Scene 4

"You smell like someone pissed on a cinnamon stick."

Dillon toweled off as Kyle dropped his bag on the sand, reeking of Fireball whisky. He was forty minutes late for their recovery swim. By the look of his bloodshot eyes, he'd either made good on his quest to find someone to shag—or hadn't. It was difficult to tell.

"Shut your gob." Kyle tugged his swim cap in place, spraying on sunscreen. "Are you really leaving already?"

Dillon deliberately slowed the packing of her gear, not wanting him to realize she was in a hurry.

But she was in a hurry. She still had to stretch. Shower. Change. It was getting late, and she was supposed to meet Kameryn in little more than an hour.

Kyle just didn't need to know that. She knew the hell he'd raise if he ever found out about the night before—that she'd taken his mocking advice to heart and invited ‘that girl' to dinner.

Not that it mattered. It was none of his business. He wasn't her keeper. She didn't need his permission. It wasn't like he could razz her for being on the rebound. She and Kelsey had been over a long time ago. If she wanted to pursue someone else, she didn't need Kyle's blessing. She just didn't want to hear him moan on about it.

Besides—it wasn't like that. It wasn't even a date. It was possible Kameryn wouldn't even show up. She knew she probably shouldn't get her hopes up.

But, if she was honest, it was too late for that. Her hopes had been up since they'd waved a casual goodnight in the resort parking lot. Before that, really. Maybe it started with the way Kameryn blushed when she caught her staring at her calf. Or the winsome way she laughed, growing flustered so easily. Or perhaps it had begun when she proved to take the mick as much as she'd been willing to give it. Or was it simply when Dillon discovered that there was so much more to her, hidden beneath her Hollywood beauty?

Whatever it was, Dillon liked her. She wanted to see her again. And without rhyme or reason, she hoped the feeling might be mutual.

She picked up her bag, starting off across the sand. "You were late," she said over her shoulder. "You'll have to finish without me."

"Hey, that's my line!" Kyle shot back, and then she heard his goggles snap into place, followed by the familiar sound of him splashing through the water.

Any concerns she had that Kameryn wouldn't show up turned out to be futile. Dillon arrived at the fountain—their agreed meeting spot—fifteen minutes early, only to find Kameryn already waiting.

She had her back to her, plucking the leaves off a Pohole fern, tossing the discarded petals to the stone walkway.

Trainers , Dillon noted, glancing at her feet. She'd dressed down—jeans and a t-shirt, a change from the sundress and sandals she'd worn the previous evening. It was perfect for what Dillon had planned.

Pushing on late afternoon—they'd agreed to an early dinner—the sun was still high, promising at least another couple hours of daylight.

"Do you like birds?"

Startled, Kameryn dropped the fern to the ground, spinning to face her.

"Hey!" She seemed uptight, full of nervous energy. "You came."

"Are you surprised?" Dillon cocked her head. "Trust me, if I ever say I'm going to be somewhere—I'm there."

Without waiting for a response, she set off down the two lane road, Kameryn falling into step beside her. She had a destination in mind, away from the overpopulated tourist attractions. A place where they could watch what the sky was promising to turn into an epic sunset.

"So, back to the birds," she resumed, as they passed through Hāna Beach Park. "Fan or no fan?"

"It depends." The rubber soles of Kameryn's shoes squeaked along the damp tarmac. "Is that what you had in mind for dinner?"

Dillon laughed. "The sanctuary might frown on it."

She was glad to see Kam smile, some of her previous tension dissipating. "Then are we talking Hitchcock or Rio ?"

"I can't say I've seen the latter," Dillon admitted, skipping the turn-off to the beach and cutting through a cluster of rainbow eucalyptus trees, "but I can assure you it's not the former." She stopped at a trail head winding up the base of Ka'uiki Pu'u, the hill towering over the southeast side of Hana. "Up for a short hike?"

"I don't know," Kameryn ducked beneath a low lying branch, taking the lead. "Do you think you can keep up with me?"

Trailing half a dozen paces behind, Dillon glanced up in just enough time to see Kameryn catch the gnarled root of a lantana shrub, and face plant into a sourbush. She stifled a laugh, uncertain how the girl from Hollywood would respond.

