Thin Love (30 page)

“What? No.” Kona didn’t resist Keira’s tug on his collar. He didn’t flinch from the rise of her voice. “No one deserves that. I’m so… I have anger issues. I’ve had them since I was a kid and I just… God, Kona… that’s not an excuse.”

His shaking shoulders stopped her, had Keira leaning away from him to look at his face. The left side was still numb, likely from the anesthesia the doctor’s gave him before they stitched it up, but the right side carried a smile, it was thin, but it was still there. “I think I figured that out a couple of months back when you came tearing into the cafeteria looking like you were going to claw my eyes out.” He took her hand, kissed her knuckles. “I’m familiar, Wildcat. You think I don’t have issues? You don’t think my anger isn’t as stupid and quick as yours?”

He touched her faced, ran his fingertips over the dip above her lips. “I’m an asshole.” She didn’t disagree with him. “I shouldn’t have touched the redhead and I can’t touch anyone else because I don’t want to.” He leaned down to rest on his elbow, coming closer to her. “The thing is, I don’t wanna touch anyone but you.” Kona looked up at the ceiling as though he were seeking some sort of help from the heavens. “I’m gonna sound like a pussy whipped idiot.”

Keira pulled his head down so he had to look at her, breath held by where Kona was steering the conversation. “Why?”

“I want you. You know that. I want to do things to your body that are probably very illegal. But it’s not just that. Tonight, when that girl was on me, offering me shit that I’ve heard from a hundred other girls, all I could think about was how I wanted it to be you saying that shit to me.” He leaned closer. “But that would be too easy, right? Me taking you. Me inside you, that shit’s easy, Wildcat.”

“Don’t call me—”

“Baby, shut the hell up.” His kiss was deep, tongue brushing against her lips, silently asking to be let in and Keira obliged. In that moment, she’d give Kona her mouth, her body, anything he wanted from her. The kiss was over too quickly and when he pulled away from her, he left her lips humming. “You gutted me, telling me about your other options and when you did, I realized, I didn’t want easy anymore.” Kona’s voice got deeper, came out at a whisper and when he looked at her then, his eyes announced everything; told her all things she knew he couldn’t say aloud. “It kills me, thinking of you with anyone else. And I know I sound like even more of an asshole, but I think I’d kill anyone who touched you. That night, back at Nathan’s? The party? I saw you with your cousin, talking to Mark, letting him touch you, that’s when I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that I didn’t want him touching you. That I wanted to touch you. You reminded me of that tonight. When you tossed me out, when you thought I didn’t want you, Keira, I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to be something you walked away from.” Another kiss and Kona let this one grow longer, deeper. When he pulled away, his breath came out uneven, panting. “I suck at this. Being with someone, letting them consume me. I was stupid, I’ve been stupid about you, careless, jealous and I thought I just wanted to get with you, to have you once and forget I did. But I know now, that’s not it.” Keira saw something flicker in Kona’s eyes, it made him look anxious, uncertain, but she touched his face, moved her thumb over his mouth and the gesture calmed him, seemed to steel him. “I’m… I’m into you, Wildcat. I’m so into you and I’m not sure what to do about that.”

She shook her head, trying to keep her eyes on his, trying so hard not to let that bandage distract her from what he was trying to say. “So tonight made you realize you were into me?”

“No. Tonight made me realize I didn’t want to be into anyone else. I don’t care that we piss each other off. I don’t care that people don’t like it. I really don’t care that us being together makes no sense at all.”

“Kona. I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Kona fingered the strap of her tank top, running his thumb underneath as though he need a distraction, needed something that pulled his attention together until he thought about what he wanted to say. Finally, with Keira waiting, wondering what kept the words stuck in his throat, Kona’s gaze returned to her face and he smiled.

“Be my girl, will you, Wildcat?”

She laughed, overcome by his vulnerability, by the hesitant way he kept his eyes shifting around her face. “You asking me to go steady?”

Kona smiled and Keira noticed that the left side of his face moved with the gesture, the medicine slowly wearing off. “It sounds stupid when you put it like that, but shit… yeah. Yeah, I guess I am saying that.” His fingers were long, felt warm against Keira’s cheek and she loved how gently he touched her, how those fingers rested against her skin like they belonged there. “I just want you. Do you want it to be just me and you?”

Their anger had been so thick, so consuming, and Keira knew that she was probably flirting with those bad decisions Leann was so worried about. As Kona waited for answer, eyebrows bunched together, Keira thought about their arguments, the careless way they never held anything back. It scared her. It scared her more than anything had before. “I want us to be normal. I want us not to scream and kick and try to kill each other.”

“Who the hell wants to be normal? Normal is boring. Everyone else is normal, but baby, that’s not us.”

She opened her mouth, planned to tell him that sometimes boring was the only thing that kept you sane, but Kona kissed her neck, threaded his fingers in her hair again and thoughts of being normal seemed beige and lackluster. She didn’t want beige. Beige is what her mother had, what she told herself she never wanted for herself.

“Come on, Wildcat, be mine, just mine and I’ll be yours.”

“I clock you with a bottle and you come here to ask me to be your girl? This is sane to you?”

“No. Not sane. Necessary. And I came here to tell you I’m an idiot and I don’t want anyone else. I came here because when you figure that shit out, you don’t want to wait.” Kona inched down on the mattress, head on her pillow and Keira couldn’t take the stare he gave, as though he needed her answer. As though it was the only thing that would keep him balanced. “Say yes. Please say yes.”

Kona Hale wasn’t the type of guy to say please. Not to anyone.

