Page 2 of Broken Hearts (Hibiscus Hearts #1)

“Nate?”

“Out here,”

I yell from the storeroom at the back of the surf shop. Alana wanders in, stopping in the doorway, she crosses her arms over her chest. “Hey, what’s up?”

I ask as I shuffle around some new boards that just came in, trying to find space for them. I don’t even know what’s going to happen with the shop now that Mitch is gone. It’s not something I want to think about.

“How you doing?”

she asks, giving me a small smile.

I shrug. “Same as I was yesterday,”

I reply, even though that feels like a lie. I have no idea how I feel or what I’m even supposed to feel. It still doesn’t feel real.

She takes in the small space, her eyes moving over all the stock that both of us know like the back of our hand. “I still can’t believe he’s gone,”

she whispers, her blue eyes filling with tears.

I blow out a breath, making my way over to her. I drop an arm around her shoulders and pull her close. Alana loops her arm around my waist, her head falling to my shoulder. “Yeah, me either,” I say.

I’ve worked in this shop for the better part of nine years, and this is not something I ever contemplated happening. Not in all the mornings Mitch and I surfed together or all the times he went out alone, ignoring the warnings people would invariably give him about surfing late or by himself.

The guy was born to be on the ocean, and he wasn’t ever going to let anyone tell him different. And even though I have no idea what I’m going to do without him, I know that if there was ever a way he had to go, it was always going to be on the water. It’s the only piece of comfort I can take right now, knowing he died doing something he loved.

“What do you think we should do about the shop?” she asks.

“Open it,”

I immediately say.

“Do you think that’s the right thing to do though? I mean?—”

“Hell yeah, I think it’s the right thing to do. Mitch would not want us sitting around mourning him or whatever, he’d want us to get on with it, to get more people surfing and enjoying the waves like he did,”

I say, the words coming out of me in a rush.

“Yeah, but it’s not our shop,”

Alana now whispers. “Is it even our call to make?”

“Fuck it,”

I tell her. “I’ve worked here since I was sixteen. It’s as much my call to make as anyone else’s. Besides, who else can we ask? It’s not like Mitch has any other family, does he? Well, besides us anyway,”

I tack on, even though we aren’t actually related.

That doesn’t mean I don’t consider him family, though. Mitch is the closest thing I have to a father, and he’s someone who has always been there for me, no matter what. It’s why losing him hurts so fucking badly because I honestly never thought I’d have to picture my life without him in it. I thought for sure we’d still be surfing waves together when he was ninety.

“Yeah, so about that,”

Alana says, pulling away from me.

“What?”

She bites her bottom lip, her gaze shifting as she looks around the storeroom again. “So I might have done something,”

she finally says, a nervousness in her voice now.

“Alana, what is it?”

I ask, my hands on her shoulders as I turn her to face me. “What have you done exactly?”

She scrubs her hands down her face before pushing them back through her long brown hair. “I called Mitch’s daughter,”

she admits, her eyes dropping to stare at her feet.

I blink, trying to understand the words that are coming out of her mouth, words that make zero sense to me. “Mitch has a daughter?”

I finally get out.

Alana’s head snaps up. “Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t fucking know that,”

I say, suddenly hurt that a man I thought of as a father didn’t tell me something as huge as the fact that he has a daughter. “How the fuck do you know?”

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, a sheepish look on her face as she says, “He told me once, a couple of months ago. He was really drunk, and I don’t think he meant to say anything. When he sobered up the next day, he swore me to secrecy. To be honest, I thought you already knew. You guys were so close. I guess I just assumed he’d sworn you to secrecy too.”

I step back, my hand in my hair again as I start to pace the small space of the storeroom, my brain trying to process this piece of information. “What do you know about her?”

I eventually ask.

Alana shrugs again. “Literally nothing,”

she says. “Only that she lives in New York, and he hasn’t seen her in years.”

“But you called her?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

She takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she stands there watching me. “I thought she should know,”

she finally says. “She is his daughter.”

“A daughter he hasn’t seen in years,”

I spit out, suddenly angry that this person even exists, that she gets to have a bigger claim to Mitch than I do. “How’d you even get her number?”

Alana’s eyes flick to the roof, and I know exactly what she’s going to say before she says it. “You went through his apartment?”

I say, my tone harsh.

“I mean, I didn’t go through it,”

she says defensively. “I just had a look to see if I could find her details. She deserves to know, Nate. She’s his daughter, and none of this is her fault.”

“Oh really, and why don’t they talk to each other then? Why hasn’t he seen her in years? Why the fuck didn’t he tell any of us about her?”

I’m shouting now, my heart pounding in my chest as anger courses through me. I know this isn’t Alana’s fault, but she’s the one telling me, so I’m taking it out on her.

“I don’t know why they don’t talk, Nate,”

Alana shouts back at me, clearly having had enough of my attitude. “He never told me any of those details. All he ever said to me was how much my eyes reminded him of his daughter’s and as soon as he’d said it, I could tell he regretted it. When I asked him about her, he tried to dismiss it, said she lived in New York, and he rarely saw her, and I was not to mention her again. To anyone.”

“Fucking hell,”

I groan, blowing out a breath as I try to process all of this. It’s fucking hard enough having lost him, but to find out there are things about him that I had no clue about, that just feels like maybe I never really knew him at all.

“There’s more,”

she says, her words low, like she’s afraid to tell me.

I roll my eyes as I meet her gaze. “What?”

“I invited her to come to the memorial,”

she says, not looking away. “I sent her the details and told her when it was. She said she’d come.”

“Fuck,”

is all I can say as I shove past her and walk out of the storeroom, not wanting to hear anymore.

In the end, we don’t open the shop, at least not from what I can tell from my spot out the back, but I don’t bother to get up to check or work my shift.

