Thin Love (65 page)

Keira weaves through mid-city traffic, fingers tapping against the steering wheel as she clicks on the speaker. One ring, two and Leann finally picks up.

“Keira?”

“Where is he?”

“Sweetie, I think he went back to Mandeville. He wouldn’t stay. Keira, he was so mad. I’ve never seen him so mad.” In the background, Leann’s school rings out; music, young girls laughing, tap shoes against wooden floors and then finally, a click of a door and the noise quiets. “Tristan tried stopping him and Ransom hit him.”

“Oh, Leann…”

“I know. He took my Volvo and left. Tristan thinks he went back to the lake house. He said something about packing and getting home.” Her cousin’s voice is high, worried.

Keira clears her throat, tries to pull the emotion from her voice. “I’m sorry, Leann. This shouldn’t have happened. I don’t why Kona would… I don’t know how…”

“Sweetie, just drive safe. Don’t speed and get to him in one piece. We’ll deal with Kona Hale later.”

“Yeah. We definitely will.”

The piano keys strike loud, angry, those brutal notes pounding out across the tile at Keira’s feet. Ransom’s unpacked clothes, shoes, are scattered in the hallway, across the floor and Keira picks them up, drapes them on her arm as she darts into the living room.

Wide, shaking shoulders, chest rising quick, Ransom strikes the keys—half played intros, unfinished choruses start and stop and Keira’s heart breaks.

A slap, a curse and Ransom slams his fists on the keys, growling, angry as Keira walks into the room.

“Sweetie,” she says, grabbing his arm, pulling him to her chest when he tries walking away. There is no sound worse to a mother than that of her child’s heart breaking. Her boy is devastated, his pain like an electric line snapping and biting. “Shh, it’s going to be okay.”

Ransom’s wet face dampens her shirt when he wipes his eyes against the fabric and he pulls back, breath shuddering before he looks at her. “Everything is over, Mom. My life here, my life back home. Everyone will know. They will all know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” His cheeks are hot, red as she pulls his face up and those eyes—those dark, intelligent eyes look lost, distant, with streaks of red lining around the whites, puffing up his lids. “We’ll fix this, honey. I promise.”

“How? How the hell can you fix this? You can’t do anything, Mom. He… Kona… that asshole… I thought…”

The buildup crests—that swift thread of rage, of fury slipping back, shaking his fingers, makes her son lean out of her touch. But Keira settles him, catches that slip of control before it is out of her hands completely.

“Play.” She turns his shoulders, moves his wrist onto the keys.

“It won’t help.” Ransom’s jaw works, clenches as she holds his large hands steady on the piano. “No, Mom, I can’t. It won’t work. I can’t get it to work this time.”

“Then I’ll help you. Come on.” He hesitates, just for a moment and with one shuddering exhale, begins to play. The notes are sporadic, uneven as his fingers slip across the keys and Keira urges him, fills in the missing notes with her right hand, her left steady, still on his back. “That’s it. Good. Take your breaths. Count for me.” And he does; clipped, uneasy numbers, gritted through his teeth, but they come.

“One… tw… two…”

Keira wants to slap something, beat in Kona’s face, but she pushes the inclination away, focuses on the way Ransom’s eyes stare down at the keys, how his fingers aren’t as shaking as much. “Can you… will you sing with me, sweetie?”

Eyes squeezed tight, Ransom shakes his head, bending his back and she knows he is trying to lose himself in the music. She’s seen it too often from him. He wants to drift from his anger, become lost in the feel of the ivory on his fingertips and the vibration of the pedals at his feet.

He is wandering, out of touch with the calm he needs; broken by the ghosts of the past and Keira’s chest pulls tight, hating that her son has felt the sting that has lived in her for sixteen years. She never wanted this for him. She didn’t want her mistakes, her sin, to touch him. But it has and its bite is vicious and crippling.

The tune is familiar to her; something new, something that Ransom learned after hearing it one time on the radio. He plays by ear and she thinks he knows this song, that it lives inside him. It’s loss and pain and the fever that love brings; the numbing pull that loving someone can do. She doesn’t know all the words, but she’ll try. For her boy, she’d try anything to heal him.

Ransom doesn’t frown or flinch when she misses some of the words, filling them in with her own. He continues to play, notes clearer, surer and when she reaches the second verse, he picks up the song, voice shaking, a quiver trembling the lyrics, but the words come to him, strengthen him as he continues to sing.

The bridge, she knows because the words always manage to hit close to all the heartache Keira brought upon herself.

Funny you’re the broken one,

but I’m the only one who needed saving.

Ransom’s hair is wavy, tousled by his fingers, something he does when he’s annoyed, frustrated; another gesture he’s inherited from Kona and she pushes back a thick wave that has fallen onto his forehead. The touch has him pausing, forehead creased as he looks at her and then, he takes his hands off the keys and jerks up as he stares over Keira’s shoulder.

He is hers. Ransom has her talent for music. He has her easy nature, her need to make others comfortable. But that rage, that tiny fuse of calm comes from both Kona and Keira and it is that lit fuse that Keira sees now. Ransom kicks the bench back, nearly toppling her to the floor and her son darts toward his father standing in the patio doorway.

“Son… wait…” Kona tries, hands up.

“Don’t you call me that, asshole. I’m not your son.” Kona lets Ransom take him by the collar, lets himself be shoved against the wall before Keira can stop the boy. “No decent father would do that to his kid.”

“Ransom, don’t.” Keira’s hands on her son’s shoulders do nothing. “Please, he’s not worth it.”