It was then that Keira decided to accept that she couldn’t refuse him. He made her so angry, brought back that little girl reeling from pain and loss, but Keira didn’t care. That girl wanted a little bit of joy. She craved it and so Keira rested on the pillow, face to face with Kona and gave him a smile that brought an easy light to his eyes. “Okay.”

His smile was crooked, but still beautiful, still hypnotic. “Good. Now roll over.” He kissed her again, quick, determined, before he nudged her on her back. “I wanna sleep with you.” When she gave him a look that was both eager and suspicious, Kona rolled his eyes. “I
just
wanna sleep with you, Wildcat.”

Now that the anger had waned, Keira couldn’t fight her yawn or the exhaustion that weighed her down. She turned on her side and smiled when Kona’s arm came back around her waist.

“Kona?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Keira kept avoiding the woman’s stare. She wasn’t surprised she was getting it. Her gaze went up, over Professor Alana’s face to the smattering of gray that grew along her temples and at the top of her scalp. Her ears protruded slightly, were large and long and her eyes were dark brown, a touch lighter than Kona’s. Surrounding those familiar eyes were creases that only deepened as she watched Keira; those eyes stared over square glasses that had slipped to the edge of her nose. There was an excess of skin around her nose, lines that pulled hard in a frown that made her large mouth seem broader, more pronounced. Professor Alana had the look of someone who had once been very beautiful but time and disappointment had transformed those soft features, made them sharp and severe.

The cool, quick frown and those big, dark eyes didn’t exactly make Keira’s history class pass by quickly, but she made attempts. The woman was her boyfriend’s mother. She tried smiling, doing her best to look sincere, but Professor Alana’s face remained impassive.

“Whatever,” Keira said, just above a whisper and continued to finish her exam.

The clock on the wall told her she still had five minutes and with only two questions remaining, she knew the exam was an easy A. Still, she could feel Professor Alana’s eyes staring, cool glances on the top of her head as she bent over her test. The woman was ridiculous and had acted, if possible, even more distant toward Keira since their small confrontation at the hospital. Kona had told her that his mother had taken issue with Keira talking back to her, ignoring her command that she leave them to deal with his grandfather’s surgery privately.

“She’s not big on outsiders,” Kona had mentioned when Keira complained about how his mother ignored her in class and how, on the rare occasions that she glanced at Keira, her expression was indifferently insulting. “My mom’s not generally a fan of, you know, couples like us.”

Keira hadn’t understood him, but she could tell by the way he tried distracting her with his mouth on the back of her neck—something he often did when he was trying to stay Keira’s irritation or get what he wanted—that Kona didn’t really care what his mother liked.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘couples like us?’”

When she’d pushed him away from her neck, Kona’s shoulders fell and he returned to his side of the Camaro. They’d been parked in front of her mother’s house, waiting for the lights inside to go dim. She didn’t want Kona to meet her mom yet, she wouldn’t put that on anyone she liked, but Keira was getting low on cash and needed to hit the safety net envelope full of twenties hidden under her dresser.

“Um… biracial couples? Specifically, Polynesian and Samoan men that date white women.”

Keira’s mouth had slipped open and she felt cold, freezing despite the hard burst of heat coming from the vents. “Kona, you’re saying your mom is a racist?”

“No. Of course not.” He shrugged, trying to pull Keira across the seat and onto his lap.

“But you said…” she was staggered. She hadn’t ever really considered it an issue to anyone but the out-of-touch, racist idiots that made muttered comments from time to time when they were together in public. Those came mostly from older folks who must have forgotten it was the twenty-first century, or the random stranger in the grocery store. She wouldn’t have cared if his skin was purple with green polka dots. She wanted him. She cared about him, not the color of his skin and she was pretty sure Kona felt the same way. It had never been an issue for either of them. “You said she didn’t like us together.”

“She doesn’t want me dating
haoles
.” He cleared his throat, realizing the slip he made. The term itself wasn’t derogatory, Kona had told her it just meant “mainlander” or “outsider,” the few times he recalled some of the slang his family on the island used. Still, she didn’t like it and Kona knew that. “She’d just rather I be with a Hawaiian girl, Wildcat. That doesn’t make her a racist.”

Keira had learned Kona was a little stupid when it came to his mom. She caught him frequently defending her when she’d cut Keira a particularly hard glare in class. “Kona, anyone who doesn’t like someone because they are a certain race is, by definition, a racist.”

He relented, tried placating her. “Baby, I don’t care what she thinks.” He finally managed to pull her onto his lap. “Neither should you.”

Keira finished her exam just as the clock hit 9:59 and she followed the other students to the front of the class, depositing their exams on
the professor’s desk. She looked over the woman’s head, not eager to catch her eye and be served another stupid frown, but as she turned around to leave the class, Professor Alana cleared her throat.

“Just a minute, Ms. Riley.”

Awesome,
she thought, mentally preparing herself for what she was sure would be something dramatic and stupid.

“Yes?” she asked Professor Alana when she made it back to her desk.

Eyes on the retreating students, Keira assumed watching for the last of them to leave and close the door, the woman’s gaze moved to her face and then she leaned back in her chair, arms crossed tight, as though she was trying to restrain herself. It was a gesture she’d seen Kona do a hundred times.

“It’s my understanding that your GPA is now the highest in the class.”

“Okay.” Keira didn’t know where this was going, but the professor had made the statement as though it was more accusation than fact.

“I find it interesting that your performance in my class improved when you began, well, when you became friendly with my son.”

Keira closed her eyes, knowing the woman’s insinuation was weak, a stupid excuse to dig for information about what she and Kona were doing together. “Professor Alana, if you’re implying that Kona is somehow feeding me exams before we take them, then, I’m sorry. You’re wrong.”

“Then would you care to explain the sudden improvement?”