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But there is one thing I have to say. When you’re a model, you become used to looking good. Looking good becomes your life; you want to look happy, and you want to smile. Because sad people aren’t beautiful. And beauty is my business. A constant, daily battle to look your best. To give the impression to people around you that you aren’t really there. Sure, there’s a living, breathing person in front of them. But you’re not interested in looking like a person. You’re interested in looking like a picture: picture-perfect, as they say.
So even when I got home, Krista hugged me at the ferry port and gave me a lift to my apartment, I didn’t show the sadness I felt, the sadness tugging on my heart and weighing me down. I felt awful.
I know Alex had acted poorly. He’d been cruel and derisive. He was an impulsive, dangerous control freak. You had to be a little crazy to do what he did and manage so much wealth and power.
I knew we were in the same city, of course—and Honolulu isn’t big. A few days later, the Kauai Continental opened, and there was little else on the front-page headlines for weeks.
But I knew I wasn’t making it up when I saw the gleaming, blue eyes of the man in the pictures. I knew him; for all our scrapes and fights, I knew him almost as well as I knew myself. And I could see that Alex looked curiously empty in those pictures.
I’d broken his heart—turned him away. I felt awful about it for a while. Then I thought about it some more, and felt angry at him, for the way he’d treated me, for the way he’d spoken to Jared, his callous disregard of everyone and everything around him. But gradually the guilt and the anger seemed to become one, whirling around in my body and in my head.
And slowly, I began to feel nothing. Only a solemn, steady procession of feelings rebounding off the walls of my heart.
And then I realized that it was grief I felt. Grief for the life I might have had, grief for the tender, comforting presence of Alex in my life.
Grief for the life growing inside of me. The life which would have to face the world without a father to rely on.
IcamehometoLA a few weeks later. I couldn’t stand being out there anymore. Besides, I knew I wouldn’t want to work in Honolulu now. Not in a city whose king had left me so heartbroken.
I didn’t hate him. I realized that now. Only, I really loved him—really had loved him, and still did. And I couldn’t help but feel a curious sense of sadness, one which closed around my heart and told me the unfortunate truth. That Alex and I were simply different.
He loved his work, loved his hotels. Loved the solid, empty structures.
But I loved my family. And there in the city, without Alex, surrounded by happy smiling families on vacation, I knew I couldn’t take another minute of it.
I called my mom on the phone and told her I was coming home.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked.
“No,” I said, fighting back tears. Fighting back the urge to tell her about the baby. There’d be time. “Actually, I’m doing great. But I think I want to be closer. I don’t like this distance.”
“Well, your father’s going to be overjoyed! And that’s great. Hey, you can even make it to Danny’s graduation. Oh, darling, we are so proud of you both.”
“I love you, Mom,” I said.
“I love you too, sweetie,” she told me.
I flew home that weekend. It was a Friday night, and I wasn’t looking forward to the drive out to Palmdale from LA International.
But to my amazement, when I got to Arrivals, dragging my tiny suitcase behind me, I saw a tall man with a card in his hand. It read:Lena Chambers (Hawaii).
I stopped in front of him.
“Is this … for me?” I said.
“You Lena Chambers? From Hawaii?”
“Yes.”
“Guess it is for you then, ma’am.”
He led me out to the parking lot of the airport, quietly. There was a black sedan parked up on the curve, with tinted windows. And for a moment, I thought that it might be Alex.
But the door opened. And while the man who got out was handsome, though his hair was dark, and ruffled, and while he did have piercing blue eyes, it wasn’t Alex.
It was his brother.
“Lena,” he said, and I stepped back in shock. “Lena! Listen to me … please. You don’t have to come with me. But I want you to.”
