Sometimes history got repeated. Lily saw that in her niece. There had been so much of Liam and Ellen in the things Zinnia did over the years. The way she didn’t hold back when something struck her as funny. Zee laughed without care, without the worry that someone would think she was too loud, her voice too high pitched. Just like her mother. That chirpy little laugh of Ellen’s got passed down same as Zee’s full mouth with a prominent bottom lip. That was a Campbell gift, something Lily had always envied about her brother’s features. She’d have killed for his perfect lips. But there was more, something more significant that Lily noticed had reappeared—it was in each step Zinnia made with Ano as they danced just outside the restaurant patio, twenty feet from the table where Lily sat in horrendous awkwardness. Zinnia had found someone special.

The way her niece moved with her man, the same look she got back from him, Lily had seen a million times passing between her brother and sister-in-law. They were a little lost in each other, like no one else in the world existed. It was in passing glances and mooning little gazes. As a kid, Lily had always rolled her eyes, thinking her brother and Ellen, with all their long looks and longer kisses, were stupid and embarrassing. Watching Zee and Ano now, Lily realized she was happy, if not a little surprised to see that look again.

She felt seventeen again, with that persistent, needy gaze of hers rushing over Keilen from across the rugby pitch. That had been the night he’d saved her. It was that rescue she’d relived a thousand times over the years. Even after her family was devastated by the fire and Lily and Zee escaped to the mainland, random memories came to her; things she could not remember with perfect clarity—the smell of her brother’s cologne or the joke Ellen used to tell when she was drunk, but one memory remained pristine in Lily’s mind—Keilen and the night he’d saved her. She’d kissed him at twenty-two, out on the Tiki Tommy’s patio, away from the crowd. But there was something sweeter about the rugby pitch rescue. Something that seemed more significant to her than the minutes she danced and made out with him.

“You want another?” The old woman in front of her had a tight smile as she held the pitcher of Mai Tais in front of Lily’s empty glass. Ano’s grandmother was a courteous hostess, and her small restaurant sold the most perfect poke bowls Lily’d ever had. In fact, she had never tasted food so good or been in such a friendly atmosphere in any other eatery on Oahu. But Lily got the feeling that this was a woman in control of her family. Leanni, she’d told Lily to call her, and it was a request made without any hesitation—as though she expected no refusals.

“Yes, please,” Lily answered the old woman returning the tight smile with one of her own. The smile didn’t lower as she filled Lily’s glass, but her eyes remained sharp, appraising as she watched the younger woman.

In return, Lily watched the old woman’s face and at the sight of her thick white hair gathered in a tight bun and the overlarge hibiscus she wore behind her left ear, she was reminded of her own grandmother. Lily’s family had come to Oahu some sixty years before, her great grandparents buying up a large parcel of land on the outskirts of Kaimuki. Their roots in the island ran deep and had for some time. But they had been considered haoles for decades. Outsiders to the locals until the years passed and the Campbell family became a fixture.

Lily and Liam played pee wee volleyball alongside local kids, and Lily had taken hula lessons for ten years as a girl. Their grandmother, the elder Lily Campbell, even took to wearing her thin, gray hair in a tight bun or loose down her back, flower always behind one ear. The vivid memories of her grandmother brought on a sudden rush of heartsickness.

Despite Leanni’s forced friendliness and appraising stare, the awkwardness suffocating Lily at that moment had nothing to do with critical old women.

“Good Mai Tai?” Keilen said, bringing Lily’s focus back to the present.

Yes, she thought to herself. It was very good. Everything here is good and sweet and a little overwhelming. But the drink was sweet too, with the smallest aftertaste she barely noticed. Why was he asking?

“Ano’s granny is my mother’s sister,” Keilen said over the hum of music and the mild crowd in the restaurant. “The recipe was my mom’s actually.”

Keilen acted as though it was perfectly normal, the height of sanity to be sitting next to Lily, his shoulder touching hers, that sweet, rich scent of his skin perfuming the air around them. The surprise that relaxed his features at the hospital when he saw her had instantly transformed the moment Zee went to him, nudging him closer to Lily, not the least subtle.

“Dr. K, you remember my Aunt Lily,” she’d said, tugging on Lily’s hand. Lily had barely noticed her niece’s smile and the obvious teasing tone in her voice. Lily’s body had shaken when Zinnia pulled her to stand directly in front of Keilen. “She looks good, right?”

Lily had planned on telling her niece to stop embarrassing her—that seemed to have been another of Liam’s traits passed down to Zee—but Keilen’s smile had stopped her. There’d been a look on his features that quelled some of the butterflies swarming in her stomach.

“She looks beautiful,” he’d said, seeming unable to keep the compliment back.

“Well,” Lily had replied, fiddling with the ends of her braid to distract herself from their stares and the rush of color that warmed over her cheeks. “So, are you hungry?” she’d asked Zee. “Can we grab dinner?”

“Sure. You hungry, Dr. K?”

