Thin Love (32 page)

“Luka, what…”

A nod toward the door and Luka rubbed his eyes again against his palms. “He’ll hate me for this. He never wanted you to see.” She opened her mouth, was determined to get an explanation, but Luka shook his head and moved his palm to the small of her back, urging her toward the door. “Go.”

At first, she didn’t see him. The lockers near the door were the same garish blue of the team colors, too bright, too in your face. A quick flash came to her then, brought her back to that first week of the semester and Kona in the showers naked and moaning. Luka was behind her, keeping his distance and when she looked at him, needing some direction he nodded beyond the lockers, to the row of benches in front of them.

She took four long steps, hurried, anxious, then stopped on her next half step. Kona stood with his back to her, his pants and pads on, but his chest bare, his jersey, shoulder pads and helmet were on the bench next to a black leather satchel with a row of silver topped, glass vials. The liquid in them was thin, tinged yellow.

Kona didn’t know she was watching him. He was too focused on the skin pinched between his fingers and the needle that sunk into his flesh.

Keira covered her mouth, fingers already shaking, and a swift weight of disappointment, of disgust and fear sank in her stomach. Steroids. That’s what this was about. That stupid, arrogant idiot she couldn’t stop kissing threatened everything offered to him with those damn vials. If he was caught, being off the team would the least of his worries. There would be no pro career. There would be no future for him in the game he loved so much. Worse still, he was killing himself to be the best. The disappointment she held was nothing compared to her anger and the growing dread of what he was doing to his body.

“You stupid, selfish idiot.”

Kona jerked around, dropping the syringe to the floor when he heard her, eyes rounded and terrified. “What the hell are you…” he stopped when Luka walked to Keira’s side and that small flash of fright completely morphed into rage as Kona’s top lipped curled. “You motherfucker.”

Luka set his helmet on the bench in front of his brother, bending down to pick up the needle. “She has a right to know.” When he straightened, grabbed the leather satchel, Kona moved, slammed Luka right against the lockers.

“The hell she does! I told you to watch the door. You stupid asshole! I cannot believe you’d let her see!” Kona grabbed Luka’s jersey and his twin let him. He took what Kona gave him like it was an absolution, a punishment for being too weak to hide his brother’s sin. “Why would you let her see?”

“Because he’s worried about you.”

Keira’s voice had Kona dropping his hands from Luka’s jersey. He stared at her for a few seconds that felt weighted, that thickened the slap of tension in the room. “Keira,” he said, voice so low that she heard the warning in it. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t understand this so please,” he closed his eyes, as though tamping down the fuel of anger and betrayal that made his breath rough, “don’t you fucking judge me.”

All these months and Kona still didn’t understand her. And Keira thought, as Luka picked up the satchel and stepped away from his brother, that there was still so much Kona would never understand about her.

“Luka, give me a minute, okay?” He didn’t acknowledge her, but Luka did grab his helmet and shoved the steroids in a locker just behind them—Keira assumed it was his own locker—before he left the room.

Kona watched her, gaze flicking to every movement she made; when she took a breath, when she crossed her arms and stepped back from him. Keira could smell the musky stench already drifting from his body. Sweat covered him, was on his forehead, sliding down his neck and chest and he hadn’t even made it to the field.

Why would he do this? He has talent, he has options. Why is he throwing everything away?

So many questions ran through her mind and Keira decided only one would suffice. It would at least be a beginning. “Why?”

Kona picked up his jersey, fiddled with the straps on his pads. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

“Oh, I want the answers, Kona. You will give them to me.” She stood in front of him, not caring how her voice carried, or how the taunt of fury came out with each word. And then Keira kicked the pads off the bench. “I want to know why you’re so eager to throw your life away, to kill yourself.”

“That’s not going to happen. What I use is top of the line and I cycle carefully. I know what I’m doing.” When her frown only dipped deeper, Kona glanced at her, nostrils wide as he took in several deep breaths before he shook his head at her. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Liver tumors, internal bleeding and a condition called peliosis hepatis, which will make your favorite pastime a little tricky considering most women wouldn’t be down for contracting Hep. God knows I wouldn’t.” There was something in the glare he gave her; it wasn’t pure anger, wasn’t completely cold and Keira recognized it. That was the same expression he wore anytime she tried convincing him she knew what size engine he’d put in his Camaro or how long she could hold her breath underwater. That was Kona doubting her.

“Senior year, Cameron Walsh, fastest runner in the school had a heart attack. He was seventeen, Kona. He’d been on juice since freshman year. He wanted to be an Olympian by the time he was twenty-five and instead ended up in the morgue. Coach made us visit former users who could barely get out of their chairs by themselves because their bones were too brittle to work anymore.”

“That’s not gonna happen to me.”

That’s what all those old juice heads had told her too. “I didn’t think it would get me. I thought I was invincible.” Kona never thought anything would touch him, most kids their age did and Keira had seen it herself in how fast he drove his Camaro and how reckless he was playing pick-up games with Nathan and Luka. He always played like every game was his last. He always lived like he knew tomorrow wouldn’t be waiting for him.

Keira wasn’t so confident, was often worried about how fast and easy Kona liked to live and she knew she’d never get through to him. “Your balls will shrivel up and you’ll probably never be able to father children.” An image of Kona old and lonely flashed into her mind, body frail, skin covered in acne scars. It scared her even more. It also made her want to slap him. “But then I guess that would make your first years in the NFL pretty exciting, right? Not having to worry about a string of baby mamas. That is, of course, if you can even get your dick hard.”

