Heat Wave (36 page)

“I hate this,” she says, looking sick. “I hate that you’re leaving, I hate that you’re leaving him broken hearted. Don’t you think he’s gone through a lot with Juliet? Now you’re going to tell him you never loved him? Do you know what that’s going to do to him?”

“I can’t live with the guilt—”

“Did you ever think that maybe you should?” she questions. “That it’s a better sacrifice if he loses the hotel and you live with the guilt over that then it is for him to keep it and lose you?”

Maybe it is selfish. But I still think it’s the only way he’ll come out of it.

“What would you do?” I say to her. “If you were in my position. Forget Charlie, he’s a piece of shit. But think if you were in love. What would you do?”

“People don’t like having their life decided for them,” she says after mulling it over.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Because I don’t know.” She sighs. “I just want you both to be happy. And this way neither of you will be.”

“Yeah well, maybe it was a mistake that I came here to begin with.”

“Ron…”

I push past her. “I have to pack.”

“You can’t be going now.”

“My father sent me an email. I’m on the eleven-p.m. red-eye to Seattle.”

“What the actual fuck?” she practically explodes, following me into my bedroom. “You are fucking joking!”

“I need a ride to the airport soon,” I tell her. “Not Charlie.”

“Dude, no, no, no. You can’t just up and leave.”

“I have to! I told you I can’t face him, he’ll know and he’ll make me stay and he’ll give everything up for me when he shouldn’t. What the fuck am I supposed to do, just keep this a secret until the time is right? There is no right time, this is all horrible, it’s so horrible!”

“But…what about me? And Johnny? Daniel? Jin? Nikki? Your
ohana
? What about this place? What about everything you’ve worked so hard for here?”

I swallow hard, my nose clogged, my eyes hazy with tears. “You, Johnny, Jin, Nikki, and Daniel will no longer be here if I stay. We will all lose everything. Logan will lose the most. Unless you have extra money lying around to buy out my parents, nothing will change. Maybe you’ll keep your jobs when someone else buys it, maybe you won’t. But your life, our lives here, as we know it, won’t be the same if I don’t go. So you can see, I have to. It’s not just Logan, it’s all of you. And everything will go back to the way it was before I ever showed up.”

“But it won’t be the same,” Kate says, wiping away a tear. “Because you brought us all even closer together. Your effect on Logan is the same on us all. We’re all closer, a better
ohana
. Without you here, we won’t have that. We’ll be in mourning all over again.”

I stare at her for a few moments until I pull her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. This is the only thing I know to do.”

And then I start packing. Kate watches me for a bit, then walks into the kitchen to crack open some rum, then comes back and sits on my bed, drinking and watching me until she finally joins in.

“You know he’ll come for you,” she says to me. “You know he won’t let you escape.”

My heart pangs. “There’s a lot of ocean and a lot of land between here and Chicago.”

“He’ll come,” she says. “I won’t say a word because I promised, but he’ll come. And then you better be ready.”

She’s trying to plant hope inside me. I have learned from the last time that the hope that gets in the cracks is the one driving the knife at the end.

So I don’t listen. Instead I take out the Moonwater Inn stationary and pen and I write a note. The hardest note I’ve ever had to write because every single line of it is an absolute lie.

I have to break Logan’s heart into pieces in order to get out of here. I have to have him hate me in order for him to believe it. The letter is what will decide whether Logan will come back for me or not.

Dear Logan,

I write this because I know if I say it to your face, I will feel sorry for you and change my mind. I know it makes me seem like a coward to do it like this and maybe I am. But this is the only way.

You’ve been a great boss to me and a great friend during my months here at Moonwater, but I’m afraid it’s time for us to part ways. I am returning your ring, as beautiful as it is. I know it was given to me with the best intentions, and the manner of your proposal made it so hard to say no. I didn’t want to embarrass you or hurt you in front of your staff.

But the truth is, last night made me realize that I have to stop what we have now, that it’s gone too far. I have played you and for that I am sorry.

I don’t love you Logan, and that’s the hard truth of it. I wish I did. It would make things so much easier. But while I care about you, I don’t love you. Whatever we have shared was purely physical, and more than that, I was with you for all the wrong reasons.

I have always been in Juliet’s shadow, from the very start. When she died, I felt like I would never get a chance for closure and I would never measure up to her. This you know about me.

I’m ashamed and afraid to admit this but here it goes: I was only with you because I wanted what Juliet had. I wanted to feel what it felt to be Juliet for a moment.

That moment went on for too long. I got carried away.

And now that moment must end.

Please know that this isn’t easy since I think you’re a nice guy. But what we had was never real and I was never the person you thought I was. I never meant to hurt you though I know I am now.

Take care Logan and remember that there is someone else out there for you. Someone you deserve. You love hard and you need to be with someone who can give it back to you.

I cannot.

I’m sorry.

Mahalo,

Veronica

Tears are streaming down my cheeks, I have to hold the paper away so they don’t stain the ink. A single tear stain on the paper and Logan would know the truth. He would know how much I care, how hard this is to do.

Kate tries to take it from my hand but I snatch it away.

“You can’t read it,” I manage to say through sobs. “It’s for him.”

She frowns. “How mean is it?” she asks softly.

“One hundred-percent believable,” I tell her. “At least I know it’s exactly what my parents think happened between us.”

