Thin Love (69 page)

She lets him pace, work out the truth for himself as Keira slides back to her chair, pulling Kona’s half full glass of scotch in front of her. When he stops, returns to his knees in front of her, Keira takes a sip, eyes unfocused at the dark liquid in her glass.

“Look at me.” Keira looks up, lets him take the glass from her. “I came for you. I came to fight for you. I told you I wouldn’t let you stay gone and I won’t.” Keira lets a small sigh move past her teeth when Kona brushes her cheek with his fingertips. “I need you to know something. I need you to really know something that I’ve been trying to say to you for months. I need you to see that what I'm saying is real.” She lets him move her head, holding it steady. “It’s been inside me for a long time, Keira. It’s been asleep, but it hasn’t ever died.”

He releases her, and Keira can only manage to look at him, wondering what he’ll say, hoping it’s not goodbye.

“I think about all the fucked up things I’ve done in my life. I’ve disappointed so many people. I’ve made choices because I was selfish. Because I was greedy.” Kona rubs the back of his neck as though those sins are too heavy to think about. As though the memory of them lay thick and full in his mind. “But even in those times when I thought I die from my stupid choices… when I thought whatever I was doing was just something I added to the long list of fuck ups, I saw your face. It was your face that got me through all that. It was your smile,” Kona’s fingertips are soft, tickle against Keira’s cheek, “the spark in your eyes, the way your fingers raked over my scalp, the way your body felt so real, so perfect in my hands, that kept me centered.

“But you cursed me, Wildcat. You did me so wrong. You told me I would regret letting you walk away and I did. Every day since you said that to me. I didn’t forget. Not when I was drunk on money and bitches and all the bullshit they threw at me to keep me happy.” The stinging returns to her eyes and Keira knows it’s not from the loss she feels. “I couldn’t forget you.” He touches her face again, thumb back on her cheek, smoothing away the moisture there. “Your face, your name, your smile, it was here,” he touches his chest, just over her tattoo. “It’s lived here for so long and I tried to kill it. I tried to run from that curse. I tried to forget that there was a girl with big blue eyes and a laugh like a fucking song that had gotten under my skin. I tried to forget that I loved her. I tried to deny that I hadn’t ever stopped. But I can’t. I don’t want to.”

That wild, manic girl sings to her, tells her that she can have it all, take back everything that once made her feel real and loved and brave. She doesn’t fight Kona, doesn’t jerk away from him when he kisses her head, wipes her face dry.

“You said we were so bad for each other and maybe you’re right. Maybe time is what we needed. To be apart from each other, to learn ourselves before we could have each other for good. But I’m done waiting.” His chest is inches from her mouth and Keira inhales, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from kissing against the peek of skin visible from the opened button of his shirt. “I’m done trying to kill something that was never meant to die. I’m done trying to wipe you out of my heart. It’s no good.”

Kona has touched her so many ways. There has been anger, passion, the grip and pull of his hands on her body, of his knuckles inside her and Keira loved them all; even the threat of danger, of violence. She expects that to return. She doesn’t expect him to be calm. But as Kona reaches for her, moves her chin up so she is forced to look at him, she sees that determined expression that tells her he wants her attention, wants her to look only at him, want only him. His fingers are sure, certain, but they are gentle: a plea rather than the demand. This time, when he takes her face, he’s asking permission, not taking it.

“I want you today and tomorrow and every day after that. I want to roll over in bed every night and know that you’re there, right where you’re supposed to be. I want babies,” he closes his eyes as though the idea is sweet, precious, “
a thousand damn babies
with you and I want to watch you get fat and miserable with me inside you, Keira. I want first steps and first words and for someone to call me Daddy.

“I want all those years to disappear in every second I spend with you for the rest of my life and I won’t let you tell me that it’s not enough. I won’t let you believe that we are still bad for each other.” His voice rises, touch becomes firmer. “I don’t care if we are because you make the bad fade away. You always have. You always will.”

“You think it’s really that simple?”

