Thin Love (63 page)

A quick roll on her back and Keira watches Kona sleep. There is a small grin on his face and his features are relaxed; that forehead smooth, mouth unclenched; sated, happy. She wants to stare at him. She wants to spend the day watching him sleep. Keira wants to curl against his chest, have his arms around her. But for how long?

And then her life in Nashville comes back to her. The responsibilities she’s created for herself. The obligations.

Keira closes her eyes, feeling a hefty weight of guilt, remorse coiling in her chest. She’d spent the night with Kona free of worry; free from anything that would take her attention from his touch, his smell. She’d acted like a teenager without a care in the world. The last time she did that, she’d ended up shattered, broken and her belly swollen by a baby.

Ransom could stay with Kona. The thought makes her heart shutter, but it’s what her son needs. He’d be with Leann, with Tristan and finally have the father he needed. But Keira? Coming back here with all the ghosts of the past eager to consume her? No. She can’t do it.

Turning away from Kona, she eases off the mattress, movements slow, quiet as she searches the room for her clothes. She’ll leave him a note. He’ll have to understand. She has a life back in Tennessee and Kona isn’t a part of it. He has his own plans, his own obligations.

“Where are you going?” He sits up in bed, thin sheet around his waist, dipped so Keira could see the hard grooves of his stomach, the deep indentions near his hips.

She can’t look at him. She can’t let him change her mind. He’ll argue with her, try to convince her that she should stay. She just… can’t.

“It’s late,” she finally says, fastening her bra, ignoring how delicious Kona’s deep voice sounds, how his hair is rumpled from sleep. “I’ve got things to do today.”

She upturns the thick duvet on the floor searching for her shirt and notices Kona’s head turning, eyes on his clock. “It’s seven a.m. What could you possibly have to do at seven a.m.?”

“I’ve got a meeting.” It’s a lie, a bad one, but Keira doesn’t look at him, keeps her intentions off her face. Keira’s shirt is wrinkled and she shakes it out. “So do you.” Back to him, she sits on the mattress, picking lint off her shirt before she tugs it on. Behind her, Kona slips to the end of the bed, just the sheet covering him and she closes her eyes when he touches her, stopping her as she tries to dress.

“Hey. What is this?”

She looks at him, gives him a brief, dispassionate kiss. Her smile is forced, that touch too brief and she knows Kona won’t buy that she isn’t hurrying away from him. “This is me getting dressed. That’s all this is.” She gives him another quick peck and comes off the bed picking up her jeans from the dresser.

“I know what this is,” he says, not stopping when he hears her heavy sigh.

“What are you talking about, Kona? I’m just getting dressed. I can’t stay in bed all day.” Her jeans are up, zipper fastened and Keira decides to be flippant; not to let on to why she’s really leaving. She can’t linger here, can’t put off what has to be done. She tries not to watch him as he slides from the bed; the sheet falls back and his wide back, that gloriously naked ass doesn’t jiggle or flinch as he pulls on his jeans.

One black ballet slipper is under the dresser, the other, somewhere Keira can’t see and she stops, stepping back when Kona stands in front of her, hands holding her arms. “You’re running.”

“No I’m not.” Even to her own ears, those words come out too quickly.

Kona walks back, leans against the dresser and she moves around the room, finally spotting her shoe underneath the bed. She feels cold, chilled by the loss of his hand on her, by the way he folds his arms watching her. “If this isn’t you running then why were you trying to sneak out before I got up?”

“I was going to leave you a note.”

“A note?” Kona pushes off the dresser, coming too close to her, his large body intimidating, his mouth hard. “That’s what I get from you? After last night? I get a note?”

He always has to make everything difficult. He can’t just let her leave, could he? Won’t let her walk away and she knows that. Since the night of Ransom’s party. She knew if she kissed him he would keep coming for her. He would come from her until she broke him. Until he broke her again. Like the last time.

Patience gone, Keira throws her shoe on the floor. “What the hell did you expect? You thought we’d fall back into it again? You thought I’d sleep with you and then what, exactly? We’d all be one big happy family?”

