Thin Love (56 page)

“Oh, you mean my
real
father?” Ransom says, but he laughs, slapping Kona’s shoulder and the melancholy and nervousness he felt instantly disappears.

Keira jabs the boy in the side and his laughter increases. “That is not funny, you little shit.”

Ransom kisses the top of her head, has to bend down to reach it and Kona’s chest pinches for a different reason. They love each other, that much he can tell and the thought that his boy has turned into someone so laid back, so seemingly willing to make others comfortable pulls a wider, honest smile to Kona’s face.

“Ugh. Go take a shower. You smell disgusting.”

Ransom rolls his eyes, grinning at his mother when she moves his shoulders and pushes him toward the hallway. “Easy, woman, I’m going.” He glances at Kona. “You sticking around?”

“Yeah. I can do that.”

“Cool. Maybe we can sweet talk Mom into making chili.” He pulls the sweat slick shirt over his head and winks at his mother before he grins at Kona. “You ever have her chili?” Kona shakes his head and the boy shrugs. “Well, it’s awesome. I call it her Bless Jesus Chili.”

“Your mom had me blessing Jesus a lot, but not for her cooking.” Kona bites his lip, realizing too late that he probably shouldn’t have said that. Keira glares at him, looks like she wants to smack him hard, and he thinks Ransom is insulted, maybe thinks Kona is disrespecting his mother. But after a few seconds that lingers, Ransom laughs hard and loud.

“Oh shit.” He holds his stomach, gives Kona a fist bump. “I like you, Kona.”

And with that, Kona’s son leaves the room, his laughter bouncing off the walls of the hallway.

“Asshole,” Keira says, but Kona catches the small smile she tries keep off her lips.

The lake house smells wonderful. Kona’s mouth waters, his eyes moistening as the smell of chili powder and cornbread perfumes the air. If the smells were any indication, then cooking is a skill Keira has acquired and she is damn good at it. She’d already slapped Ransom’s hand from the simmering pot twice when the boy tried stealing a taste and Kona couldn’t blame him. The smell alone is making Kona’s stomach grumble.

He excuses himself, walking down the hall to the bathroom and that smell follows him. He slips in and out quickly and hits the light, starts to make back for the dining room where his son is talking to his cousin Tristan and Leann while Keira takes a phone call. But then the light from the back of the house glints against the framed photos on the wall and Kona stands in front of a row of pictures, all of Keira, her as a child, graduating high school, her on the docks outside with her Gibson on her lap.

Fleetingly, he wonders if she still has it, but the thought has him feeling guilty, remembering how she’d almost lost her father’s prized Hummingbird; how it had been his fault.

Kona rubs a thumb over the scar on his cheek and is about to leave the hallway and the shameful memories those pictures had pulled from his mind, but he hears Keira’s voice, steps silently toward it as she talks on the phone in the office.

A slip of light falls onto the hardwood at his feet through the crack in the door and Kona looks down at the grain and edges of that oak wood. He knows he has no business listening. Nothing she says has anything to do with him. He shouldn’t care that her voice is affectionate, pitched high.

“Oh, I know, sweetie, don’t worry about that.” Southern folks call everyone sweetie. Or honey. Or sugar. It is custom. It is habit, but Keira saying that word, saying it with that soft tone, sets Kona’s teeth on edge. He doesn’t know the woman she is now, but as a girl she’d reserved her pet names for him. He leans his head against the wall, listening, praying that the tone will harden, that she’ll stop using those endearments.

“No,” she says, clearing her throat. “I don’t know. He’s here now and it’s okay. Well, it got okay after we screamed at each other.”

Walk away.
He isn’t eager to hear Keira insulting him, talking about him like he is an asshole.
But you are an asshole,
he tells himself.
Hello, DNA test!
Still, the small chuckle Keira releases keeps him rooted to that shadowed space next to the door. He wants to hear a name. He wants to know what she’d say to the guy who brings out Keira’s pacifying, sweet tone.

“The end of summer, at least. I think Ransom is going to try to get into a camp, maybe one at Tulane and I’ve got to settle all the shit with Steven’s estate.”