They'd been struggling up the single track path for twenty minutes. The hike to Ka'uiki Head was short—she'd given no misrepresentation there—but the reason it wasn't found on any tourist pamphlets was because it was arduously steep, the majority of the climb covered in a low-hanging jungle understory.

Dillon's concerns were abated, however, as Kameryn hopped up, laughing as she wiped her muddy palms across her jeans.

"You know," she said, plucking a sourbush blossom from her hair, "it should be a crime for a flower to look so pretty and smell like turpentine."

The greater crime, Dillon considered, was that in less than thirty-six hours, Kam would be back in Los Angeles. But she kept the thought to herself.

"Mind your step," she warned instead, turning to offer her hand as they descended a particularly slippery section of trailhead, but before the last word was out of her mouth, she'd lost her footing, sliding on her arse through the slick red clay.

Behind her, the sound of Kameryn's laughter raised a bright crimson honeycreeper from the dense shrubbery.

"Fair to assume there's no dress code for dinner?" Kameryn hooked her elbow, undeterred by the mess of sticky soil, and tugged her upright. Whatever had remained of her previous edginess had vanished, lost along the challenge of the climb, seeping away like the sludge of silt glissading down the hillside.

Dillon couldn't help but take a second glance at her smile. She loved the way she took it all in stride. The way she could stand there, covered in mud, without a care in the world.

Kelsey would have hated this. For her, an impromptu hike up a muddy trail would have fallen just below the Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno. It had always mystified Dillon that a woman who earned her living as a professional footballer—required to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, accept hard knocks, and spend her life covered in splattered mud and grass stains—could remain so rigid and particular off the pitch.

She shoved the thoughts of Kelsey aside. She knew she shouldn't be comparing her to this girl, anyhow.

Stopping to catch their breath, Dillon leaned against the winding trunk of a hala and pointed down over the peninsula.

"There," she said, indicating the massive mound of lava rock detached from the hill of Ka'uiki. "Pu'Uku Islet Bird Sanctuary." Hundreds of wedge-tailed shearwaters and white-tailed tropicbirds were weaving and diving between the crashing waves, preparing to burrow in for the evening. It wasn't much to look at—the islet itself was little more than a hunk of solidified volcanic matter—but the saffron glow of the setting sun cast a metallic sheen atop the silvery wings of the seabirds, their glittering backs reflecting the light where the clouds had turned the sky into something ethereal.

Dropping onto the lava rock, Dillon dangled her legs over the ledge, joined a second later by Kameryn. A light drizzle had begun to fall, stirring a breeze up from the ocean. They sat in silence, allowing the rainfall to wash the clay from their skin and clothing.

"How'd you find this place?" Kam asked after a few minutes, staring over the blanket of cobalt water. The rain had darkened her long brown hair, turning it almost black, a dramatic contrast to the medley of color all around them.

"I was told by one of the locals no one could swim out to this part of the island. That the Hawaiian god who created this hill made the current too strong." She tossed a porous stone into the breaking waves a hundred feet below. "So I accepted the challenge."

Kameryn half laughed, shifting her gaze to catch Dillon's eye, before looking back at the horizon. "Of course you defied the gods. It must be nice to have that kind of confidence."

"Trust me, I didn't always."

Her thoughts drifted to long mornings in Hamburg, Henrik forcing her to swim through tides she was certain would drown her.

Again, Sch?tzchen. Swim it again .

She shook the memory from her mind. It killed her that he still lived rent free inside her head, even after all these years.

To hell with him.

In a fluid swing, she gained her feet and looked down at Kameryn. She wasn't about to let her past ruin what had turned out to be the perfect afternoon.

"Sometimes you just have to be willing to close your eyes and dive head first into the unknown—see where the current takes you." She held out her hand, wavering on an arch smile. "What do you say, Kam-Kameryn?"

To her surprise, Kam remained unflustered by her boldness, offering instead a coquettish tilt of her head. She leaned back to look up at her. "Are we still talking about swimming?"

Outplayed at her own game, an uncommon flush crept up Dillon's neck as Kameryn took her hand.

Yeah, she was way past trying not to get her hopes up.