He had been, apparently, and as Zee pulled Lily along into Keilen’s black Mercedes, filling the cab with her insistent questions and explanations on the neuro service she’d landed that month—Lily learned way more about how the attending cracked open his morning patient’s skull than she ever thought she’d need to know—Keilen’s attention got split between her niece’s endless explanation and his quiet focus on Lily as he kept shooting glances at her through the rearview mirror.

Now Keilen went on about his family’s Mai Tai recipe and how his auntie had managed to get the restaurant up and running.

“She worked nights for years. House keeper at Turtle Bay.” He moved a hand around, motioning first at the table, to the foot stretched out around it, then to the room. “She started selling meat pies and poke bowls out of a cooler she took to job sites. Then…she ended up here.”

Lily wasn’t interested in what he said, just that he spoke with his mouth near the curve of her earlobe with that rich, deep boom in his voice vibrating so close that she found it hard to listen to him and keep from spilling her drink down her front at the same time. It fascinated her, how time hadn’t quelled his pull. There were still strong emotions attached to him, most of it the small disappointment that their night together never really happened. For the most part, Lily thought on the reaction her body had at that moment—just being near him and how after all these years, how Keilen could make her feel awkward and smitten.

“Ano, come here. You too, Zinnia…” Leanni yelled, drawing Lily’s attention away from the smell of Keilen’s cologne and how warm he felt sitting next to her. At Leanni’s request, her niece and Ano broke apart, dutifully following the old woman.

Lily watched them as she fussed, pointing toward a closed off section of the restaurant. After a few moments, Zee deflated and Ano argued back with his grandmother. She didn’t like seeing her niece go still like that, or how her body language shifted—shoulders lowering and her eyes cast down as though she didn’t have anything to say to the old woman at all.

“What’s that about?” she asked Keilen, nodding toward them on the other side of their table.

“I’m not sure,” he answered, stretching an arm along the back of Lily’s chair to lean in for a better look. When Zinnia looked near to crying and Ano pulled her to his side, Keilen released a breath, leaning back against his chair. “Auntie Leanni can be a demanding.” He moved again, picking up his glass to take a sip, and Lily was distracted from her niece’s obvious discomfort. Keilen smelled good, like cologne, clean soap and something that reminded her of the beach. The smell made her mouth water.

Ano said something to his grandmother that made her shake her head, and he managed to distract Zee enough that they escaped Leanni and returned to the dance floor.

Lily understood what her niece saw in Ano. It was hard to miss the symmetrical features of his face, those sharp, knife-edge cheekbones, that angled jaw; even the long scar that ran through one eyebrow gave him a hint of danger, ruggedness that added to his appeal. One quick introduction, the briefest greeting of his kiss on Lily’s cheek had given her first glance at his eyes, how light they were, almost hazel and his complexion, not as dark as Keilen or Leanni, but a hint of something other than Polynesian in the shape of his face. 

But it wasn’t his features and the attractiveness of his body that Lily guessed made Zee eager to stick around. It was the slow smile he gave her, if Lily had to guess. It was the way he watched Zinnia’s mouth when she spoke, how he moved his gaze to hers, following each movement like he wanted to commit it to memory; how he seemed to act as though he couldn’t believe his luck, that this beautiful woman wanted him.

Lily got it, saw it just then when Ano kissed Zinnia’s forehead and took her in his arms, away from the music, from the slow-moving crowd to dance in the seclusion of a dark corner in the restaurant.

Keilen was a distraction for Lily as well. The winds outside picked up, circulated around the restaurant, and Lily shuddered, rubbing her palms along her bare arms.

Keilen didn’t miss the movement. “Cold?” he asked, leaning closer toward her, as though more than a decade hadn’t separated them. As though it was perfectly normal for him to be so close.

“A little, but I’ll survive.” She closed her eyes when he brushed his fingers down one arm. The movement felt good, familiar, but Lily reminded herself that this was too fast, that Keilen wasn’t the boy she’d left in the parking lot all those years ago. He was someone else entirely. So was she.

“The hair on your arm is standing on end.” He came so close then that Lily’s neck warmed from his hot breath. “I…can warm you up if you want.”

She couldn’t help the mild snort she released at that, and Keilen at least seemed to realize how eager he sounded. She raised her eyes, learning back, out of his reach to watch him. “Oh, I bet you could.”

Despite the mild amusement that surfed between them just then, there came a moment when everything slowed and quieted. Lily had felt it once before, the first time Keilen had kissed her. Her universe went still just looking at his face. So much had changed in him. So much remained exactly the same. Lily wanted to mark the differences, see where he was different, to measure how he’d changed. Mostly, she wanted to keep still in the look he gave her. She wanted to hold the flood of memories coming to her just then, cherish them because she knew the feeling they invoked might never come again.

“Why is it so easy for you to make me act this way?” Keilen’s voice was low, soft and Lily let herself get lost in the tone, in the warm rhythm of his words. There was a tease there, the smallest flirtation that reminded her that once Keilen had been the dream. Her dream.

“How am I making you act?” she asked, not keeping herself from enjoying the feel of his touch over her arm, down to her wrist.

“Like I’m twenty-three again. Like I could forget everything just to keep that look on your face.”

