“Albie was sobbing as he left. I’ve never seen him so sad, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And now they’re gone, so it’s just mom and me to take care of Dad. And I know my dad’s the one with the real battle on his hands, and mom’s the one doing most of the caretaking now that I’m here. But I feel so alone. And I’m so angry that Mika had to abandon us again. And I’m even angrier at myself because these stupid tears won’t stop.”
I viciously wiped the moisture brimming in my eyes away. Why wouldn’t it stop? I wasn’t this girl. I wasn’t—
Han curled a hand around mine, forcing me to stop.
“If you’re upset, your tears aren’t stupid,” he told me, his voice firm but somehow more gentle than I’d ever heard it before.
And for some reason, that sent me into a whole new fit of crying.
He simply laid my head back down on his chest and let me cry some more. Eventually, I calmed down again, but neither of us made a move toward me getting up.
We sat there with me curled up in his lap for I don’t know how long. Watching Hawaii play out yet another picture-perfect day while I tried to get over the heartbreak of my sister’s and nephew’s abrupt departure.
Han shifted underneath me, and I thought maybe he’d ask me to get up. But then he said, “The other night when I took you so forcefully, I was angry. Angry for the opposite reason of you. Because my brother by blood showed up to the island without warning.”
HAN
If you were to ask him about it years later, Han still wouldn’t have been able to say why he did it. Why he suddenly felt so compelled to explain his behavior, explain himself to the surfer girl, to tell her this thing he’d never told another woman.
Jasmine stilled in his lap. “You have a brother?”
“Yes, a half-brother. My father’s legitimate son,” Han answered, giving her more truths she hadn’t asked him for, and he watched her reaction closely as he added, “He grew up with everything I did not have. A big house in Shanghai. A father who claimed him, and a mother who did not have to do terrible things to provide for her son. I imagine he was upset when I took that life away from him.”
Her eyes shifted to the side. And Han could tell she remembered the scene on the beach when Kuang Jr. had purposefully used English to accuse Han of trying to murder him like he murdered his own father. “So it’s true. You killed your father?”
“Yes, I did,” Han answered, his voice as harsh as the act. “When I was seven.”
“When you were seven…” she repeated, her mouth dropping open.
He waited for her judgment, for her to push out of his lap with the realization of what he was.
But then she shifted her eyes back to him. “If you were that young. You must have had a good reason.”
Han let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding until his chest suddenly caved with its expulsion.
However, that breath froze in his chest again when she asked, “Will you tell me why you did it?”
She pressed her left hand into his, intertwined their fingers. “I want to understand. I want to understand you.”
She wanted to understand him? Something new and unfamiliar twisted in Han’s chest. Women wanted him. They enjoyed the game of getting caught in his seduction traps. In his experience, they wanted him to call them back. To invite them into his bed again. In some cases, to entrap him in a relationship he did not want.
But Jasmine said she wanted to understand him. And when he looked into her eyes, they glowed with tender sincerity.
He never talked about what happened. Not even with Victor. But what would it feel like to do so with Jasmine? To have this surfer girl, of all people, understand him?
The need to answer those questions drove the next words out of his mouth. “One of my father’s men brought these two prisoners to the house he’d bought for my mother and me—the wife and son of his greatest rival. He had the boy’s tongue cut out and sent to his father. Then instead of further negotiating for their release, my father came to the house himself and killed the mother. And he was about to kill her little boy too—an innocent three-year-old. I couldn’t let him. So I grabbed the gun he set down, and I shot my father with it. I don’t remember much about the incident beyond that. Just that I couldn’t let him...”
Jasmine’s eyes widened, so clearly horrified. But that horror was not directed at him, he soon discovered.
“Then what happened?” she demanded. “What happened to the little boy you saved?”
