Thin Love (57 page)

“Kona, Nashville isn’t New Orleans and yeah, a whole night. He got landed with a priest who was pulled over for DWI. The man quoted scripture to him for sixteen hours straight.”

Keira walks off and Kona watches her, then quickly moves his gaze back to his son when Ransom again lowers his voice. “I went the next day and got my damn money though.”

There’s a small moment of silence, which is immediately broken when a crash sounds from the patio and Leann tells Tristan to check on his little brother.

“You want another Abita?” Ransom asks Kona and he shakes his head, his eyes flicking down to the varsity team t-shirt he wears.

Kona points to the shirt, at the Spartan in the center of Ransom’s chest. “You thinking about college yet? Your mom said you’ve gotten interest.”

“Yeah. LSU and Ole Miss, but I’m not focusing on that.” He silences his phone, moving it to the side to look at Kona. He nods to Tristan who pushes his little brother into the kitchen before returning to his seat. “This one is already signed with CPU for basketball. Point guard.”

“Good job, man.” Kona thinks the boy look like Leann. Same nose, same mouth, but his coloring is different and he wonders if the tattooer stuck around long enough to get Leann to marry him. “Michael your dad?”

“Who?”

Leann clears her throat, glares at Kona as she brings silverware to the table. “No. I married Will Bankston. I don’t think you know him, Kona. He graduated from Tulane.”

“Who’s Michael?” Tristan says again, eyeing his mother.

“Someone you will never meet,” she says, returning to the kitchen.

The doorbell rings and Kona is glad for the distraction, is glad that Tristan jumps from the table to answer it. He wants a minute with his boy, just to talk to him and figures as long as his cousin is around and the manic activity at the lake house continues, he won’t get that minute. Still, Kona likes how easy, how relaxed Ransom is with his cousins, with Keira.

Not liking the silence, Kona folds his hands together, nods again at his son. “So you leaning toward Ole Miss or LSU?”

“I don’t know, man. I still have two more years to think about it. Tennessee might be interested, but I don’t know what Mom wants to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s gotta handle all the shit here first. The estate and everything.”

He’d caught the mention of her stepfather’s estate during her phone call, but assumed that her mother’s financials had been settled. Kona frowns, wondering what that would mean for his son. He wonders how long he’d have him here. “I thought she donated everything.”

“Her mom’s estate, yeah, but she still has to take care of the mess her stepfather left.” Kona frowns, confused. “The asshole left so much debt when he died and two illegitimate kids, that there is a hold up on his estate. Cora and Steven had a pre-nup, so one down, one to go.” Ransom shrugs, fiddling with the end of a spoon in the center of the table. “We’re stuck here to the end of the summer.”

Kona doesn’t hide his smile, likes that his son mimics him. He’d have him for the summer. He’d have time even with his training and then an idea comes to him and he hopes mentioning it to Ransom doesn’t make him seem like he’s trying to buy him.

“There’s a combine happening in June. It’s at CPU.” Kona shoots for subtly, but he can’t seem to calm the excitement in his chest. He wants the boy to like him. He wants him to have opportunities and even if they didn’t make up for him missing the first fifteen years of his life, it could at least be a start. “I could probably get you in if you’re interested.”

Ransom drops the spoon, sits up straighter. “You serious?”

“My buddy Brian is the assistant coach. He owes me a favor.” Another flippant wave, and Kona looks up, sees Keira watching him, eyes narrowed, curious. “It’ll at least let you know where you are, give you an idea on what you need to work on.”

“Hell yeah.” Keira comes to the table, a large, steaming pot of chili in her hands and Ransom follows Kona, stands to make room for her as she places the dish in the center of the table. His son bites his lip, staring at the chili and then he glances at Kona, as though he’s just realized something. “I’ve been slacking since we’ve been here. The food is too damn good and I…” he stops talking when Tristan returns to the dining room, followed by three teenage girls. They are pretty, well dressed, but have friendly smiles and they greet Leann, linger near the kitchen island. Kona smiles at his son, at the way his gaze shoots immediately to a tiny redhead hanging back from her friends, eyes searching the room, looking shy and uncomfortable.

