It's All Relative (59 page)

How could he hate someone for loving him so much, that they’d do anything to keep him from feeling pain? That was all his mother had ever done for him; tried to shelter him from the sharp sting of the truth. As the tiny woman attacked him, sobbing apologies into his shoulder, Kai found that he couldn’t even hate them for sending him to Mason. True, hearing it from them would have been better, would have been easier, but the outcome would have been the same.

Plus, Kai had had a lot of practice recently at understanding regret. After everything that had happened between him and Jessie, when they’d both believed they were blood-related, he’d regretted several things that he’d done. So he understood that his parents were beating themselves up every chance they got over the way they’d chosen to break the news to him, and he wouldn’t add to their grief by torturing them about their decision. But he did intend to sit down and talk with them about it. Much like with Mason and his grandmother, Kai wanted to understand. He wanted to know them, as people, not as the infallible parents he’d believed them to be. He knew they’d both made mistakes with him, and with each other, and he wanted to sit down and discuss it with them. But first, he wanted to introduce them to his girlfriend.

Peeling his mother off of him, he moved over to where Jessie had stepped back so she could watch the exchange from a respectful distance. She was drying her cheeks and Kai warmly shook his head at her. She shrugged and sniffled; that emotional display had gotten to her. He loved that it had. Jessie had such a good heart, and he wanted to show it to his parents. He wanted them to be okay with who she was. And after everything that they’d done to him, really, accepting her as the love of his life was the least they could do.

Exhaling a slow breath, he grabbed both of her hands and then slung his arm around her waist. That intimate move got the attention of both of his parents, and they started examining Jessie with curious eyes. Kai watched Jessie flush as he pulled her closer to his parents, and felt her squeeze his waist tighter when she was right in front of them. Looking down on her, Kai quietly said, “Mom, Dad, this is my best friend, the love of my life, my girlfriend…Jessica Marie Harper.”

Even though the busy airport was bustling with holiday travelers, Kai could have heard a pin drop at that moment. Looking over at his parents, he almost laughed at the near-identical, stunned expression on each of them. They each knew her name, same as he had known that name. His mother appeared shocked and dismayed at the revelation, and his father had paled considerably. Since Nate and Jessie actually
were
blood related, it had to be startling for him to see Kai with his arm around his niece.

Kai and Jessie gave them another quiet moment to absorb the news, then Jessie stuck her hand out. “It’s nice to meet you, Leilani.” Kai’s mother loosely took the hand offered and shook it. After that, Jessie waved her fingers at Kai’s still-open-mouthed dad. “Hi, Uncle Nate, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

That phrase seemed to snap everyone out of their astonishment, and both parents twisted to Kai. “You can’t date her,” his mother and father said almost simultaneously.

Kai smiled as he let them voice their concerns for a few minutes. When they both seemed flushed but finished, he merely said, “We’re not related. We
can
date, and we’re going to.” He smiled down at Jessie as she rubbed soft circles into his back. “I love her, and I’m not spending another day without her.” Glancing at his parents, he raised an eyebrow. “Is that going to be a problem between us?”

They both shut their mouths and offered no further objections. There was nothing they could say to change his mind anyway, and perhaps they realized that. Since neither parent was saying anything else condemning on the subject, Kai looked at Jessie. “Come on, I want to show you
my
hometown.”

She eagerly nodded, biting her lip, then she leaned up and kissed him. Kai thought he heard his father sigh, but he ignored him. He ignored everything but the warm woman under his lips. That was enough. She was enough.

K
ai and Jessie were alone in a car with the man Kai had believed was his father his entire life. Jessie watched her uncle as they drove along in complete silence. She hadn’t ever met the man before, but the resemblance to her was there in the color of his eyes and the shape of his face. Jessie squeezed Kai’s hand as they sat together in the back seat. Before he’d known the truth about his background, Kai had probably had a hard time looking at Jessie without seeing shades of his father in her countenance.

