Excerpt: Hawaiian Ginger

Mission accomplished—she hung up the radio after being assured the patrol officer would check out the transient, and couldn’t stop her eyes from landing on her finger again.
It had been raining the day she took the ring off. She remembered the patter of drops on the window, the rain reflecting the blank shock in Michael Stevens’ eyes as she put it in his hand and folded his fingers over it.
“I just can’t do this,” she’d said. “I’m just not equipped for it. I need some space—I’m transferring to Kauai.”
He’d put the hand with the ring back in his pocket, looked at her a long moment with those blue, blue eyes.
“Maybe he was right about you,” Stevens said. “You are damaged.” Now her eyes went wide with shock—that he could hit her so low and so hard by quoting Charlie Kwon, her childhood molester.
He turned and left, the door slamming hard behind him. She hadn’t seen him since.