Meet Me in Hawaii by Georgia Toffolo (novels for beginners txt) 📕

His chest squeezed painfully as her arm dug into his side, pressed there by his own. He loosened his grip, forced an even breath. ‘It was what it was. We lived in the poorer suburbs of London and with him struggling… he was drinking heavily…’ He swallowed past the tightness persisting in his throat. ‘I got put into care. He couldn’t look after me properly, but he couldn’t bear to give me up for adoption either. So, the authorities moved me back and forth between him and foster homes.’

‘Your entire childhood was spent like that?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘No stability, no family life?’

Exactly.

‘On the upside, you don’t know what you’re missing if you’ve never had it in the first place.’

She curved into him, her other hand coming up to rest on his upper arm. ‘I can’t imagine how you must have felt.’

‘Scared, lonely, confused, helpless… the list goes on.’

Too much information!

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his face angling to look down at her as he forced himself to smile to take the edge off his words. ‘It’s not all bad, though, it taught me to survive, to work hard and prove my worth. All those school teachers who said I would amount to nothing, I proved them wrong.’

She smiled up at him, her eyes filled with such wonder that they stole his breath.

‘You sure did, Todd Masters.’ Her voice was soft, the emotion in it so raw… He was used to such praise from people who discovered his background, those people like his PR team that wanted him to use it to push his business, his interests, but with her, it was different, it meant something.

It made him feel something.

‘So that’s why you run the charity, to help kids like you?’

‘Precisely.’ He tried to dodge where his heart was taking him, to get back on safer footing, on what he understood and knew how to deal with. His motivation, not the alien feeling she was stirring up within. ‘I want to help those that can’t help themselves. Some of the kids don’t have any visible disability, no scars, nothing. It’s buried deep inside and they need an outlet, a way of bringing it to the surface so that it doesn’t have a chance to fester. They need to learn from it, forget the anger, the pain, and move on.’

‘But how did you realize that? You were just a child yourself back then…’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged as he considered her question. ‘I guess I realized that if I wanted a better life, I needed to take control of it, I needed to work hard, make myself independent of the system, earn my worth, so to speak. With wealth comes the ability to control your own destiny and I wanted that more than anything.’

‘It is incredible to have achieved all you have, especially when you think how different things could have been.’

‘Don’t I know it. It didn’t happen overnight, but I got there eventually. Life was hard and full of obstacles, but I faced them head-on and got through it, it made me stronger.’

She took an unsteady breath and he frowned down at her. Had he hit a nerve? He hadn’t meant to distress her, only to be honest.

‘Sorry, Malie, I didn’t mean to go on, to get all—’

‘No, no, I’m fine,’ she waved him down, ‘you just talk a lot of sense.’

‘I do.’ He grinned. ‘Are you giving me a compliment?’

Her own smile was slow to come. ‘Don’t get big-headed about it.’

‘I wouldn’t dare.’

She tugged him forward again. ‘How are things with your father now?’

‘You want the honest answer?’

It was a rhetorical question and the look she sent him told him she knew it.

‘Difficult… OK, awkward… fine.’

‘That good?’ she queried.

He gave a gentle laugh. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘I can imagine, what with everything you’ve both been through. He must be proud of all you’ve achieved though?’

He laughed harder this time, cynical, his mind returning to their phone call that afternoon. ‘I’m not sure about that, I think I’m a giant pain in his backside at the moment.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t see you that way.’

‘If you’d heard him on the phone this afternoon, you wouldn’t be saying that. He’s the reason I ended up on that stretch of beach. The house was teeming with PR reps, journalists, collaborators. I took his call and knew I needed to get away, clear my head before I went back to it.’

‘And instead you almost drowned, that’s some head-clearing.’

‘Well, it gave me an early introduction to you, and an eventful one at that.’

‘True…’ She looked to their feet as she pulled him along and he could tell she was building the courage to press him about the call.

‘He won’t let me help him.’

She looked up at him questioningly.

‘Crazy, isn’t it? You’d think having a wealthy son would be a huge advantage, but he won’t take anything from me, not a penny. He still lives in the house I was born in.’

‘Maybe it’s because he feels close to your mum there.’

‘Maybe…’ He felt the familiar tension building between his shoulder blades, the throb kickstarting at the base of his skull and he rubbed at it with his free hand. ‘But it’s falling apart, it needs work, and personally I’d rather just buy him somewhere new, get him to start afresh.’

‘I can’t imagine it’s easy for him to accept help from you.’

‘From his son?’ he snapped, instantly regretting it. ‘Sorry, it’s a sore point.’

‘I get it. But put yourself in his shoes,’ she said gently, ‘he will feel like he failed you growing up. Even if you never doubted his love for you, he will still feel like he wasn’t there for you in all the ways that mattered.’

She was right, wasn’t she? Didn’t he know this already? Wasn’t that exactly how his father felt. Wasn’t it how he felt?

Hadn’t he wanted a normal dad, one that took him to the park to play footie on a Saturday, one that