I close my eyes, run an unsteady hand through my damp hair.

“Riding me,” he adds.

I’ve stopped breathing. I press my forehead to the steering wheel, hear the rain come down on my roof, the windshield, the street, and I’m not in Seattle anymore. I’m not in Hawaii, either. Frankly, I don’t know where I am. Who I am. It’s unnerving and yet exciting.

Hearing my silence, Kai laughs softly. “Still there?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good. For a minute I thought you might have hung up.”

“Oh, no.”

“So how are you, girl?”

“Good. Great. Work’s been busy.”

“Is that why you haven’t called?”

I lean back in my seat, start the engine. “Was I supposed to call?”

“I hoped you would.”

I turn on the windshield wipers, allow the back window to defog. “Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because I’m good in bed?”

He laughs some more. “Yes. And because I like you.”

And that, I think, settles that. I’m going back to Hawaii. It’s just a question of when.

“Tell me I heard you wrong,” Anne says with a groan. “Tell me you didn’t say you’re really going back.”

It’s one o’clock a day later, and I’ve met Anne for a quick coffee. But it’s not the coffee chat either of us expected. Anne’s currently looking at me as if I’m out of my mind, and for a moment I wonder if I am.

No, not for a moment, but for many moments. I’ve had this same conversation with myself, the worry that I’m rushing into something, that I’ve no idea what I’m rushing toward.

But I want to go back. I want to see Kai again. “I love Hawaii,” I say, voice calm, absolutely even, because there’s no way I can let her know about all my self-doubt or Anne will never back off then. Anne’s a rock. Beautiful. Smart. Solid in the middle, whereas I’m definitely more flighty, definitely less… rocklike, because I refuse to use the word unstable. I’m not unstable. I’m just a little less grounded. And almost immediately I think of Diamond Head and Shark’s Cove and the red rocky hill we climbed down to reach the beach for snorkeling.

“Hawaii’s lovely, but, Jack…” Her voice drifts off, and she’s staring at me over her cappuccino. “It’s Hawaii.”

“Right.”