Thin Love (55 page)

Kona doesn’t like swallowing his pride. He’d do it, has done it a dozen or so times in his life, but apologies still taste bitter, dry on his tongue.

This time, though, as he drives up the street he hasn’t been on in decades, Kona will be eating crow for both himself and his manipulative mother.

He pulls the rental car across the street from the lake house staring at the large porch, the wide gables. It is simple on this side of the property; a pretty mammoth, well cared for despite the age. And on the other side, Kona recalls the fenced yard that leads down to a dock, out onto the smooth waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

He closes his eyes, seeing the rest of the property, knowing what is on the other side of that fence: the wrought iron trellis that leads to the second floor balcony. How many times had he climbed it? How many nights and early mornings had he shimmied up and down it, fingers avoiding the sharp pricks from the roses woven between the spaces to get into Keira’s room? A dozen? A hundred? He didn’t know.

Sometimes he’d taken the trellis slowly, worried that he’d fall, that it would give under his massive weight. Sometimes he didn’t care enough to worry; he’d been too focused on what waited for him inside. That body, that laugh, those fingers, that mouth. He would have crawled through glass to get to her. Once, he did.

Now Kona looks at the place, the blooming spring flowers, the full crepe myrtles and wonders about the woman inside. Her anger the day before had been like a poison, heady and thick. Kona doesn’t blame her.

His mother’s lies, the deception all made Kona feel stupid, simple. He wasn’t a dumb man. He was educated, he was moderately mature. So why had he not seen the way his mother deceived him? How could he have not believed in Kiera? They’d made headway, crossed the bridge from the past, began to forgive each other and in one afternoon, he let his mother strip that all away.

A visit to the punk kid working in the lab and one small threat in his frown and Kona had uncovered the truth.

“That professor lady, Mr. Hale, she paid me five thousand bucks! I couldn’t turn that down.”

Five thousand dollars destroyed Kona’s chance at knowing his son. And the boy
was
his. The lab kid confirmed it. Keira hadn’t lied. Kona had a son, not Luka.

Five thousand dollars and his mother took away another connection to blood, to family.

He’d let her threaten whatever he hoped to have with his son.

“Why did you do this?” he’d asked her, waving the aged, yellow check in his hand. The one she’d hastily written to Keira all those years ago. “Why would you lie?”

“I was protecting you. I will always protect you, Kona.” His mother’s tears had been real. The trembling in her limbs, the pale, washed out color of her skin. She’d been scared, petrified that Kona’s anger would have him walking away from her without ever looking back.

He couldn’t forgive her. He’d left her crying on her sofa, looking old, looking weak with no promises that he’d ever see her again.

From his car, Kona sees his son coming out of the front door. Tall, strong, wide shoulders, thick legs. He is beautiful; the most remarkable thing Kona has ever let his eyes land on. His son waves to the old woman trimming weeds from her flower bed the next yard over and then the boy runs on the sidewalk, iPod in his ears, head down, concentrating as he slips past Kona’s car.

He waits. Watches in the rearview mirror until his son disappears around the corner and Kona pops his neck, rubs his face before he leaves the rental.

A weird flash of déjà vu hits him as him heads up the front walk, palms sweating, heart jackhammering in his chest and when his ring on the doorbell goes unanswered and Kona hears the sound of a piano behind the front glass, he twists his head, glances inside to see Keira in front of the large Steinway.

Behind her, the patio doors are open, and the breeze from the lake blows her hair around her face. Kona stops breathing, feeling the rapid beat of his heart increasing.

My God, is she beautiful.

The grass needs mowing, is thick and Kona’s heavy feet crunch the blades as he walks around the house, to the back of the house. The fence has the same busted latch, the one he’d broken sixteen years ago, and so it is easy for Kona to slip right through the wood fence, just like he’d done at twenty, eager to get to Keira. He takes the same path up the walkway, noticing the gardenia bush next to the bathroom window is overgrown, small buds clustered between those shiny green leaves.

As he walks around the large AC unit, the tune of one of Keira’s songs, “Better Men,” flies off the patio tiles and Kona frowns. He hates that song. Hates it more now that he knows Keira wrote it with him in mind. Then her voice rings out above the notes and Kona feels the muscles around his mouth tighten.