Kai squeezed her hand but didn’t look at her. His eyes were locked onto his father’s back. Both men looked speculative. With Leilani following in the car behind, the small group eventually made it to one of the two homes Kai had been raised in. As Kai took in the familiar modest dwelling, the corners of his lips curved up. Jessie supposed a part of him was happy to be back here, even if it was sort of painful.

Her uncle’s house was in a pretty secluded area, with green life abundant all the way around it. The flat, black-roofed home had a barn behind it, and Jessie remembered Kai telling her about how he used to go horseback riding with his dad. At least Kai had very good memories with her uncle. Hopefully they outnumbered the bad ones.

When Jessie stepped out of the car, the humid air immediately made her feel moist with dew. Kai stepped out after her, looking perfectly at ease in the environment. Walking around the car to her, he extended his hand. Jessie grabbed it and stepped close to his side. Uncle Nate took in their closeness, but didn’t comment on it. Jessie was glad he was choosing not to say anything, and hoped he was starting to accept the two of them as a couple; she really didn’t want to create tension in her family by loving Kai.

Leilani pulled up to the house a few seconds later and also glanced at Jessie and Kai. Her only response was a smile though, as she helped Kai and Jessie get their bags from the back of the car. Uncle Nate moved to help them as well, and between the four of them, they had their things situated in Kai’s old bedroom pretty quickly.

Jessie noticed that Kai’s parents kept their distance from each other. It was clear that any love between them had died the moment Uncle Nate had discovered the truth. It saddened her that they’d each had to experience such pain and loss, but even still, she was happy about the situation. It was the only reason she and Kai could be together.

Leilani stayed for a quiet, peaceful supper, then reluctantly said her goodbyes for the evening. As she hugged Kai for the fifth time, her face shifted into sadness. She seemed certain that if she left Kai alone with his father, Kai would feel differently about her the next time he saw her. Knowing Kai like she did, Jessie was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen. He would make up his own mind about his mother.

Jessie yawned as she said her goodbyes to Leilani. When the door shut behind her, Kai squeezed Jessie’s waist. “Why don’t you go to bed. I’ll…be there in a minute.”

Knowing that Kai was probably just as jet-lagged as her, since he’d finally adjusted to her time zone, she looked past him to her uncle. Nate had his head down; he was obviously waiting to talk to his son in private. Switching her attention back to Kai, Jessie held him close. “I’m here when you need me.” He smiled and nodded, then gave her a goodnight kiss.

Hoping the conversation between the two men went well, Jessie shuffled off to Kai’s childhood room to get ready for bed. After changing and brushing her teeth, she climbed onto his small mattress and looked at all the signs of young Kai’s life around the room. While it wasn’t a child’s room anymore, there was plenty of evidence that it had been once—old stickers on the dressers, army men shoved in a gap between the window frame, a poster of a bikini clad girl on the wall. Smiling at the image of Kai as a boy, Jessie closed her eyes and let the exhaustion flow through her. As she started fading into sleep, she heard low voices coming through the wall. Realizing that Kai and his dad must be right outside the bedroom window, Jessie fought through the fatigue to listen to their conversation.

Kai’s voice broke through the stillness of the night. “Dad, why didn’t you just tell me? I mean, I can understand not wanting to let me know when I was young…but I haven’t been young for a while now.” He paused for a second and Jessie shifted to face the direction of the open window. “Why keep me in the dark? Why send me to Mason?”

Uncle Nate let out a long, beleaguered sigh. “I tried to tell you, Kai. You have no idea how many times I stared at you and tried to tell you.” He sighed again and paused long seconds before continuing. “But every time, the anger, the betrayal…it all resurfaced, and I…I just couldn’t make the words come out.”