He was impossible to resist. Despite everything she wanted, all the things she ran from, Lily found that ignoring Keilen would never be possible. There was too much sensation, too much emotion wrapped up in him, in that smile, in the warm gaze he moved over her face.

The movement around them shifted and realization came back to her. “But we’re not kids anymore and this isn’t Tommy’s,” she reminded him. There were clinking flatware and laughter that made its own music. There was an audience around them, curious stares she only remembered when Keilen stretched a finger to touch her cheek. “This,” she said, tugging on his wrist so he’d lower his arm, “this would not be good. Not right now.”

The smile held, followed by the smallest nod, and Keilen sat back, stroking the smattering of hair on his chin that seemed to be trying to grow into a beard. “No, not right now.” Keilen nodded again, as though there was a decision he made for himself and then glanced across the restaurant, nodding at Ano and Zinnia.

“What do you make of those two?”

She could say a thousand things, all of them concerns, but kept her opinions to herself. Zee’s earlier frustration seeming to have passed, her niece and Ano looked so happy together, dancing close, stealing kisses with every downbeat that came across the speakers.

“They seem happy.”

Keilen took his glass, smiling behind the rim. “They are. I’ve watched them close these past few months. Looks real enough to me.” He finished off his Mai Tai and set the glass on the table, the moisture from the wet bottom absorbed by the linen tablecloth. “They have a lot in common. Both lost their folks, both loyal to the family they have left.”

Lily went on watching them, wondering if it was only their losses that drew them together. “Is that enough?” In her periphery, Lily noticed Keilen staring at her. “Loss and loyalty? Is that enough to sustain them? Shouldn’t there be more?”

If he disagreed, Keilen didn’t say. Instead, he laughed, pushing back from the table to reach out a hand toward Lily. “I got no answers for you.” That scent wafted around her again, when he leaned down to speak in her ear. “I’m no expert on relationships, but I know when I see something good.” He cleared his throat, shooting her a smile that made her face heat. “I also know we never got to finish our last dance. Want to try again?”

“That would be a bad idea,” she said, taking his hand despite her words.

“You’ll do it anyway?”

Lily shrugged, letting Keilen bring her out to the center of the dance floor. “I have a tendency to do the worst possible things for myself. Why stop now?”

“There she is,” he said, pulling her close, smile wider, dimples dented as though he’d only caught a look at the real her. It made the smallest warmth creep over her chest when Keilen looked at her like that. “I wondered if I see you being reckless. It’s been a while. Time makes us strangers to ourselves.”

She considered him a moment, agreeing but only offering him a nod. She fit perfectly against him when he held her and a flood of emotions came back to her. She hadn’t felt them in years, not with anyone aside from this man. “But this island, home, it reminds us.”

The song was familiar, something sweet and slow that Lily couldn’t quite place, but she hummed along with it anyway, letting Keilen led, letting him brush his fingers too low on her waist because it felt good. The entire day had.

Zee might be reckless with her decisions, she might be making a mistake committing herself to a pretty boy she didn’t know that well, but she looked happy. She seemed content, a feeling Lily hadn’t felt in years.

Until now.

Until Keilen took her hand and reminded her of what she’d left behind all those years ago. He felt solid and safe. The shape of his body and the pressure of his large hands against her back reminded her what it was to be cherished, even if it didn’t last. It was a single dance, something that didn’t meant a thing at all, but it made Lily a little drunk. It reminded her how easy it was to let herself feel. How simple it could be, to let go, to forget there were worries waiting for her on the mainland.

“You still feel good,” Lily whispered, half praying he hadn’t heard her. It was more of those loose words leaving her mouth before she gave them much thought. But he had heard her, that much she could tell. Those four small words worked like a spell, moving Keilen’s arm to tighten around her, his fingers to fist in her shirt. And when his mouth brushed against her neck, Lily thought she could forget everything, right in that moment.

It would be easy to let it all go. Those worries about her career, about the stalker, were things, situations out of her control. In New Orleans, there were stresses that came with the job; loneliness was the only reward. Money was fleeting. It filled no voids and even the work Lily had long believed she loved had grown tedious and unsurprising. If she thought too hard about the bad in her life, away from the island, away from her niece, then she could half convince herself that running away would be easy.

There was a lot she could have in Oahu. There was a lot to take. At least, that was what her imagination told her. That’s what hope did to you when you let your guard fall.

“Lily?” Keilen said, weaving his fingers between her loosening braid, playing with the thick strands until she pulled away from him to stare at his face. “You still feel good too. You feel better than good.”

He waited for her; a hopeful look she recognized as an invitation. He wanted her to take it. He wanted Lily to take everything he offered and she would, she thought. There needed to be only a half a second to weigh the good and bad of tasting Keilen Rivers after all this time. But it was a half second too long and whatever hopeful thoughts she had, shattered the closer he came to her, the sweeter the sensation of his breath on her face felt. A half a second was all it took, he was right there and then, he wasn’t.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a loud shrieking voice came, followed by Keilen behind tugged back. The voice got louder and Lily felt her stomach twist as Malini Wilson glared at her, her grip on Keilen’s arm tight and unrelenting. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my husband?”