Tulane? Hell no. No son of his would be practicing at freaking Tulane.

“Are you going to be okay for that long? I hated leaving you.”

Kona feels a cramp in his stomach, one that twists up his esophagus and he tells himself to push down that sensation. It shouldn’t matter to him that Keira probably had someone back in Nashville. She is a beautiful woman. She is strong and confident. She is talented and smart, he’d never kidded himself into believing she’d be without a man. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t jealous. That doesn’t mean he’d stop listening.

“Bobby, no. I can come home if you need me. I’m serious. Of course… well, no, but…” Keira’s words rush out, and Kona can hear the frustration, the worry in her voice. “You know I will. Okay. Yes. Yes, of course. I love you, sweetie.”

Four small words that feel like a gut punch.

Three words that Kona hasn’t uttered to anyone in sixteen years.

Keira says them easily. She says them like she means them and Kona can’t listen anymore.

“You know I will. Sure. Yes. Yes ma’am.”

Bobby,
he thinks.
The boss Keira said helped her out.
Kona tries to pull the instant, stupid-looking relieved smile from his face as he walks into the dining room, waving off a slice of cornbread Ransom has lifted from the oven as he sits at the table.

“So Kona, you back for good?” Leann asks and Kona looks at her, needing a distraction so he won’t stare after Keira when she returns to the kitchen.

He nods to Ransom, a small thanks when the boy sets a bottle of Abita in front of him. “I don’t know yet, Leann. My agent is trying to work something out, but the Steamers’ defensive line is pretty strong.”

“One of the best in the league,” Ransom offers, taking a sip of his sweet tea.

Another nod and a swig from his bottle and Kona shrugs. “We’ll see how spring training goes. I’m set to start with them in July, but I’ve been putting out feelers on some other things.” Leann grins at him and Kona gets the feeling her question had been polite, that she’s not all that interested in who Kona signs with.

Leann sits at the table peelings cucumbers, slapping her son’s hand from the bowl of clean vegetables and fussing at her younger son when he runs through the dining room with wet feet. “Outside, you little monster.”

Kona’s gaze follows the boy and he smiles at his white blonde hair, at the low growl of a laugh he makes when his mother continues fussing. “Two boys?” Kona says to her moving his chin between the little guy running out onto the patio and the one sitting next to Ransom as both boys check their phones.

“Yes. Two was plenty.”

“You don’t dance anymore?” He was curious, trying to catch up, trying like hell not to watch Keira as she moves around the kitchen.

“I do. I own a studio in Kenner.”

“That’s good. Owning a business will keep you out of trouble.”

“Then maybe my boys should think about it.”

Kona’s grin grows as he nods at Leann’s boy across the table from him. “You give your mom hell?”

“Not as much as the shit Ransom gives Keira.” He winces when Leann throws a cucumber peel at his head.

Ransom elbows his cousin, silently telling him to keep his mouth shut and Kona laughs, relaxes against his chair. “You give Keira problems?”

“No. Well, not anymore.” The boy sips from his glass. “Last summer there was some shi—” Leann clears her throat and Ransom waves her off. “Last summer I got talked into a race.” Tristan snorts, a disbelieving sound that has Kona laughing.

Ransom takes another drink, finishing off the tea until the melted ice rattles in the bottom of the glass. “Okay, so I don’t like people messing with me.” Head to the side as his eyes move over Kona and Ransom moves his chin at his father. “You can’t tell me people didn’t screw with you when you were my age.” He waves between them. “The size? The height?”

“Yep. I got that. Lu…” he winces, catching Keira gaze’s from behind the kitchen island when he looks up her. Kona feels stupid, awkward with how uneasy he is just uttering his twin’s name. “Luka too. We were always fighting, especially him, because he was tall and fat until he was about ten.” Kona shakes his head, blinking away the memory of his brother knocking out an sixth grader who tried telling the whole playground that the boys were stupid, had to have been held back since they were so much bigger than everyone else. “Anyway, last summer?”