“Keira… stop… don’t…”

“Shrunken testicles. Not very attractive from what I hear.” She stepped back when he reached for her, knowing if he touched her, she wouldn’t be able to hold her fists. “But wait, you won’t have to worry about any of that. They don’t take users in the NFL and they drug test any incoming draftee. In fact, so does CPU.” Head tilted as she stared at him, Keira could see Kona hiding, eyes on the jersey in his hand. “How are you getting past that?” His eye flicked to the door and she understood. “Your brother is a good person.”

“I know that.”

“He’s a better man than you are.”

Kona kicked his shoulder pads, sending them flying across the locker room. “I fucking know that!”

She had to push back that ridiculous desire that rose up at his rage. This was different. This wasn’t them fighting out of jealousy or lust. Her fury at his stupidity was sticking and sharp and despite the undercurrent of wanting him, of fueling his already burning anger, Keira was too disgusted, too disappointed to acknowledge what her body wanted. She watched Kona’s trembling hands, the unrestrained way he released breaths through gritted teeth and she still could not stop herself from asking questions. “So answer me. I want to know why.”

“It doesn’t matter why.”

“It matters to me you greedy son of a bitch!” That small thread of patience, of resistance, snapped quickly and Keira swung, hoping her palm would leave a mark, hoping he could feel her slap despite all the dulling chemicals coursing through his veins. But Kona’s reflexes were heightened, and his response was swift. He grabbed Keira’s arms, jerked her against his chest and tried to kiss her. In the middle of this devastation, Kona tried to kiss her.

She jerked free of his touch and pushed herself away, raising a hand when Kona immediately rushed toward her. “No. Don’t you dare.” Keira wondered how much time they had. The game would start soon and someone would come to fetch Kona and Luka, but she had to know. She was desperate to know why this beautiful, pigheaded giant would gamble his future, his life, on something so common and clichéd. “You tell me now.” She pointed her finger at him and Kona’s gaze moved right to that naked nail. “You tell me why you do this shit.”

“Because I need it.
This
Keira,” he said, slapping his bare chest, growling when she stepped away from him, “this is all I am. Bone and muscle and speed. This.” His fist on his chest, hard, stinging and Keira noticed the bright red mark on his tan skin. “
This is all I am! I’m not smart, Keira. I need it. It’s what they expect of me. Be strong, Kona. Be fast. Be more, train harder, work,
work
until you can’t breathe.”

She didn’t know who he was speaking to, but it wasn’t to her.. This was an exorcism, words and desperation and sheer fury that he seemed to need. His voice was so loud, his anger so heightened that Keira pitied him. It dulled some of her rage, but only some.

“Train and
focus
, fucking
focus
until you feel nothing but agony, until your fingers and hands bleed from the metal of the weights, until you don’t feel like such a punk failure! This,” three hard slaps against his chest, each one harder than the last, and the skin on Kona’s chest welted up, began to redden. “This is all I am! A body, Keira. A fucking machine. No one cares about me, not what’s in my head.” Kona’s voice broke, cracking and his eyes shone bright, glassy. “One body made to please—the team, the coach, women who don’t give a shit what I think, what I feel. There is only this body, this strength and if I don’t have this, I am nothing. It I don’t win, don’t tackle, can’t play, I have nothing.”

She could have held him then. She could have let Kona use what he needed to feel his best, to feel as if he had tried everything to excel. It would have been easy just then to cave. Kona’s face, drenched in sweat, hands and fingers still trembling like a dry leaf, it cost Keira greatly not to reach for him, not to give him even the smallest comfort. But she had heard excuses like this before. She had heard them a hundred times. “Daddy needs this, sweetie, to take away the pain.” At nine, she believed her father. Pretending to understand why he snorted white powder, why he drank from a bottle of Jack every night. He was weak and Keira grew up with that weakness; making excuses, defending him. The comfort she gave her father had not saved him and she knew it would not save Kona.

“You’re right,” she told him, two steps back, just feet from the door behind her. She would never be an enabler again. She wouldn’t have Kona’s blood on her hands too. “You don’t have anything.” Keira saw the sting of hurt in Kona’s eyes, saw how her words left him wounded, stricken. “You use that shit, you damn well don’t have me.”

“Don’t you even think about it.” Kona ignored how she held up her hands, trying to keep him away. He ignored her small yelp when grabbed her by the waist. His breath was hot, damp and on it Keira smelled that airy scent she loved so much, something primal, something that only smelled like Kona. “Don’t you walk out on me when shit gets heavy.”

She twisted away from him, but he barely let her put an inch between them. Still, she wasn’t scared. She knew that poison in his body could make him insane, could make him dangerous and she guessed, just then, that’s what he had been on the night she clocked him with the bottle at Lucy’s. Kona moved his head and Keira’s gaze flicked to his wide, desperate eyes and then down to the scar on his cheek. This time, the guilt did not come.

“I’m not going to watch you kill yourself.” She took a breath, was fueled again by rage and she pushed against his chest, stepping away from him until she was against the door. “One man I cared about chickening out on life is enough for me. I don’t want another one.”

He only stared at her, hands at his side and his face marked with hurt, confusion. She’d never told Kona much about her father. She felt that day and what she had endured was for private, for her alone, and in that locker room with Kona’s body marked red and his breath coming in short bursts, was not the time for history lessons.

Hand on the doorknob, Keira opened it. Kona’s steps were small and tentative, but she saw the threat of attack beneath his movements; in the shake of his bottom lids and the tremor moving his mouth.

“Goodbye, Kona,” she said, slipping out of the room before he could follow. She moved quickly, jogging down the corridor when she thought Kona would surely break from Luka’s hold, when she thought his loud screaming of her name would silence the roar in the stadium. Then, face wet and hot from her tears, she ran, ignoring the coaching staff and assistants as they headed toward the locker room, ignoring the loud, desperate call of her name behind her.