Page 4 of Heartless Stepbrother

Our last day together.

My chest tightened.

I missed it. Iachedfor it. The familiar rhythm of my life. The careless chaos. The wind through my bedroom window. The sound of my friends laughing like the world would never end.

“Almost there, love.”

A soft voice drifted through the haze of my thoughts, gentle enough to cut through the static. I turned, blinking back to the present. One of the flight attendants stood beside me, her smile small but kind, the sort of practiced warmth that still somehow felt human. Fatigue shadowed her eyes, but there was sincerity there too, fragile, fleeting, like a candle fighting against the cabin’s dim light.

“Just a few more hours until paradise.”

Paradise.

I returned the smile, but it didn’t quite reach.

Kauai. The Garden Isle. My mother’s wedding.

And somewhere on the other side of that ceremony… a new house. A new school. A new name on the mailbox.

Maddox.

The name flickered before my eyes surrounded by shadowed faces. Unsmiling. Remote.

Something told me they wouldn’t be waiting at the airport with a lei and a hug.

No.

They’d be the storm.

And I’d be the girl standing in its eye.

CHAPTER THREE

LUNA

Theairhitmelike a soft sigh the second I stepped off the plane.

Warm. Saturated with moisture. A tropical balm that clung to my skin and slipped beneath my clothes like a whispered promise.

The flight from Sydney had ended hours earlier in Honolulu, a blur of customs lines and too-bright terminals that smelled of metal and jet fuel. I’d boarded a smaller plane after that, one that felt more fragile, more human, the kind that trembled against the sky as though it knew it didn’t belong there. I’d watched the Pacific glitter beneath us under the rising sun until the island appeared like emeralds rising out of blue eternity. By the time the wheels touched down in Kauai, my body was heavy with exhaustion, my mind stitched together with too many thoughts that refused to quiet.

It was the opposite of the arctic sterility I’d spent hours inhaling, dry, synthetic, laced with anxiety and memories I couldn’t outrun.

Here, the air smelled alive.

Sweet plumeria. Crushed leaves. Sea salt curling off the wind. Earth and heat and something that smelled almost like forgiveness.

I let my eyes close for a second, just to feel it. Just to breathe it in like it might stitch me back together.

But peace was a fleeting thing. My heartbeat quickened again as I merged into the steady tide of passengers flowing toward baggage claim, my carry-on cutting into my shoulder, my body aching with stiffness and the weight of too many what-ifs.

She was here.

Shewould be waiting.

My mum.

It had been six months since I’d last seen her. Since our last hurried goodbye in an airport much colder, much grayer than this. A long-distance relationship in ten-minute video calls and texted hearts, stretched across time zones and oceans.