The prompt has Ransom shifting his eyes down, sliding the empty, sweating glass between his hands. “Some big redneck with a Kawasaki Ninja starts talking shit, telling me his 900 can beat my GSXR.”

“Wait,” Kona says, stopping Ransom with a wave of his hand. “You drive a GSXR? How? You’re a kid.”

From the kitchen, Keira clears her throat, eyes narrowed as she glares at Ransom, motioning with her chin for their son to explain himself.

“Well, technically, I’m not allowed.” A quick shrug and the boy leans back in his chair, gaze moving around the table as he ignores Kona’s expression. “Mom didn’t know about it last year. Bobby, she, well, I guess you could say she’s my adoptive grandmother, she let me keep it at her house and Mom…”

“Neither one of them told me,” Keira says, leaning against the kitchen island. “And I gave them both hell for it too.”

Ransom glares at his mother, but the expression is quick, easily leaves his face when Kona clears his throat. “So this guy?”

“Right. Well, I tried walking away, but this asshole keeps talking smack, him and his boys following me out to the mall parking lot and man, I hate a bully. Especially one that only starts shit when his boys are around.” He looks up at Kona as though he needed his approval; as though Kona’s small nod would make his actions seem reasonable. So Kona gives his boy that nod, urging him with one gesture to continue.

“So I tell this Barney Fife jackass to ease off me and that there was no point arguing over a 900 racing a 950. ‘It’s not the engine, dumbass, it’s the rider,’ I tell him and he and his boys just start laughing at me.” Ransom looks down, voice lowering. “No one laughs at me.” Leann gets up from the table and the boy watches her leave, leaning lower over the table, voice almost at a whisper. “That asshole also bet me two large that he could beat me and there was no way I was gonna pass that up.”

Kona laughs, understanding the logic, remembering what it was like when his mother was tight with her cash and he and Luka would fight with punks eager to prove themselves. He’d made some nice bank in high school teaching a lesson to guys half his size.

“So we go to the West End, out to Centennial. It’s late, no one is around and we take the two miles twice and this idiot is all over the place. He had nothing on me, but he keeps on running his mouth the whole time we’re racing, calling me a punk, telling me I’m a stupid jock, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘shit man, whip it out and measure.’”

“Ransom!” Keira shouts from the kitchen and the boy flinches at the sound.

“Sorry, Mom. Anyway, so we take the curve, the redneck flips, wrecks that sweet little Ninja and I beat him by at least two hundred yards. I run to check up on him and the dude is crying. Literally crying like a freakin’ kid.”

Head in a shake, Kona can’t help smiling at his boy, a mix of approval and annoyance makes him wonder if he’s a bad father for feeling proud. “You won the bet.”

“Lot of good it did him.” Tristan says.

Ransom again jabs his cousin in the ribs. “Hey. My story, asshole.”

“Luka Ransom Riley watch your mouth.” Kona doesn’t buy Keira’s frown or the way she stomps into the dining room with a stack of bowls in her hands. “Marcus is eight years old and he repeats everything you and Tristan say.”

“Hey, his foul mouth isn’t our fault. You’ve heard Leann yell, Mom.”

From the kitchen, Leann throws a dishrag at Ransom’s head and he catches it.

“What happened with the bet?” Kona asks him, sliding his beer out of the way when Keira places a bowl in front of him.

She stands at his side, hands on her hips and Kona gets that she hates this story, that she’s not amused by how animated Ransom is retelling it. “There were two State Troopers tailing them the whole time. Our son spent the night in jail.”

“What?”

Keira nods.

“You didn’t bail him out?”

“Hell no. When the cops called me I agreed with them that our son needed to be taught a lesson.” Ransom looks like he might correct her language, but one lifted eyebrow from his mother shuts the boy up immediately. “He was being stupid and he needed to learn consequences.”

“But a whole night in jail?” Kona asks her, looking up at her surprised face. He knows he has no right to question her decision to leave him in jail overnight, but he’d been there himself at sixteen. He hates to think that his boy had repeated Kona’s behavior.