The Pipe Dream is an iconic shop on Maui, and Mitch has been running it for as long as I can remember. I don’t think it’s ever been closed a day in its life, and I’d hate to think what he’d think about it being closed today.

Still after everything Alana admitted to me, I just can’t bring myself to be there. Or be near her. I feel hurt and angry, betrayed by a man who I worshiped. So I do what any grown twenty-four-year-old guy does, and I sit out the back of the shop, in the grassed area that he always used for barbecues and random get-togethers, and I spend the day drinking beers from his fridge.

“You ready to talk to me again?”

Alana says as she wanders outside and drops into the chair beside mine, plucking the Corona out of my hand and taking a sip. She doesn’t give it back to me, and to be honest, that’s probably for the best considering how many I’ve already drunk.

“I don’t know,”

I say, stretching my legs out and propping them up on one of the makeshift tables out here. “You ready to tell me what else you know that I don’t?”

“Nate,”

she says, her hand resting on my arm. “Don’t be like that. It was an accident when I found out, and like I said, I honestly thought you already knew. I wasn’t keeping it from you on purpose.”

“Yeah, but he was,”

I spit out. “Why the fuck wouldn’t he tell me something like that? I thought…I thought we…”

I trail off, not wanting to admit that I thought he and I were closer than that. That we didn’t just work together and surf together, we shared a bond that was the closest thing I had to a father-type relationship. God knows my own dad wasn’t ever in the picture; neither of my parents really were, and Mitch knew that, knew all my fucking secrets.

But he’d kept one from me. A really fucking big one, and I have no idea why or what I’m supposed to do about that.

Alana squeezes my arm. “I’m sure he had his reasons,”

she says quietly. “Mitch was…well, he was a complicated guy at times, you know that.”

I blow out a laugh as I slide down in my chair, looking up at the apartment that sits above his shop. The apartment he lived in, the front balcony giving him the perfect view of the day’s swell. He loved this place, and even though he’d had countless offers to buy him out over the years, he never once entertained the idea of selling.

I think he knew that most people wanted to buy it so they could flatten the building and put a hotel or some high-rise apartment complex on the land, and Mitch didn’t want that.

It’s part of the reason everyone loves him too, that he protected this space and this business that serves not just the islanders, but the tourists who flock here too. It’s a tight-knit community here, and Mitch was revered for how much he wanted to keep it that way. And while he knew the tourists were a big part of how we survive, he didn’t want this place to become commercialized like so much of Honolulu has.

“What if she wants to get rid of this place?”

I eventually say, my words a whisper.

“We don’t even know if Mitch had a will,”

Alana says, taking another sip of beer. “Maybe he made plans for it.”

I roll my head to the side to look at her. “Or maybe he didn’t, and it will go to her because she’s family,”

I say, air quoting the word family. “Then what the fuck happens to us? To this place?”

“I don’t know, Nate,”

Alana says, finishing off the rest of my beer. “But there’s nothing we can do until she gets here.”

The next day, I force myself to get up with the sun, heading out for a surf to clear my head. I definitely had way too many beers yesterday, and the coldness of the water is great for washing away my hangover.

It also helps to clear my head about what Alana had told me, and while I still haven’t forgiven Mitch for not telling me about his daughter, I know I was wrong to take that anger out on Alana. None of this is her fault, even if I do wish she would have talked to me first before calling this mystery daughter.

And I know I need to apologize to her for that.

After I’ve surfed for an hour or so, I head back to the beach, grabbing my towel from the sand and slinging it over my shoulder. With my board tucked under my arm, I head up the beach and across the road to the shop, planning to shower in the outdoor shower on the side of the building before changing, grabbing a coffee from the place next door and then opening up the shop.

I prop my board against the wall, turning the tap on in the shower before standing under the cold water that always takes a few minutes to warm up. It’s freezing but perfect for taking the remaining edges of my hangover off. As I step under the water in my boardshorts, I hear a voice say, “Excuse me?”

I look up to find a gorgeous blonde chick standing by the open side of the shower, watching me. She’s clearly walked around here, which is unusual and when I take in what she’s wearing – the long sundress and flip flops, the pale skin – I know she’s not a local. Still, she’s fucking hot, and if she’s a tourist just looking for some fun, even better.

“Hey,”

I say, giving her a wide smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m…I’m, um, looking for someone,”

she says, clearly nervous.

My grin widens as I step out of the water, pushing my hair back. “I can be someone,”

I say, not missing the way her eyes drop, taking in my body.

I know I’m in good shape; years and years of surfing have toned my body into something that girls like to look at. And this girl is no different.

She blushes, her eyes snapping back to mine as she says, “Alana Hale? I’m looking for Alana Hale.”

My head tips to the side as I take in this girl again. There’s something weirdly familiar about her, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. “She’s not here yet,”

I say, glancing at my watch. “Maybe in an hour or so.”

“Okay,”

she replies with a nod. “I’ll come back then.”

Her gaze meets mine before she moves to turn away and as she does, I suddenly get hit with the weirdest sense of déjà vu.

“Wait,”

I say, my hand out to her, before I remember I’m wet.

The girl stops, turning back to me, and it’s then that I see it. When the pieces finally click together, and I know exactly who she is and why she’s here. Her eyes. Her eyes are crystal clear blue, like the color of the ocean on the perfect summer day.

They are also the eyes that looked across at me from the shop nearly every day for the past nine years.

“You’re his daughter,”

I say, my words a statement, not a question.

“What?”

she asks, confused.

“You’re her,”

I repeat, taking another step toward her. “You’re Mitch’s daughter.”

She doesn’t say anything, just blinks at me, her eyes filling with tears.