Mouth of the Sea
Mouth of the Sea
-A Wiki Wiki Romantic Suspense Story-
The cave breathes.
Each pull of the tide drags cool air from its mouth, and each push sends it spilling back across my skin. I stand at the edge of the sand with my camera pressed to my chest, unsettled by how alive it feels—like I’ve stumbled into a secret I shouldn’t be seeing.
I raise the lens, trying to capture the way shadows ripple inside the cave’s throat. That’s when a voice cuts through the surf.
“Not here.”
I whirl.
A man stands ankle-deep in the tide pool, spear balanced against his shoulder. His hair drips in dark ropes against his jaw, water sliding down the ridges of his chest. His eyes are the color of storm clouds before rain—steady, hard, and fixed on me.
“Why not?” My voice is smaller than I’d like.
“The ocean doesn’t forgive mistakes.” His gaze flicks to the cave. “And that place is greedy.”
The words chill me more than the wind. I should leave. Instead, I lower my camera and say, “I’m Olivia.”
His expression doesn’t shift. “Koa.”
I come back the next morning. And the morning after.
I tell myself it’s for the light, the colors, the lava rock. But really it’s him.
Koa moves like the tide belongs to him, sure and unhurried. I watch his hands—rough when they knot nets, gentle when they free a fish too small to keep. He doesn’t speak much, but silence feels different around him. Full, alive.
One afternoon, I edge too close to the cave, drawn by the way sunlight scatters across the water inside.
Suddenly, Koa is there. His hand clamps around my wrist, strong and warm, stopping me cold.
“Not there,” he murmurs. His thumb brushes against my pulse.
My breath stumbles. “Do you warn everyone off?”
“Just the stubborn ones.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. When he lets go, the absence of his hand feels sharper than the grip itself.
In town, his name reaches me again—this time whispered.
At the shave ice stand, two women lower their voices: Koa… the cave… his wife.
The words sting like salt in a cut. A dive gone wrong. A tide too fast. He surfaced alone.
The next time I see him, the weight of it is in his shoulders. His face is calm, but grief lingers in the way he stares at the horizon like it might give something back.
I want to say I’m sorry, but the words feel too small. Instead, I say, “They say the plankton might glow tonight.”
His jaw tightens. “Forecasts lie.”
“Then let’s find out.”
He doesn’t agree. But when I come back after dark, he’s already there.
The cove is black velvet. Then my feet stir the water, and stars wake beneath the surface. Light spills from my toes like sparks. I laugh, startled, and Koa’s gaze finds me—not the glow, but me.
I reach for his hand. He hesitates, then gives it. Blue light blooms around our joined fingers, bright enough to make me catch my breath.
The night feels too alive, too charged. His face is close, shadows softening his edges. My lips part, waiting.
But he pulls away, and the glow fades. The ache he leaves behind is sharper than the cave’s breath.
The storm arrives before dawn.
Wind bends the trees sideways. Rain lashes my face as I run the trail, mud slick beneath my shoes. When the cove comes into view, the ocean is wild, a furious gray maw.
Koa is waist-deep, battling to free a turtle caught in his net. His body strains with effort, muscles taut, waves crashing against him.
“Koa!” I shout, plunging into the water. Together we hack at the mesh until the turtle bursts free and vanishes into churn.
The next wave slams us sideways. Salt scorches my throat as I tumble under, the current dragging me hard toward the cave’s black mouth. Panic tears through me—cold, suffocating.
Then his arm locks around me, solid and fierce.
“Breathe now! Hold. Now. Hold.” His voice is hoarse but commanding, the only thing cutting through the roar.
I force myself into his rhythm, lungs burning but tethered to his. His chest crushes mine, his hand braced at my ribs, holding me steady as the sea tries to tear us apart.
The cave swallows us, surging and slamming. He shoves me onto a ledge slick with water, but the current claws him back.
I seize his wrist, fingers slipping on his skin. “Don’t you dare let go!”
A sound tears out of him, jagged and strange—half laugh, half sob—as if his body doesn’t know how else to let go. He lunges up beside me, and we collapse together, gasping, the cave’s fury echoing in every breath we steal.
For a moment, all I hear is water and the hammer of my pulse. Then his voice breaks. “I couldn’t save her.” His head bows, as if the weight of the words drags him under. “I let go. And she was gone.”
The grief in his words tears something inside me. My hand finds his, trembling. “But you didn’t let go tonight.”
His eyes lift to mine—gray and storm-wrecked, but burning now with something else. Want. Need.
By morning, the storm is spent. The world smells of wet earth and salt.
He sits repairing his net, hands steady again. I raise my camera but lower it. Not every moment needs to be captured. Some are meant to be kept.
On my last evening, we walk the ridge. The horizon burns gold, the ocean below calm, the cave still breathing.
“Stay,” Keoni says. One word, heavy with everything he doesn’t say.
I think of the city waiting for me—noise, deadlines, empty rooms. And then I think of him, of how he dove into the place he feared most to pull me out.
“I can,” I whisper.
His breath stutters. He steps closer, slow, as though testing if I’ll vanish like the tide. I don’t.
When his lips find mine, the kiss is deep and certain. His mouth tastes of salt and rain, and my body trembles with the release of everything we’ve held back.
Below us, the cave exhales. For the first time, it doesn’t sound like mourning.
It sounds like the beginning.
🍜 THE END 🍜
Author's note
In Hawaiʻi, the ocean is never just background — it breathes, it provides, it takes. In Hawaiian culture, the sea (kai) is both giver and destroyer, and that duality inspired The Mouth of the Sea. The sea caves carved into lava cliffs reminded me how grief can carve into us too, while the rare glow of bioluminescent plankton offered hope — proof that even in darkness, light rises to the surface.
For me, that’s what Romance is all about: love fierce enough to survive danger, and hope strong enough to carry us through the tide.
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MAHALO from Oahu!
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