Kate shakes her head, her mouth grim. “This is so wrong and so fucked up. You have no idea.”

I have some.

I put the note on my bamboo dresser and then…then I slip off my ring.

It feels wrong.

So, so wrong.

It belongs on my finger, this symbol of us, this symbol of our love.

Don’t do it. It’s not too late. Change your mind.

But I can’t.

I place the ring on the note and turn away, hauling my bags over to the door.

Kate is standing there, barricading it.

“I don’t know if I can let you do this,” she says. “As your friend, I should stop you.”

“As my friend,” I plead, “you need to let me go.”

Our eyes are locked in a match, seeing who will look away first.

Kate does, looking utterly defeated. I feel a million times worse. I feel like I’ve crawled out of a swamp, a dark, damp place I belong in.

Because Logan is at reception, Kate heads over to her car in the parking lot and I go around past the pool to the service entrance.

I try not to think about what I’m doing.

I try not to take it all in.

I try to deflect everything.

It’s working.

Until I see Charlie coming out of his place.

Sees me with my luggage.

“What the hell?” he asks. “Where are you going?”

I’m so angry. I thought I could get through it, past it, but I can’t. Every single ounce of rage and hate I have burning away in the pit of my stomach is rising, rising, rising.

Charlie stops in front of me, a brown tank-top, backward cap. Looking like he always does.

I don’t even think.

I punch him square in the nose.

He yelps, doubling over, covering his nose with his hands. “What the fuck?” he squeaks.

“You know exactly what that’s for,” I sneer at him as he looks up at me. “You fucking snitch.”

“Wait, what?’ he cries out, whimpering. His eyes are watering from the pain. “I don’t…wait, is this about your mother?”

I laugh. It feels like acid. “Oh and the truth comes out. Whether you meant to or not, you ruined everything, Charlie. And if you dare speak of this to Logan, you know he’ll destroy you.”

“Ron,” he says, examining his fingers as he pulls them away from his nose. No blood. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

“You knew enough,” I tell him, looking him dead in the eye with as much venom I can spare. “You knew about my family and me and our relationship. You knew I was at the bottom of the barrel with them. You knew it all and you talked to her and you kept it from all of us and now you’ve gone too far. You may have thought you were doing the right thing, you may have thought you were important by being the one person my mother had to talk to. But the fact that you kept it a secret from us all says something else entirely.” My throat feels thick with jabbing pains as I try to swallow. “Goodbye Charlie.”

“Goodbye?” He reaches for my arm as I rip out of it. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” I tell him, pressing my hands to his chest and pushing him away. “Where I can’t embarrass my family anymore.”

I hear Kate honk her horn from the street. I quickly open the gate and bring my bags through. Charlie looks over my shoulder, eyes widening at the sight of Kate in her car.

“You’re actually going?” he squawks.

“And it’s all your fault,” I tell him, not caring that I’m being overly harsh. “When you see Logan later, you can fess up to what you did and lose it all. Or you can keep your mouth shut and keep your job. Your choice.”

“Ron,” he says again. “Kate!”

But Kate is out of the car and quick to get my bags in the backseat and the trunk.

“Kate,” Charlie says again, coming forward.

Kate narrows her eyes at him and jumps back in the driver’s seat before peeling out of the lane with both of us in it.

I’m silent the rest of the ride. I’m heading to the airport way too early, I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I know you don’t want to hear it right now,” Kate says to me later as we pull over at Lydgate Park to watch the ocean, a way to kill time since we are so early for my flight. “But I really do think Charlie will be hurting. I’m not saying this because I like him. I know him and I honestly think he didn’t think. He loves you both, he would have never said anything if he knew this would be the end result.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say with a heavy sigh. My hand still hurts. “He said it and whether it was an accident or not, we can’t change it. My parents know. And it’s just as well. I would have told them one day. I was under the very naïve impression that they would understand.”

“Ron, there’s nothing naïve in thinking your parents would be happy for you if you were in love.”

“It’s naïve when I should have known what they’d do. I thought it too. In the back of my mind, I knew this was all too good to be true.”

“What? Love? Love is never too good to be true. Love is true.”

I give her a look.

She shrugs. “What? People fall in love, people fall out of love. But in the end, almost everyone in the world gets to feel it, live it, taste it. Love is never too good to be true because it is the original truth. And everyone deserves it. Everyone.”

It’s the most poignant thing I’ve ever heard Kate say, which of course doesn’t help.

The tears start flowing again and they don’t stop. Not when we’re pulling up to the airport, not when I’m saying goodbye to my roommate and my best friend here. Not when I’m hauling my luggage through the agriculture inspection and security. There’s no space inside the actual Lihue terminal to hang out without getting on a plane, so I have to say goodbye to Kate right away.

And then the unthinkable happens.

Just as I step through the detector, grabbing my items and carry-on from the x-rays, I hear my name.

Loud, rough, broken.

The voice is a hand reaching over my heart and yanking me into submission.

I look up.

Logan is on the other side of the security gate, Kate hovering behind him.

I meet Logan’s eyes and the world goes still.

This man, this beautiful, loving, loyal man is here for me, fighting for me.

And yet I have to convince him I’m not worth fighting for. After the ring and the note, he’s still here, he’s still not believing it.

I didn’t think my heart could break anymore.

“Veronica, please,” he cries out, loud enough that everyone turns to look at him.