He doesn’t like her anger; she can tell. Those massive hand are at his side, clenching into fists. “I didn’t think anything beyond your being wrapped around me, but why does this feel like you’re running out like I’m some fucking douchebag you slept with when you were drunk?” Keira won’t listen to this. He is being irrational, stubborn. She tries leaving, moving around him to reach the door, but he is faster, wider and blocks her path easily. “Because I’m not. Whatever else you think, I’m not just some fuck and you damn well know it.”

“I never said you were.”
People don’t change, things do.
Kona is proof of that and the idea is unsettling. It’s infuriating. “God, you still do that shit.”

“What do I do?”

“You get these stupid self-deprecating ideas in your head and then run with them. You think you know me so damn well, think you know what’s going on in my head. You always did that and it drove me crazy.”

Hands over his face and a low, frustrated noise rumbling in his chest, Kona frowns at her. “What else am I supposed to think? You were sneaking out, trying to avoid this conversation.”

“I was not.” She pulls away from him when he reaches for her, slips on her shoe, but he still won’t budge from in front of the door. “Kona, let me go. Please. I’ve got things to get through today and I don’t have time to smooth your ego because you didn’t get the chance to kick me out.”

A small twist of his head and Kona’s mouth drops open, but he recovers, blinking as though he hadn’t heard that insult for what it was. Keira knows she’s grasping at straws, searching for something that will push him away or at least move him from the door. Still, Kona’s anger is quick, face reddening as he glares down at her. “Shit, why don’t you tell me what kind of person you think I am, Keira? You think I fuck anything that throws it at me and then toss them out?” Her dismissive shrug only stokes his anger further. “If you thought so little of me then why the hell were you with me last night?”

“I don’t know.” She can’t watch him, scrubs her hands over her face to block out his anger, his shock. “I shouldn’t have been. It was a lapse in judgment brought on by too much time on Memory Lane.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You wanted me just as much as I wanted you and now you’re running because you don’t want to admit the simple truth.”

“And what do you imagine that simple truth is?”

Kona is in front of her in two small steps, hands back on her shoulders, despite her struggling away from him. “You and me. It’s still there. It’s there even more than when we were kids. It hasn’t changed, it hasn’t left us and I doubt it ever will.”

“God, Kona, please stop this.” Keira wishes that wasn’t true. She wishes that whatever she felt for him had died the day she boarded that bus for Nashville. But he’s right. She’s knows how right he is. Still, she can’t have him. She won’t. Sometimes you sacrifice so much, give so much to others that you forget to save something for yourself. Keira didn’t know how to have what she wanted anymore. She’d forgotten how to be greedy for the happiness she once had. “You and me, we aren’t going to happen. We will never happen again.”

In the months she’d been around him, Keira had noticed the changes. Kona was calmer, easy going. He had relaxed and time and distance seem to have taught him control, discipline. He no longer let his anger control him. He wasn’t jealous or possessive. He rarely screamed at her, not since the party. Not since he’d met Ransom. But now the man in front of her reverts to the hot head linebacker he’d once been.

A collectible football in a glass case on the dresser is the first victim of Kona’s rage. Then, the bench at the foot of the bed gets kicked, shot across the room before Kona faces her; his hands shaking, his control slipping as he battles against wanting to touch her, reaching for her, and stepping away, out of her space. Finally, swallowing, fingers scrubbing his face, running through his tousled hair, Kona’s shoulders lower, defeated, worn. “Why are you doing this?”

She wants him to understand. They had come too close to the past last night. The gripping, the tugging, the hard passion, it had all been her, what she wanted, but Keira’s loosened control scares her. She can’t be that girl again. She will never be that girl again.

“Because love isn’t like this. You and I weren’t in love.” She ignores how tightly he closes his eyes, as though hearing the truth is like a slap to his face. “We were addicted to each other, you just never understood that. You liked the chase and then you liked my temper and it all just escalated.”

A rough growl and Kona’s voice lifts in a shout. “Don’t tell me what I felt… what I feel. You don’t know me, you aren’t in my head.”

“That’s exactly my point. We aren’t kids anymore. This isn’t you and me on campus making out after a game. We have a son. We have responsibilities and you keep forgetting that. You keep forgetting the bad. You never remember the bad.” Keira can’t take that expression, the hard stare, the disappointment, his anger. She closes her eyes, squeezes them tight praying he’ll just let her go, wishing that she really wanted him to. “God, Kona, you act like I was this great thing to you, like what we were was the greatest thing that ever happened to you.”