“Um, I’ll be right back,” he tells Kona, shooting away from the table to approach the redhead and Kona sits back down, grinning like an idiot as he watches his son introduce himself, as he watches the boy work his magic. Inside two minutes, the girl is grinning and Kona sees Keira, peeking out of the kitchen, staring at their son. He catches her eye and shakes his head at how closely she watches the two kids.

Kona thinks she should be worried. His son is too much like him; looks the same, has the same need to prove himself, the same quick temper. But he is kind, gentle and smiles easy, just like Luka. Kona thinks, as Ransom leads the girl to the table, introduces her to him, that Keira isn’t the only worried parent in the room. It is funny to him, weird that he could have this much worry, this much pride in a kid he’s just met.

Later, after the Bless Jesus chili had been consumed, Kona’s belly full with Keira’s exceptional handiwork, he watches his son joking around with his friends and Keira and Leann sitting across from them, talking low, relaxed in two cherry wood Adirondack chairs on the patio. The fire pit burns bright, sparks of flame and ash floating above the wood and the lake is slow, calm. Kona nurses another Abita, closes his eyes, loves the touch of the breeze on his face and the quiet sounds his boy makes on Keira’s guitar.

Ransom has an audience, plays a few tunes, songs Kona can’t make out before he begins a strum that is familiar. “Dark End of the Street.” When Ransom begins the intro, Kona moves his head, glances at Keira to meet her stare. Her smile is thin, loose, and he wonders if she remembers that morning she played the song on the piano. It was the day he’d discovered the hell Keira had lived with in this house.

The longer he stares at her, the clearer the memory becomes and he blinks, a flash of sensation returning to spark; the perfect recall of the rest of that morning, how they forgot the French toast cooling on their plates; how he’d taken her on the counters, then again in her mother’s bathroom. He hadn’t attempted a visit to the kitchen the entire day for fear that the memory would be too sharp, the sensation too biting.

“Mom, come on, sing for us.” Ransom’s voice carries across the low chatter Leann and Keira make and at his request, she waves him off, but like Kona, his son is stubborn. “Don’t make me pull the birthday card.”

Kona sits up straight, curious, wondering why he hadn’t thought to ask the boy about his birthday. They’d talked about football and his classes and the things the thought he might want to do after college, but they’d glossed over details about his birth and his childhood in Nashville. Kona had thought that might be a conversation for a second or third visit.

“That’s not for another two months,” Keira says, her voice soft, lazy. “Too soon.”

Ransom sighs and then his cousin and their friends begin to nag Keira, offer exaggerated eye bats and pouts.

“Come on, Keira,” Leann says, brushing her foot against Keira’s knee. “Sing something so they’ll shut up.”

Kona watches Keira begrudgingly get up, as she shoves Tristan out of his spot next to Ransom.

“One song,” she tells her boy. “And not that one.” A quick glance at Kona and then Keira turns toward Ransom.

“Play Dylan.”

Ransom’s smile grows and he clears his throat before his fingers work over the warm sound of the guitar. Keira’s voice is stronger, deeper than the last time Kona heard it and he loves how she’s stopped singing with her eyes downcast. He remembers her with that guitar, playing “Crazy Love” like it was a letter to him; her great, quiet display of how much she loved him. She’d kept her gaze just below his eyes, only managing to look up at him once or twice as she sang.

Kona had thought it was still beautiful and in that moment, all those years ago in the bedroom above them, he’d fallen harder, deeper in love with her.

Now Keira’s alto rolls across the patio, straight into his chest like a warm wave. She is a pro now with a presence she hadn’t had at eighteen and Kona can’t make his eyes blink or pull his attention away from her face, from the sultry magic of her voice.

He thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful or heard anything more poetic and then Keira reaches the chorus, sings,
I’ve known it from the moment we met,
and Ransom sings beneath her, voice lower, crisper, a perfect complement to his mother’s whiskey rasp.