You’re not special

You’re not a surprise

You laid me down with grins

Burned me with your lies

But don’t feel accomplished

Don’t think you’ve done anything new

‘Cause baby I’ve seen it all before

I’ve been burned by better men than you

It became an anthem for scorned women everywhere ten years ago and the second Kona discovered Keira had written it, he found the references a bit too familiar, the anger too sharp. His Wildcat had been angry for years and she capitalized on that anger.

There is a manic expression on her face as he watches her. Hair flapping against her shoulders and her fingers pounding the keys, Kona touches his chest, a habit he’s acquired when he feels pressure, when he needs to feel something that centers him. Now the one thing that always made him feel better, calmer, sits only a few feet away from him, her angry voice beautiful and bellowing as she sings about an asshole, a loser who took what he wanted and walked away.

He closes his eyes, steeling himself, trying to make the race of his heart settle. When the music dies abruptly, Kona opens his eyes, gazes straight ahead and focuses on Keira’s frown as she stares at him.

She doesn’t take her fingers from the keys. She doesn’t leave the piano at all. But the severe frown remains, stays fixed before Keira turns away from him and her fingers move slower, calmer, the song haunting and sad.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks, coming through the open doorway.

Her stubbornness has not diminished in all this time and Kona is not surprised that she ignores him; that the poison he felt from her the day before is still toxic.

Keira wears a simple pair of jeans and a thin sleeveless black tank that hugs her small waist and pushes up her beautiful breasts. Kona can’t help but stare at the perfect curve in her back, at the subtle way her body dips and bends and he has to remind himself he isn’t here to gawk at her or hope for things he can never have again.

The melody changes, shifts to something he recognizes and a quick ache squeezes in his chest as Keira plays Mary J’s “Not Gonna Cry.”

“Keira, please. I’m trying to apologize.”

Hands flat against the keys, she whips her gaze to him, that ever-present glare only hardening. “Apologize for what, Kona? Letting your mother call me a whore?” Her attention returns to the piano and her fingers hit the keys in soft taps. “Or did you want to apologize for not believing me?” Striking the ivory harder now, Keira’s arm shakes and Kona steps next to the piano. “Maybe you want to apologize for allowing your mother to lie about your brother and me. Maybe, I dunno, maybe you wanna apologize for acting like a sackless wonder while she and that Twinkie of a lawyer spoke for you.” Another glare at him and her fingers still. “
That
was very manly, Hale.”

He takes the venom without arguing. She’s right. Every word is a punishment, something Kona knows he deserves. But he still has to make his apologies. Keira straightens up, takes her hands from the keys when he kneels next to the seat.

“Yes. For all that. She’s manipulative and she didn’t care about insulting my brother’s memory.” He has to stop himself from touching her when some of the stiffness of her frown softens. “Yes, I was a punk. I let her convince me that you’d lied. It’s not an excuse, but I never realized how long she’d planned this. I didn’t speak up. I didn’t try to stop her. I’m an asshole who doesn’t deserve to meet my son. I don’t deserve a lot of things, Keira.” Kona closes his eyes, tries to ignore the pout on her lips and had badly his wants to kiss them. “But I’m here, on my knees asking you to forgive me. I’m here because I want to know my son. Will you let me? Please, Keira?”

She inhales, shoulders moving up, and then Keira returns her fingers to the keys. “No.”

And Kona is disregarded, ignored again when Keira hides behind those notes. On the drive over, he promised himself he wouldn’t get angry; that he’d take whatever she gave him and accept it. He’d let her take the lead in this. She’d been the one raising the boy on her own. She’d been responsible for him when she was barely old enough to know what that meant.

But Keira Riley did something to Kona. Always. Only she could make his stomach clench, bubble with frustration, with quick, easy anger and her dismissal has that burn stirring in gut. “You are being stubborn as hell.”

Kona shoots up on his feet, stepping back when Keira kicks the bench away, when she slams the cover over the keys. “Yes I am, you asshole.” She takes a step and Kona feels that bubble of anger shift, lower. He doesn’t want to get worked up by this, but the deep shade of red on her cheeks and how her eyes are lit with fierce rage, has Kona’s dick twitching, makes his fingers buzz. He watches her move toward him, wondering if she’ll lash out, annoyed with himself when he hopes she does.