He moves quickly, like a shot and grabs her face, fingers gentle, but firm on her face. “You were.”

His admission stuns her, silences her until all she hears is his breath, the labored ways he exhales, the fierce, steady widening of his eyes. He’s breaking her heart with that look, with the desperate way he leans his forehead against her.

She tries for calm. Kiera tries to collect herself, slow her heartbeat, but Kona smells too sweet; his touch feels too right.
Walk away. Walk away and don’t look back.

“And I’m not anymore.” She pulls his hand from her face, trying to turn away, not wanting him to know how much he affects her. “I won’t be again.”

“Keira, please.” He stands behind her, but he doesn’t touch her. She’s grateful for that at least. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this.”

“You can’t, Kona. There’s nothing left to fix. We tried once and it nearly broke me. I… gave you everything. I gave you absolutely everything I had and you took it all.” Kona’s shadow lengthens across the dark floor, his wide arms curl up, hands on the back of his neck as though he has to restrain himself from touching her. “You were greedy for it and it still wasn’t enough. And now, now you come back into my life and you want it all again. You want more.” One glance over her shoulder and Keira looks down, unable to take the tremble moving his chin. “I can’t give you that. I won’t. You aren’t my life anymore. You can’t be. Ransom is.”

“What are you talking about, Keira? Of course it was enough.”

She turns, tears in her eyes and she leans out of his touch when he reaches to wipe them away. “Then why did you give me up? If I was so important to you, meant so much to you, why did you push me away? And why the hell did you not once fight for me?”

His voices goes soft, eyes shifting from the floor to Keira’s face. “I didn’t know how. Not then.”

“Well I did.” A quick, annoyed wipe against her cheek and Keira lifts her chin, aching to sound proud, brave. “I fought Kona. I spent the past sixteen years fighting and trying to make sure I didn’t become a cliché. And I didn’t. I am more than that. All that fighting I did worked. It worked too well. I gave you too much. I gave Ransom what was left. I don’t have anything more to give.”

Kona pulls his top lip between his teeth and a hard line forms between his eyebrows as though he hates hearing about her struggling on her own. “I would have been there. You have to know, if you’d told me, I would have dropped my entire life to be at your side, to fight for you, to protect you… both of you.”

She stares at him, shocked that he seems to actually believe that. “No. You wouldn’t have. Your mother would have never let you. I was the
haole
whore she hated. The stupid slut that had her son forgetting about all her plans. And you listened. You were the good little boy obeying her.” Kona touches her arm, takes a step, looking as though he needs to feel her, to hold her, but Keira is too worked up, too annoyed with herself, with him, to take his comfort. She pulls out of his grip. “You still are. Even today, she’s still got her clutches into you. You still wouldn’t fight for me.”

“I walked away from her, Keira. It’s been months…”

“She’ll come back and you’ll let her. I can’t be around that. I… I can’t let Ransom around that woman. She wins every time, Kona. She always did. She’s your mother and who are we?”

This time Kona doesn’t let her pull away from him. This time, he moves forward, taking her shoulders, fingers firm as though he couldn’t let her go; as though he’d never let her go.

“You’re my family. Keira, you and Ransom, you’re my everything. No one else matters to me. I know I don’t deserve you. I know I threw everything we were away.” He steps closer, hands on her face, thumb rubbing against her cheek. “You won’t ever know how it killed me. But I was scared. My brother died because of me and I was so angry at myself, I hated myself for what happened to Luka. I was afraid that I was falling, that I was digging my own grave and I wouldn’t drag you down with me.” There is a strange look on Kona’s face, eyes closing, head shaking and he looks pained, conflicted as though he wars with his thoughts, weighs and measures the logic of saying whatever is in his head. Finally, he loosens his grip, steps back to pace before he leans on the dresser, hands over his face. “I… I found you once. About twelve years ago.”

“What?” It seems impossible to Keira. Twelve years? It didn’t make sense. How could he have found her and not known about Ransom? “You couldn’t… what?”