Page 45 of Try Me

Declan looked down at her, his eyes bright with understanding. “That’s why you took the job as my girlfriend.”

“Fake girlfriend,” she corrected.

Declan winced. “Right.”

Pearl felt the connection between them fizzle. She glanced out the window at the open sea, and her heart clenched. “Tell me something else,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me why you haven’t been home in so long.”

Declan dropped Pearl’s hand and eased back in his seat. “I crashed my car into a pole on the Kamehameha Highway near Hale’iwa.”

Pearl’s eyes widened. “What happened? Were you hurt?” she asked. He had a small scar under his right eye and another one on his chin. Nothing that looked like he’d been the survivor of a serious accident.

“I broke my arm and my collarbone, but I could have gotten up and walked away if they’d have let me.”

“You were lucky,” she said.

Declan shook his head. “No such thing as luck,” he said. “I was so wasted I could have broken every bone in my body and not felt a thing.”

“You could have died,” she said. “So stupid. Don’t do that again.” Pearl was horrified that Declan had taken such a risk. He could have died before they’d even met. She would have never known him. The world of surfing wouldn’t be the same without Declan Bishop. The thought saddened her, reminding of her mother’s too-short life.

Declan’s lips curved and his gaze flicked down at her with that look — the one that tugged at her belly and made her heart stutter.

“I won’t,” he promised. “I’m not that man anymore. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in two hundred and fifty-six days. But I couldn’t come home and face everyone until I was forced to. I wasn’t ready.”

Pearl felt the pinch of guilt, knowing that she had taken advantage of their situation to get Declan to open up to her.

“Look,” he said, pointing out the window as they approached the emerald island of Kauai. “Beautiful, right?”

As the helicopter flew over the sharp mountains and jagged cliffs aged by centuries of exposure to the elements, Pearl leaned forward to peer out the window.

Roughly the same size as Oahu but with only about a tenth of the population, the island of Kauai was one of the most remote places on Earth. Draped in green valleys, forking rivers and cascading waterfalls, the dramatic beauty of the island was spectacular from above.

Unlike Oahu, there were no hotels reaching up to scrape the sky along the sandy shorelines.

“Have you been here before?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Although Pearl had heard many stories, she had never been to Kauai. Growing up, she had split her life between the mainland for school and Maui during the summer. There had been no reason to come to Kauai.

“Is it true what they say about the people?” she asked. The people of Kauai were infamous for being inhospitable.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said.

Pearl gritted her teeth and clenched her fists as the helicopter plummeted down between the sharp mountain spires. Her heart pounded furiously as the thin strip of sand between the jagged cliffs and the blue Pacific zoomed closer.

Declan put his arm around her shoulder. His voice sounded in her ear. “Wait till you see the point break,” he said. “It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

Sweat trickled down her back, and chills broke out over her skin, but Declan’s arm around her shoulders was solid and warm, and his voice soothed her worries.

“Close your eyes,” Declan said.

Pearl squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled the woodsy smell of Declan’s aftershave. Forcing herself to relax, she listened to the sound of Declan’s breathing and sank against the hard wall of his chest.

The helicopter touched down on the sand, and Pearl’s eyes flew open. She’d survived.

---