“I will not ever let you treat my son like that. I will not put him in a situation where you or your mother can hurt him.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“You don’t have a say in it.” Another step and Kona stops retreating, curious what she’ll try. “He is my son and you cannot meet him. I don’t want you near him and if that bitch ever thinks about contacting him…”

“She won’t. I promise, you, she won’t.”

“You think your word means anything to me? You think your promises are worth anything at all?”

The twitching stops, completely reverses. He had grown hard the louder her voice grew, realizing that he missed her passion, the quick anger that never failed to turn him on as a kid. It was fire; something Kona hadn’t experienced with a woman since Keira busted the jail’s telephone receiver. But her mentioning his broken promises takes away that excitement, replaces it with a cocktail of guilt and frustration.

“This isn’t about you and me, Keira. Fuck! You don’t get that? I’m not here to win you back.” Kona’s hands fly to his hair, rub the back of his head and he turns away from her, looks out at the lake to keep his anger in check.

“You’ll hurt him,” she says, her voice softer, cautious.

“No, I won’t.” Kona looks down at Keira, away from her full mouth, breathing through his nose, ignoring the urge to touch her. “You’re going to have to trust me on this. He’s my son, Keira. I won’t hurt him.”

When she folds her arms and looks to the row of photographs on the wall—all of her mother and those rich bitch friends of hers—Kona risks another rejection by grazing his finger against her elbow. “We have to come to an understanding. Whatever happens from here on out, it has to be about him first. Dredging up the past isn’t going to help anyone and it certainly won’t make things easy for him, will it? Not if he’s put in the middle of our shit.” Keira’s eyebrows lower and that hard edge that made her mouth look something like a straight line, disappears. “You agree?” he asks her, moving his head to catch her eyes.

“I agree.” A little nod of her head and Keira steps back, but she is still closed off from him, arms still cradled tight against her body. “Ransom wouldn’t want that anyway.”

“I wouldn’t want what?”

If Kona had a mirror, one that shot back a reflection of his younger self, then Ransom would be what he saw. He wasn’t a sentimental guy, not generally, and he liked kids well enough; had wanted his own for years now. Kona didn’t get off on beautiful sunsets or centuries old masterpieces. If he saw something he thought was nice, he either bought it, bedded it or guzzled it down. Most of the time, whatever he admired warranted a pleased jerk of his chin. But seeing this boy in front of him threw all of Kona’s composed swagger and cool right out the open doors behind him. The boy was beautiful and strong and he amazed Kona with one single glance.

Fleetingly, he wonders what the boy had been like as a kid, if, like Luka, he’d had a little chunk or was he lean like Kona had always been? He pushes those thoughts aside quickly, not wanting to dwell on all the milestones he’d missed in his son’s life.

Ransom walks forward, sweaty, looking tired as he pockets his iPod and smiles at Kona, giving him a nod before he stands at Keira’s side.

“What wouldn’t I want?” he asks his mother, but his gaze keeps veering to Kona.

“Us. Fighting about shit that doesn’t matter.” Keira rubs her face, shaking off her earlier annoyance and anger before she grabs Ransom’s hand. “Sweetie, this is your father, Kona.”

Absently, Kona tugs on the hem of the white button up he’s wearing, unusually nervous, worried by the way his son looks him over, and he thinks he might get some attitude, maybe a thousand questions about why there had been a DNA test and why his mother had returned home yesterday likely ready to spit fire. But Ransom doesn’t ask a single question. He nods again and an easy, warm smile crosses his features. Kona blinks, shivering when the right side of the boy’s mouth curls in a half grin. Luka had done that a lot. He did that often and seeing that gesture after so long makes Kona’s palms sweat and his chest twinge.

“Hey man,” Ransom says, lifting his hand toward Kona.

He takes the boy’s hand, pulling him into a dude hug—hands grasped and a quick pat on the back.

“You remind me of my brother.” The words are out before Kona realizes he’d said them and he thinks he might have messed up; that his honesty is too telling or that Keira might think it is a dig at her and the stupid accusation his mother made.