaxed, but strong as he began speaking. But Gia couldn’t focus, couldn’t quite understand what about this man had piqued so much of her attention in such a short time. He was handsome, but a lot of men are. He had a nice smile and was well spoken, but that wasn’t it either.
“So, there is an issue, you see just for that two week period…” he went on, shifting in his seat as Gia continued to stare, continued to zone out everything but that nagging constant feeling that there was something significant she was missing.
Pukui paused, jerking his gaze up, meetin
g Gia’s eyes before he leaned forward, elbows on his knees and that’s when she spotted it. The same rough leather cord. The twisted knot holding the pendant in place. The linebacker adjusted, pulling on his collar and the necklace broke free, the dark stone slipping onto his chest.
She had seen this piece before. Once, a long time ago, Luka wore that same obsidian pendant. The same one he’d dived fifty feet from the White Sands Beach in Oahu to dig up. He’d almost died that day. His family would have never given it away.
“Miss Jilani?” Pukui asked, smiling as he looked up at Gia. He looked to her, then down at his pendant, frowning when he spotted her staring. “This is from a…friend. An old friend.”
“I’ve only ever seen one like it before.”
Pukui nodded but didn’t ask her to explain. Instead he cleared his throat, acting as though he expected her to answer him. When she didn’t he lowered his shoulders. “So the vacation…”
Gia needed answers and she wouldn’t get them with the man staring up at her. “That’s fine, Pukui, as long as you’re back in time for spring training.”
“Of course.”
She stood, and he mimicked her taking her hand before she offered it. “Thank you, truly. I was going a little lolo over not being back there.” Gia jerked her hand back, but hurried to cover her quick reaction with a smile.
“We’re happy to help where we can, Mr. Pukui.”
“Thank you.”
The man smiled and, maybe from habit, maybe from self-consciousness, touched the pendant under his shirt before he nodded and left her office. Gia waited for him to enter the elevator before she called Cat into her office, shutting the door behind the woman as soon as she entered.
“Ma’am?” Cat tried, going silent when Gia waved her quiet.
“Kai Pukui,” she said, sitting on the edge of her desk. Out of habit, she grabbed the flying pig, rubbing her thumb along the smooth edge of one wing. “I need you to find out everything you can about him.”