Kona takes her words like medicine. He needs it; they cut deep, but he’d allowed something unforgivable. He wants more of Keira’s insults. He wants all of Ransom’s rage.

“Why would you do that?” His son shakes him again and Kona’s head goes back, hits the wall behind him. “What gives you the right?”

He can’t find words; there aren’t any. Kona can only stand there, staring down at his son, the boy who looks so like him, who Luka lives in all those small gestures and familiar expressions. The rage is thick, tangible and all Kona can think to do is reach out to touch it.

But Ransom jerks away from his reaching hand, pushes Kona’s chest again and he knows what his boy wants. It’s what he would want, what he always wanted when someone hurt him.

When the swing comes, Kona closes his eyes, relaxes the muscles in his face to feel the full impact of his son’s fist.

“Say something, motherfucker!” Another swing, another stinging smart of Ransom’s knuckles against his jaw, and Kona opens his eyes, stares hard, anticipating. But his boy stops; his glare lingering, searching, then eyes lowering to follow the small bead of blood in the corner of Kona’s mouth.

Ransom steps back, lets his mother tug him away and Kona’s own anger brims forward, wanting more, needing more of that rage dealt against his skin.

“Come on, son.” Again he reaches for Ransom, but only manages to touch his sleeve. “That all you got? Come on!”

Keira follows Ransom as he steps away, one finger pointing at Kona, a warning he ignores.

“You don’t know me and you ruined my life.” Ransom’s kick against the piano bench cracks the wood, splinters it until the hinges break and scatter worn sheet music across the floor.

Kona sees so much of himself, so much of Luka in his son’s manic anger; his fists upturning all of Cora Michael’s fine, useless figurines on the bookshelf, his shouts as he breaks the pictures of a woman he had never known. Keira is crying, hand over her mouth, looking helpless and scared, and when she steps forward to stop their son’s outrage and aggression, Kona takes her shoulders and keeps her still against his chest while she tries jerking away from him. She doesn’t want his touch, he knows that, but Keira is overwhelmed, clearly clueless on how to stop this rampage. “No. He needs this,” Kona tells her. “He needs to get this out.” He hates how she leans away from him, how she jabs at his ribs, but he steadies her, holding her while Ransom’s fury is exhausted.

The boy decimates much of the living room, crying, shouting, knuckles, fingers bloody and the twin sensation of Ransom’s yelling and Keira’s uncontrollable sobs has Kona’s eyes burning, has him holding onto Keira’s shoulders as though she is an anchor that will keep him from falling apart completely.

“Asshole running his mouth, talking about shit he knows nothing about.” Kona takes the glare his son gives him, closes his eyes against that fury only for a second when Ransom points at him. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me you piece of shit! And you still manage to ruin my life. You both… you both ruined my life!”

Kona doesn’t expect Keira’s loss of control, doesn’t catch her when she falls to her knees, hands over her face, wounded to the quick by Ransom’s angry words

The boy lunges forward, eyes wide, as though he’s stepped away from his senses, not caring who he hurts. Kona remembers this; just like him, his boy wants to lash out, he wants to injure and he doesn’t seem to remember that his mother has loved him, has made him her world for all of his life. So Kona reminds him.

He moves in front of Keira, ready to take whatever venom Ransom needs to spit at him. “She was protecting you, son. From me.”

“Good damn job she did!” Ransom is big for his age, but he still has some sense, still has some semblance of understanding that his father is stronger than him, that he won’t let Ransom touch Keira. One step toward Kona, a glance at his mother and the boy retreats, hands held in his hair, eyes searching, itching for something else to destroy.

And when Ransom spins away from him, stops short and looks down at the guitar next to the leather sofa, Kona’s stomach drops. Behind him, Keira’s sharp intake and immediate sobs have Kona moving, speeding toward Ransom as he jerks the Hummingbird off of its stand. The instrument is up and over his head as Kona reaches him.

”No.” The strings bite into his palm when Kona grabs the neck. “Not this.”

Ransom’s breathing is heavy, eyes swollen, nostrils flaring and Kona watches his quick intake of breath, the pants that move over his open mouth. There is confusion in his son’s expression, but the anger ebbs away, a sluggish retreat, but it dampens as Kona pulls the guitar from his hands.

Just then, Kona sees what Ransom has been running from. He is a little boy, hurt, betrayed and masks it all with fury. Kona is familiar and the memory of that emotion, how quickly he can recall it, staggers Kona.

“She didn’t do this to you.” Kona feels the metal tang of blood from his bitten cheek. “I did this. Not her.”

His frown relaxes and Ransom stops breathing, gaze flashing quickly from Kona, to Keira sobbing on the floor. He follows Kona’s movement, the cautious way he sets the guitar back onto its stand and then his son’s anger is gone, lost in the realization of what he almost did.

“Mom. Oh God…” Ransom runs to his mother, falls in front of Keira on the floor. He dwarfs her tiny body. Ransom covers her, conceals her in his large arms, her fingers clinging to his shirt as her sobs quiet. Ransom’s hold is tight, fierce as his kisses the top of her head, rubs his hand down her back. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The moment is theirs; forgiveness given, taken without hesitation and Kona can only stare at them, amazed how his boy, and his Wildcat, hold each other. He feels like a voyeur, an unwelcome witness to the healing they take from each other. His fingers shake with the urge to touch them both, to interrupt this moment so that he feels what they share, taste a hint of what he’s never had, but he doesn’t move from his spot. He doesn’t speak. They amaze him. His family. His everything.