“Damn right I do. It’s very simple. I love you. You love me, let’s stop fucking around and get on with our lives. Everything that happened, all the lies, all the disappointments, all the years we wasted… we’ve got to let that shit go. Time to move ahead. Together. Me and you, Wildcat. Just me and you.”

Kona’s words are like a spell, weaving hope, eagerness into her. She lets him kiss her forehead, pepper them over her face. Until her tears are full, brimming over her lashes and onto her face.

“The other night… you asked me.” She looks up at him, then back down at her hands. Tears flowing. “You asked me how long it’s been.”

“I did.”

“Too long, Kona.” Keira thinks shame should come, maybe embarrassment, but it doesn’t. If Kona wants honesty, if he wants her raw, then she’ll spill all her secrets, give them to him one last time. “Ten years.” His eyes widen, mouth open. “I tried once. Only the one time.” Keira dries her face, shaking her head at herself. “I got drunk. Went to a bar and ran into a friend of mine. This guy I knew from the Bluebird. He was a good man. He was sweet and I just wanted to forget that I had a kid at home that needed so much from me. I wanted to forget that I was alone. That I had been alone so long. I… I slept with him… I slept with him and cried the whole time.”

When that flame shoots over her cheeks, Keira covers her face, driving out the memory of that man and how helpless he looked when every time he kissed her, touched her, she jerked, twitched as though she couldn’t stand to feel him against her skin. But she made him continue; she replaced his long, thin fingers, a guitarist’s fingers, with wide hands and big knuckles. She pretended that it was Kona touching her, loving her and when that failed to calm her, she’d let the tears comes.

“Keira…”

Head lowered, Keira threads her fingers together, stares at the chipping paint on her fingernails. “I’m gonna need your help, bebe. You’re gonna have to remind me how to love you again.”

“I will. We’ll figure it out together.” Kona stands, pulls Keira up so he can take her hair between her fingers, so his mouth is closer to hers. “We were kids when we loved each other. We were fire and passion and obsession. You were right about that.”

“And now?” She holds her breath waiting for his words. Keira ignores the voice telling her this is pointless, that what she’s tried to bury should stay in the past.

“Now we’re whole. Now we’re thick, so thick, baby that we can’t breathe.”

The fear is still present, still bites into her limbs. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

“Then we just need to hold onto each other.” Kona’s kiss is brief, too fleeting and Keira has to hold herself still, keep from following him when he leans away from her. “Remember what you said to me once? ‘I don’t want easy. I want impossible. I want love so thick, I drown in it.’” Kona nuzzles her nose, rests against her forehead with that breath, that warm, tingling heat fanning against her face. “Keira, come drown with me.”

The delay is brief, a moment that shifts the breath on her skin, that fractures any lingering doubt from her mind. Kona Hale was her always. He was her past, the part of herself Keira thought she could forget. But as she stares at him, as he waits for her answer, a small gesture that makes his features relax, Keira realizes that there is no hole deep enough, no grave dark enough that could keep their love dead. It hadn’t died, not really. It went untended, untouched for sixteen years, but it always remained tethered, always took up space in her broken heart. Now it filled the spaces of that dead muscle, it inflated the withered bits left weak by the past, by the punishment Keira had forced upon herself for years.

Now it was large and beating, shuddering and wild.

And it belonged completely to Kona.

She doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t say “yes” or “I love you.” Keira simply rises, lifts closer to him and kisses Kona like it is the first time. He takes that kiss and Keira smiles against his mouth, loving the sweet groan he releases and then, Keira kisses him harder, surer, pulls herself around him, arms on his neck, legs around his waist, tongue working in his mouth so fierce, so quick that Kona staggers back, falling against the wall.

“Baby.
Jesus
.” Kona’s chest is beautiful, strong, moves quickly as Keira pops open his shirt, untucks it. His hands are everywhere all at once; on her hips, down her thighs, pulling down her thin yoga pants, cupping her.

“Oh God, Kona.” Keira manages a breath, a small break from his mouth before he slips his fingers inside her. “Wait…
oh
… let’s… let go to my room.”