It’s that small length of time and melody with his son’s voice echoing Keira’s that Kona decides he couldn’t love anything more. That boy, that woman, he wants them both. He wants evenings like this. He wants every night to be like this. He wants small chats about stupid mistakes, about girls his boy likes, about football and possibilities his son’s future would bring. He wants Keira around him, holding him, filling in all the gaps of time that Kona had missed. He looks at them both and realizes that this is the family he was meant to have. This was what had been stolen from him, what he threw away without knowing it.

He wants his family.

Kona is selfish. He doesn’t care about the life they’d put on hold in Nashville. He wants to try, to fight, to start over.

The end notes vibrate and Kona feels them, lets them move across his skin and it is Ransom’s smile, the way he slings his arm across his mother’s shoulder that makes Kona smile, has his chest swelling with so much emotion that he ducks his head, rubs his face on his sleeve.

“Do you sing, Kona?”

A quick jerk of his head and Kona waves off his emotion with a laugh. “No, man. I sound like a cat dying when I sing.” He runs his thumbnail over the neck of his bottle and glances at Keira. “You get your talent from your Mom.”

“And your good looks from your father,” Keira says, eyes immediately round as though she can’t believe she’d said that aloud.

“No, sweetheart, that comes from you too. I just gave him a thick head and wide shoulders.”

Ransom laughs and beside him, the young girls sigh as though Kona was something out of a romance novel and not the knuckleheaded asshole who let his girl and son slip through his fingers.

“Play something fun,” Keira tells Ransom, breaking the long look she exchanges with Kona. “I’m gonna go pick up the kitchen.” And she is in the house, forcing a smile before anyone can stop her.

Leann’s loud exhale and the scratch of her chair on the patio tiles pulls Kona’s glance to her. “I guess I should help her.”

“Nah, Leann. I got it,” Kona says, darting out of his seat before the woman sits up.

Kona doesn’t say anything to Keira when she stops to look at him, hand gripping a wet bowl over the open dishwasher. He doesn’t stare too long at the counter or let himself recall the last time he’d been in this room. Instead he works at Keira’s side, silently scraping the plates, wiping down the counter and handing her a cup, a pot until the dishwasher is full and the faucet is off.

Hips against the island and a dishrag in his hand, Kona keeps his eyes downcast, sees her closing the door and the sound of the quiet machine is the only noise in the kitchen.

“He’s… God, Keira.” Kona folds the rag twice, messing with the worn tag in the corner, unable to look at her. “He’s amazing.” After a moment, Keira’s feet are in front of him and Kona stares at her small toes, at the tiny strap of her sandals between them and then he looks up at her when she takes the rag out of his hand. “Thank you.” Eyes to her, he knows he looks pathetic but he doesn’t care. His thoughts are knotted with hope, with want and all the things he cannot say to her. Not just yet. So he doesn’t pour out his heart, doesn’t beg for her forgiveness, once a day is enough, he thinks. “Can I?” he starts, grabbing her wrist.

“What?”

Kona doesn’t wait for her permission. She is under his chin, against his chest with his arms around her, tightening his grip in seconds. Kona thinks she might pull away. He thinks she will push at his chest, tell him not to touch her, but then Keira’s fingers tighten around his shirt and he inhales, bringing back that scent, familiar and characteristically Keira straight into his nostrils. He hugs her, smells her hair.

“You did amazing, Wildcat. He’s a great kid.” Her fingers tighten, pull on his shirt and Kona grins, breath deep before he pushes on her shoulders to look down at her. Her eyes shine, gleam like the bright reflection on the lake at sunset and Kona moves his thumb across her cheek.

He wants to tell her he’s missed her, that nothing has felt the same, tasted the same since she left. He wants to tell her that she cursed him that day at the jail. He wants to say “I need you” and “Have me again,” but this day isn’t for them. It is about the boy, their bright, beautiful son. “That’s all you.” Not for the first time today, Kona’s chest tightens, but it’s Keira’s look, the relief in her expression, the breath she must have been holding all day, maybe for years, that brings that warmth to his heart. A small kiss on her forehead and Kona returns his gaze at those shinning, bright eyes. “Only God could be prouder of his son.”