Page 36 of Broken Hearts (Hibiscus Hearts #1)

Alana is openly crying at the board Mitch commissioned for her, and as much as I’d like to give her shit about being all emotional and shit, I know this is a huge moment for her. This is Alana’s dream, and no one believed in her more than Mitch.

I get why she stopped training when he died, because with him gone, who did she have to believe in her anymore? I mean, we all did, of course, but it was different with Mitch. I understood that more than most.

“What do you think?”

I ask, slinging an arm around her shoulders.

She’s standing beside me, hands clasped together and in front of her face, as the tears continue to stream down her cheeks. “Nate, it’s fucking awesome,”

she whispers, looking up at me. “Thank you.”

I lift a shoulder, shrugging. “I only did the design. The board is all Tanner.”

“I know, but the graphic, it’s so cool, so me,”

she says with a laugh, turning to give me another hug before stepping over to where Tanner stands and throwing her arms around him.

“He’d want you to continue, you know that, don’t you?”

Tanner says his arms around her.

“I know,”

she says, nodding. “It’s just so fucking hard with him gone.”

Tanner pulls back, smiling at her as he rests his hands on her shoulders. “I know it is. But we’re all here for you, and when you win, we’ll all be there to congratulate you too.”

“And to say we told you so,”

I add, smiling.

Alana scoffs. “When I win? I think that’s a bit of a long shot.”

Tanner grins, jerking his thumb at the board. “Not with this beautiful board it isn’t.”

Alana laughs, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Oh, I see. It’s got nothing to do with me and my skill, has it?”

“Ahhh, there she is,”

he says with a wink. Alana’s jaw drops, her mouth opening into a tiny O as she stares at Tanner.

“Guess you’ve got no excuse now, do you?”

I say, nudging her with my shoulder.

She puts her hands on her hips, glaring at Tanner and then me. “You two are assholes,”

she mutters before turning to Sage and smiling at her. “Thank you for this,”

she says, blowing out a breath. “I still don’t know if I should compete, but this…this is amazing.”

“You’ll compete,”

I say, pinching her side. “You know you wanna prove all those pros wrong.”

“Yep,”

Tanner seconds, chuckling.

“I know what you’re doing,”

she now says.

With a laugh, I cross my arms over my chest. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

Alana rolls her eyes. “You’re trying to trick me into doing it.”

I smile. “I’m not trying to trick you. I’m just telling you, you’ll do it,”

I say with a smirk.

“Yep, me too,”

Tanner chimes in.

Alana throws her hands up now, scoffing as she turns back to everyone and says, “Whatever. Can we just get drunk now and welcome Sage to her new home?”

Everyone cheers, Tanner and I sharing a knowing glance because there’s not a chance in hell Alana is going to be able to resist the challenge we just threw at her. She’s stubborn as hell and has always been determined to prove everyone wrong, and this will be no different.

“Better start training again,”

I tease as Tanner adds, “Yeah, you’ll need to learn how to master this beautiful board.”

Alana snorts before turning to walk back to where everyone else has been watching this unfold.

As she walks away, I remember the other thing Mitch did for her. “Alana,”

I call, closing the distance between us. “There’s something else,”

I add, pulling the envelope from my pocket. She glances down, her eyes widening when she sees her name on the front, written in Mitch’s distinct handwriting. “I’m here whenever you’re ready to read it, okay.”

She looks up at me, her eyes filled with tears and a million questions as she whispers, “Did you…”

“Yeah, I did. Sage too.”

Alana nods, shoving the envelope into her pocket as she wipes away her tears before pushing up on her toes to kiss my cheek. “Thank you, Nate,”

she whispers before joining the others, not quite ready to read it yet.

Just as we move to join them, Sage grabs my hand, holding me back. When I turn to her, she’s smiling up at me, her eyes glistening.

“You okay?” I ask.

Sage nods, tugging me closer as she wraps her arms around my waist. “I am so very okay, perfect even.”

Smiling, I lean down to drop a kiss on her lips. “You are. I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Home,”

Sage corrects, squeezing her arms.

“Home,”

I repeat, loving the sound of that. “Should we?”

I ask, tipping my head toward the others.

“Yeah,”

she replies, pushing up on her toes to brush her lips against mine. “But not too drunk, you have a promise to keep, remember?”

Chuckling, I kiss her again. “Babe, how could I forget.”

“Are you really sure about this?”

I ask a week later, as Sage taps away at her laptop.

We’re sitting on her bed, well, our bed now I guess, Sage with her laptop in front of her and me sitting behind her, an arm wrapped around her shoulders as I watch her work.

“Yeah, why not?”

she asks, glancing back over her shoulder at me.

“Um, because we could get a total random in there,”

I say, nodding at the screen. “Or a fucking weirdo.”

Sage laughs, turning back to her computer. “We get to veto them, Nate.”

I gently bite her shoulder. “Oh, and you think weirdos put that they’re weirdos in their profile?”

She bursts out laughing, clicking through the pictures of what is now my old house. We’ve officially been living together in the apartment for the past week, all of my stuff now here. It’s kind of crowded, but neither of us seems to care, loving just being together.

For me, I love the permanence of it. Love that I get to wake up to Sage every morning and fall asleep beside her every night. Love that I get to share all these little moments with her. It wouldn’t matter if we did that here or on a patch of sand on the beach, as long as she was with me.

Sage is home to me, not a place.