“No,” he says, two fingers now moving in her center, straight to that sweet knot he’d always loved to tease. “You, me, against the wall.” Keira’s eyes roll up, her shoulders shake when Kona attacks her neck, nibbling up to her ear. “I don’t wanna wait. Not anymore.”

A flurry of limbs, quick, wild groans, fingers moving, mouths sucking and before Keira can register what is happening, Kona slides into her, body raw, hot against her, his wide dick moving easy, smooth, over and over.

“Say you’re mine, Keira.” He thrusts, moves her hips over him, fingers digging into her skin. But she can’t speak, can barely manage to keep hold of his shoulders. “Tell me, baby.” Another thrust that has Keira trembling and Kona turns them so that Keira’s shoulders move against the wall.

“I’m yours, bebe.” She clenches, spasms against his dick and smiles at the way Kona moves his head, how he squints at the sensation. “I’ve always been yours.”

Kona broke her heart once. But it was Keira that left the remains tattered and frayed inside her. With his touch, his body, his brilliant, blinding love, he pulls it back together.

“I love you, Wildcat, so much I can’t breathe.”

She smiles against his mouth, rocks into his body as he moves. “Mine,” she says, stroking her fingers over his heart and Kona pauses, expression open, sweet.

His fingers are large, and when he slips his palm over hers, Keira’s hand disappears. “Yours, baby. Always.”

Ransom was better than Kona. At everything. He was bigger, stronger and at eighteen, as a freshman at CPU, his boy was about to play his first game. No redshirts. No year of ineligibility.

Kona didn’t know who was more nervous; him, walking up and down the sidelines in his coaching garb—Blue Devils cap and polo; or Ransom bouncing on the balls of his feet a hundred yards away from him as their offense tried to earn a few points.

It could have been Keira who had the most frayed nerves. Kona turns around, squints through the crowd until he spots his wife. She is gorgeous, lit up with a glow that has nothing to do with game day excitement. It’s that baby; the one that’s rounded her belly, the one she holds with her arms around her stomach.

Kona smiles watching her, loving that he can see her eyes all the way from the sidelines. And when she stares back at him, gives him a wink, something twists in his chest. It always does anytime she looks his way. It’s habit, him moving his hand to his chest, resting it over his heart. “Yours,” he silently tells hers and he gets choked up, a little flustered when she returns the gesture, moves her hand over her heart. “Yours,” she mouths.

The moment is wrecked, interrupted by the fussing two year old on her lap, that bushy haired boy who looks just like his older brother, acts too much like Kona. Little Koa spills his drink and Keira rushes to clean up his mess, her cousin Leann at her side, hurrying to sooth the boy. She waves Kona off, nods to the sideline and he follows her direction, sees Ransom sitting on the bench, knee bouncing.

“Brah, you alright?” Kona asks his son and they both turn when the whistle blows, when CPU takes a penalty and the ball returns to LSU.

“Shit,” Ransom says and Kona tries not to laugh at him. The kid has been worked up for a month, worried how he’ll perform at his first game.

The defense is summoned, return for their turn on the field, but Kona holds Ransom back, pulls on his mask to get his boy to look at him.

“You got this, son. Just do your best.”

His boy looks down, frowning. “That shadow, Dad. It’s freaking big.”

Kona takes Ransom by the collar, hopes his voice is easy, calm. “Son, it’s just a shadow. Time to make your own.”

And Ransom takes the field, running toward something Kona remembers, taking on his path with his eyes wide open. When the line forms and his boy immediately runs through two offensive linemen and heads straight for the quarterback, easily sacking him hard, Kona joins the rest of the crowd, jumping up and down.

Kona’s attention immediately returns to Keira, to her hands over her mouth, that wide smile again. That beautiful woman loves him. She loves him in whispers, in lyrics and rhyme. Keira loves Kona with a fierceness that rattles him, only hurts when she pulls away. She’d stopped running, stopped fighting the ghosts of the past and the guilt they used to cripple her. And when she stopped, when she let Kona hold her, love her and believed that he meant it, their life together began. It would continue. Kona knows the only time love really dies is when we stop trying to revive it.