Feeling sympathy for her uncle sweep over her, Jessie sat up. None of this could have been easy on him, and he’d been dealing with it for so long. He must have been a wreck. He must have been desperate for it to end, and at the same time, terrified. Nate continued in a soft voice, and Jessie pressed her head to the wall to hear him better. “After years of that, of not being able to talk to you like I wanted to talk to you…it ate at me. I needed you to know, but I still couldn’t tell you.”

He paused again, and Jessie tried to picture having a conversation like this with her own father. She couldn’t. “I figured, since I physically couldn’t get the words out around you, and Leilani absolutely refused to tell you…maybe he…maybe Mason could finally do something right…and maybe he could tell you.” Her uncle sighed heavily again. “Once I had that thought, it consumed me, and then I
needed
him to be the one to tell you. In my mind, there were no other options.”

Jessie looked down at the black and white sheets of Kai’s bed, torn for the both of them. For all of them really. Kai exhaled, not speaking for long moments. “I wish
you
had somehow found a way to tell me, Dad. It hurt so much to have a stranger do it.” Jessie closed her eyes, remembering how she’d found Kai. She’d never seen someone so shaken up.

Her uncle didn’t respond to that right away. “I’m so sorry, son. I was wrong. I promise you I will never deceive you like that again.” Jessie smiled as she settled against Kai’s pillows. Maybe they would all come out of this stronger. As she closed her eyes, Uncle Nate spoke again. “I’m so…I’m so grateful you still call me Dad.” There was so much relief in his voice; it made Jessie smile.

Kai laughed a little, and the sound lightened the heavy mood Jessie could feel pouring in from the outside. “Of course I’ll still call you Dad. It’s who you are, blood or not.”

Jessie heard the men shuffling, and imagined they were hugging. “I love you, Kai.”

“I love you too, Dad.” Jessie started falling asleep with a smile on her face and tears on her cheeks, happy that even though the blood bond had been broken between them, the bond of love hadn’t been.

After that candid conversation, things between Kai and his father were less tense. Their relationship evened out, once the sting of deception and lack of communication started dulling. They often sat on the lanai after dinner, talking late into the night while Jessie crawled into Kai’s childhood bed. Before she fell asleep at night, she’d be comforted by the sounds of their reconnection. Through the walls she would listen to her uncle repeat his guilt and grief at not having had the strength to tell Kai himself. And for his part, Kai was pretty sympathetic to the man’s feelings. When Jessie asked him about it, Kai told her that it wasn’t his dad’s fault that he hadn’t been the one to create him, and he couldn’t imagine having to tell a child something that hard.

And after that first day, Kai’s parents were silent about her and Kai’s relationship. Jessie had to believe that it was extremely awkward for them though, especially for her uncle. It was difficult for him to see beyond the fact that Kai was his son and Jessie was his niece; the cousin connection was just too strong to ignore. Jessie understood. Even for her, it was weird to call Kai’s dad, Uncle. A part of her wanted to drop the familial term and just call him Nate, but it was too ingrained in her. It seemed to be ingrained in Nate, too, since he always called her Jessica Marie, and only Jessie’s family ever did that.

But he didn’t ever say anything negative about her and Kai being together, not even when he walked in on a pretty intense make-out session they’d been having on his couch. Instead of freaking out over the display, he’d only mumbled several apologies and hastily fled the room. Jessie tried to keep the PDA to a minimum after the incident. She didn’t want to make Kai’s family—her family—uncomfortable, especially in their own homes.

On their final day in Hawaii, Kai took Jessie to a private beach that he loved, to do something with her that Jessie had been hoping they’d be able to do this trip. Something she’d been dying to do ever since arriving here. Something she, in all honesty, had been waiting her entire life to do.

Sitting on a surfboard, Jessie floated peacefully in the relative calm of the Pacific Ocean. Being just behind the breakers, she stared in awe at the tumultuous waves crashing onto the comparatively hard beach. She had no idea how people did this. She’d been attempting to successfully ride one of those waves all morning. So far, she’d swallowed about a quarter of the ocean, but hadn’t even successfully popped up onto the board.