“No, obviously,”

she says, jabbing her elbow softly into my stomach. “But we can check their reviews and shit. Airbnbs are like the new thing, Nate,”

she adds, turning to give me a quick kiss. “It’ll give The Pipe Dream even more publicity and make you even more money.”

“I don’t care about the money,”

I say, narrowing my brow when I spy one of my drawings hanging on the wall of my old living room. “What is that?”

I ask, pointing at the screen.

Sage turns to me again, one hand on my cheek. “I asked Tanner for your old board sketches,”

she says, her eyes soft as she watches me. “I wanted to showcase your work, and he said he was happy to give them to me. You don’t mind, do you?”

she now asks. “You’re crazy talented, Nate, and I?—”

The rest of her words are cut off as I crush my mouth against hers in a hard kiss.

Sage smiles, her mumbled, “I guess you don’t,”

buried in our kisses.

I cannot believe this woman, cannot believe I got so lucky with her. Every fucking day, she surprises me, and I don’t think I can ever thank Mitch enough for bringing her into my life.

“I fucking love you,”

I say, resting my forehead against hers.

She cups my jaw in her hand. “I know, and I love you,”

she whispers. “So can we list it? If we get any weirdos, I promise we’ll take it down, call it done.”

I smile, lifting my gaze to hers. “Let’s do it,”

I say. “I trust you.”

She smiles at that, leaning in to give me another quick kiss before she hits post on the listing she’s created. We both watch as the page reloads, the new listing of a one-bedroom cottage in a beachside town on Maui now live.

“Okay, so I guess we just wait,”

Sage says, blowing out a breath.

I scoff, picking up the laptop and moving it to the nightstand before pulling Sage back onto the bed so she’s lying on top of me. It’s late in the afternoon, the shop is closed, and we have nowhere else we need to be.

“Oh, I think we can think of something to do in the meantime.”

She giggles, pushing the hair back from my face. “Oh yeah, such as?”

Grinning, I slide my hands up her side, pulling her tank top up and over her head before throwing it on the floor. I unclasp her bra next, my mouth going dry at the sight of her naked chest. Moving my hands to her hips, I hoist her up my body so I can suck one of her nipples into my mouth.

“I don’t know, maybe something that involves both of us being naked,”

I murmur, gently biting the hardened peak.

Sage rests her hands on either side of me, pushing herself up so she can straddle my hips. I’m already fucking hard, and when she discovers this, she smirks. “What like taking a shower?”

she teases.

My hands move to her ass as hers now rest on my bare chest, her fingers gliding down to trace the ridges of muscle on my stomach. “I was thinking more along the lines of me making you come with my mouth and then my dick,”

I say, grinding her against me. “But we can make that happen in the shower too.”

Sage laughs, leaning in to kiss me. “No, I’m happy with your suggestion,”

she whispers.

I hook my fingers into the panties she wears, tugging them down a little. “So how about you get these off and then get up here and sit on my face.”

She grins down at me, but just as she shifts to get off me, a loud ping sounds from her laptop, snapping her attention to the nightstand.

“No, nope, no,”

I say, my grip on her hips tightening.

“Just let me look,”

she says, smiling. “It could be a weirdo and it’ll all be over, and we can get back to doing this,”

she adds, wiggling her ass.

I growl, sliding my hands up to cup her boobs. “Fine, have a look.”

She laughs, dropping a quick kiss on my lips before reaching over to grab her laptop. She flops down onto the bed beside me, lying on her stomach as she clicks on the new inquiry about the house.

“Oh, someone from Australia,”

she says, clicking on their profile, as she scrolls down to the reviews. “Has a lot of good reviews. Clean, quiet, very friendly, definitely not a weirdo.”

I roll over, so I am half lying on her, my hand sliding up and down her back as I look at the reviews of the person that might be coming to stay in my old place. Not that I really think of it as my place, not anymore. I might have only been officially living here for a week, but I pretty much stayed here every night before that anyway. Besides, I’ve never really been attached to anything except Sage.

“I think it could be good, what do you think?”

Sage asks, glancing at me. “He wants to stay for like three weeks too, which is good money.”

Chuckling, I slide my hand down to her ass, squeezing. “Babe, we own a ten million dollar plot of land, I don’t think we need to worry about three weeks’ worth of rent.”

She lifts a hand, pulling my face to hers. “I know,”

she says, smirking against my mouth. “But this could be fun.”

Smiling, I kiss her again, my hand slipping into her panties. “I know something that’s fun.”

Sage laughs. “Yes, I know, and the sooner we make a decision about this, the sooner we can get back to that,”

she says. “So come on, what do you think?”

I turn back to the screen, my hand still on her ass, my chin resting on her shoulder as I look at this stranger who might soon be living in our space. I know this is a good idea and really, it’s no different to what Mitch did for me when I was younger. And even though we will make money off this, I also know that Sage is doing this for other reasons too.

“Flynn Roberts,”

I murmur, my eyes moving to his profile picture, which is of a guy on a surfboard, flying above an impressive wave. I burst out laughing, dropping a kiss on Sage’s shoulder as I say, “Fuck, dude’s a surfer, he can definitely stay.”

“Nate!”

Sage squeals, as I reach over to click the accept booking button before closing the laptop and pushing it to the side.

Then I flip Sage onto her back, moving so I am now hovering over her. “Now, where were we?”

I murmur before kissing my way down her body, pulling her panties off as I go.

We hope you loved reading Nate and Sage’s story of grief, falling in love and finding your person. Looking for more angst? We’ve got you covered with Flynn and Alana’s story, Reckless Hearts.

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