The Makapu?u tide pools. The ones he said he’d take me to. The ones he later claimed he shouldn’t have brought up. I watch the water instead of him and try to keep the memory from aching.
“Did you get to look at these last time you were here?” I ask, to shift the air between us.
He shakes his head. “No. Never really cared to.”
He doesn't finish the sentence.
“Back then I was still in marine bio. But I focused mostly on cnidarians.”
That catches me off guard. I knew he’d switched from marine biology to oceanography, but cnidarians? Jellyfish and corals? I blink at him like I’m seeing him through a new lens.
“Why did you switch?”
“You’ve asked me that before.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
He exhales, his hand moving idly over a piece of basalt, rough and crumbling under his thumb. His eyes lift, not to me, but to the open sea again.
“At the start of my master’s, I lost my brother.”
The breath leaves my lungs. I blink, hard. A gasp tries to escape, but I press my lips tight, afraid that if I interrupt the moment, it’ll disappear.
“He was five years older. Used to sail all over the world. Basically lived on his boat in his twenties.” His voice is steady, but only just. “That little girl you met during the outreach day—Penny? She’s his.”
The ache that rolls through me is slow and hot. I remember her smallfingers gripping mine at the touch tanks, her sweet smile when Holden lifted her onto his shoulders somewhere in the crowd.
“He had her young. Stopped sailing when she was born. But… a few years ago, he wanted to go back out. Said it would be short, easy. I told him the weather didn’t look great.”
He pauses, his jaw tightening.
“He said he’d sailed through worse. And I didn’t push. It wasn’t my field. I didn’t think—” He breaks off with a humorless breath. “The storm hit faster than expected. Took out houses on Maui and O?ahu. He never came back.”
He goes still. All I can hear is the water lapping against the rock and my own heart breaking open.
“Parts of his boat were found weeks later,” he says finally. “Scattered along the shore like driftwood.”
The rock he’s been holding splits in his hand, and he flicks a piece into the dark.
“I know, logically, there was nothing I could’ve done. He wouldn’t have listened anyway. He was even more stubborn than I am,” he adds, the smallest smile ghosting his mouth. “But after that... as much as I loved marine biology, I needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere I could do something useful. Predict systems. Prevent damage. Maybe help someone else keep their brother.”
He finally looks at me, like he’s gauging how much he’s just given away.
And I—God—I have nothing eloquent to say. Just this warm ache in my chest that burns to say,you already are useful. You already are helping.
He turns to me fully then, his brow furrowed, gaze flicking over my face like he’s scanning for damage. And then—softly, without warning—he lifts his hand and brushes a thumb beneath my cheekbone.
I freeze.
His thumb is rough, callused from hours in the field, and the heat of it is at odds with how gently it touches me. He wipes away a tear I hadn’t even realized had fallen, and somehow that makes the others come faster. I hate that. Hate that I’m the one crying, when he’s the one who lost something. Someone. When I should be comforting him and instead I’m breaking apart beside him like a tide-worn shell.
I don’t have the right tools to fix what he's shared with me, or the training to dissect the psychology of a man like Holden Wilkes, whose brain should honestly be preserved in a museum someday. But this… this explains so much. Why he speaks like every statement is a hypothesis that must be tested twice. Why he won’t act unless the variables are controlled. Why he’s a TA inField Problems, of all things.
He carries storms in his past like data points—quiet and devastating. And suddenly, I understand why certainty matters so much to him. Why he doesn’t let people in unless he’s sure of their staying power.
“Holden…” I whisper, but nothing follows. My throat cinches tight around the words Iwantto say—I’m sorry,you didn’t deserve that,you’re not alone—but they all feel thin and insufficient.
He glances toward the horizon and lets out a breath.
