Yeah, surfers were known for their hot physiques, and a few of them had tattoos, too. But it had been years since I competed, and none of the tourists I taught were cut up like him, with well-defined abs and lean muscle.
Brad had been so concerned about losing sponsorship deals, he hadn’t dared to get any ink, even after he turned eighteen. But tattoos covered the entire left side of Han’s body, then they abruptly stopped. As if something in his life happened to put the project on hold forever.
I guess I wasn’t doing all that good of a job of not staring. He glanced my way without warning, and I was totally busted.
He smirked, then, even worse, he held my gaze. It was excruciating, but for some reason, I couldn’t look away. His eyes were two pools of almost black onyx, hypnotizing me over the steady lap of the water. My heart started that annoying dance inside my chest and something way low in my belly went tight.
Was he…? Was he as mesmerized by me as I was by him? Was the Fae King interested in a mere mortal?
He suddenly yawned in seeming answer to that question. And I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he’d broken the spell or insulted that he didn’t seem nearly as affected by our eye bang as I was.
“Tired?” I guessed out loud to keep myself from dwelling on it.
Han nodded and squinted up at the sky. “I’m not used to so much sun where I come from.”
“And where’s that?”
“I live on the coast of Rhode Island. But the beach isn’t like this. Even in the summertime.”
The sun was doing him good, I observed. He’d been pale when we first met, but now his skin was tanned, which went well with those impressive abs.
And there I went, staring again. Okay, stop ogling the guy, Jazz.
I averted my gaze and pinned my eyes to the horizon so that I wouldn’t be surprised by any incoming waves.
But the next question I asked felt way more dangerous than that possibility. “So, is this what you meant by ownership? Whenever you or one of your buddies want a surfing lesson, I come running?”
“Yes, I expect for you always to answer when I tell you to meet me somewhere or do something,” he replied with a hard look. “But Kuang Jr. is not my buddy. I only let him come because not doing so would have been considered a direct insult to his much more powerful father. But if he asks you for a surfing lesson, tell me, and I’ll deal with him.”
I shifted my gaze to K Diamond, who was now walking back and forth on what appeared to be a phone call. “So you really don’t like that guy, huh?”
“We are in business together,” he answered. He, too, watched K Diamond. “It doesn’t matter if I like him or not.”
I snorted. “I’m jealous. If I could adopt that attitude, I’d probably get and keep way more clients.”
He turned his eyes back to me to give me a look that somehow managed to be both curious and surly. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” I answered. “How old are you?”
“Why surfing?” he asked, instead of answering my question.
I almost laughed. It was actually a pretty typical question. I’d gotten it often from tourists and reporters alike. There just weren’t a lot of Black people in the world of professional surfing—at least not on the Hawaii side. But his tone suggested that he was upset with himself for being even mildly curious about me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t fully remember choosing it, just like I don’t remember a time before I could swim. My dad claims he dropped me in the deep end of the pool, and I just came back up like a dolphin. He also says I grabbed the paddleboard stick from him by the time I turned three, and he says he barely got through teaching me the surfing basics before I snatched the board and jumped onto a wave. It just feels like something I’ve always done. I was a pro, traveling all over the world for a while there, and I even started getting sponsorship deals. But then I decided to come back here.”
“Why?”
A simple and fair question, but it scraped over the scar tissue where I’d shelved that particular dream.
“I found out my dad was sick. A rare form of muscular dystrophy.”
“Muscular dystrophy,” he repeated, scrunching his brow.
“It’s hard to explain. Maybe look it up when you’re back on your phone. It’s like your muscles waste away until you can’t use them anymore, can’t even swallow. Then eventually….”
I couldn’t say what would eventually happen to my father, even after two years of trying to process it.
But Han must have gotten the gist. He tilted his head. “You came to Aloha Ballers to pay off the debt of someone who will die soon anyway?”
