Ohana Legacy: Thin Love Series Bundle, page 27
part #1 of Thin Love Series
Cautiously, he leaned forward, barely touched his lips to the bruise. Even that careful gesture made Keira wince.
“Baby...”
“It’s not a big deal.” That sounded too practiced, thrown out too casually, like she’d spent years brushing off marks and scratches she'd received. But even as she uttered the platitude, Keira lowered over the keys, head resting against the top of the piano.
Kona couldn’t take her silence or the small shaking movement of her shoulders as she cried. “I’ll kill her.”
Keira laughed, but it was harsh, mixed between tears. “You can’t kill the devil, Kona. Trust me, I’ve thought about it.”
He slid next to her, pulled her onto his lap and Kona kissed her face, drying the moisture as quickly as it surfaced. “You can’t stay here.”
Keira pulled away from her comfortable spot on his chest, her eyes glassy and an expression on her face that made him feel small, made him feel like she thought he was naive. “Where would I go?” She wiped her face dry. “Your house? Bet your mom would love that. The team house? My dorm? Everything is temporary, Kona.” He closed his eyes when Keira brushed her fingers against his cheek, thumb rubbing over the scar she’d put there. He hated her frown when she looked at it. He hated that she felt so guilty, still, even after his goading. “This scared me. I did this to you. I lost it. How many times have I slapped you? Just last night...” She tried taking her hands from him, tried pulling away and he meant to stop her, to cover her wrists so she’d keep her touch on him, but then Keira kept her fingers against his face as though she needed the contact. “Am I any better than her?” Her voice broke and the wobble of her chin, that pained, crumble of her grin gutted him, had his own eyes burning.
“Baby...” He pulled her close, held her as she cried and he felt the slow trickle of her tears on his bare chest. He cleared his throat, tried to remove the knot that made him sound lost. “You’ve slapped me when I pissed you off. You lashed out because you know what it does to me. We do it to each other. It’s this...this weird thing between us and you’ve never hurt me.” Kona adjusted her on his lap, pulling on her waist to bring her closer. “That night at Lucy’s, I was coming off my shot. I was still full of that shit and high on adrenaline. I was out of my head jealous when I saw you with Luka because with you, shit, baby, most of the time I can’t think straight.” She started to speak and Kona knew there would be an excuse, something Keira would say to make herself seem unhinged. “No. It’s true. We both have issues. We’re just the same. I never got over my mom keeping our father out of our lives because he hurt her. You’ve had to deal with a bitch who gets mad and can’t keep her hands off you. But when I’m with you, when we’re together, none of that shit matters. I forget everything.”
“So do I.”
“Good. See? We’re the same. Tempers and stupidity and sometimes we do shit we don’t mean to.” Kona bent his head, kissed the exposed skin below Keira’s collarbone. “Last night, I threw you onto your bed because I was mad.”
“And I liked it.”
His smile was quick, moved across his mouth because he was happy he hadn’t hurt her, because he knew how much she’d liked it. But that grin disappeared when he lowered his eyes, when he brought his fingers to the bruise. “This isn’t the same thing. Not even close. That bitch is an ugly drunk, you’ve made a few comments that had me guessing that.” Kona tilted her chin to get a better look. “And I doubt this was the first time. Right?”
Keira looked over Kona’s shoulder and he knew she was remembering something. “She didn’t drink as much until my dad sold his practice.” Her stare unfocused, eyes unblinking. “When they married, he was a lawyer. He did what everyone expected and then, one day, he stopped caring about what they expected. My mother didn’t like him quitting. She didn’t like the cash cow going away and they fought so much.” Lids moving, Keira glanced back at him. “They threw chairs and plates and TV remotes...whatever they could find that would inflict the worst damage. She started drinking, he did everything else. It got so bad she didn’t even cry at his funeral. Or the next week. Or the month after that and when I tried to stand up to her, or said something that sounded too much like him, I got popped.” She took Kona’s hand from her face, and patted it once when he made a fist. “I learned to keep my nose down, stay out of her way and usually that worked. Usually if I do whatever she says, let her get her way, then she’s fine. But you came over yesterday and she started asking questions, starting flapping her White Power flag and I mouthed off to her. And then...this.”
Keira waved her hand, pointing to the bruise like it was nothing; something mundane and usual. He hated her attitude about being knocked around. He hated that she thought this was normal behavior. “It’s not safe for you to be around her. What if she really loses it?”
“Kona, I can fight back. I just never have before.” He leaned up, moving his head to watch her and Keira must have seen the question in his eyes. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I have. But I know that if I do what she asks, if I play the pacifying daughter, she’ll leave me alone. I’ve got three years, Kona and most of that time will be spent on campus or at Leann’s. Things have just been bad the past year or so because I rebelled, because I moved to campus,” Keira’s cheek dimpled with her quick grin, “and being around you has made me a little ballsier. She doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like that she can’t control me when I’m at school. This has been coming for a while.”
“I still can’t let you stay here.” The thought of this happening again made Kona feel sick and he grabbed her arm, holding onto her as though he needed the focus she gave him. “What kind of man would I be if I let you stay here unprotected?”
“The kind that knows I can take care of myself.”
“Keira...”
She shook her head, stopping him. “I hate her, sugar. I hate everything she stands for, everything she believes in. But I have three years. I have to bide my time for three years. When I’m twenty-one, my inheritance kicks in.” Keira shrugged, picked up Kona’s hands and locked their fingers together. “It’s not much, but it’s what my dad wanted me to have, what’s left of what he didn’t put up his nose, but it’s enough to get a place, to get me through my last year of college without her help.”
It all sounded too simple, too perfect. Kona didn’t know Cora Michaels. That brief conversation with her the day before told him she wasn’t the kind of woman who just took whatever came her way. He had a feeling she’d spend the rest of her life trying to control Keira and Kona wondered, despite Keira’s claim that she could walk away, if she really would. She was strong, she was a fighter, but Keira ran away from things when she thought she’d be hurt. Would she run away from the person who could hurt her most?
“Hey,” she said, voice light, as though she hadn’t spent the past few minutes crying on his chest. “Let me make you some French toast. It’s my specialty.”
More of that running. It’s what Keira did. She was done exorcising her demons, for now at least, and Kona loved that expression, how open it was, how happy she seemed to show him another side of herself he didn’t know existed.
“Sounds good, Wildcat.”
But as she walked away from him, looking far too good for someone who was so broken, Kona wondered if she would fight when the time came. He wondered if she’d let him fight for her. He wondered how far Keira would have to run to keep that expression on her face.
Kona wondered if you could O.D. on tryptophan. He thought that might be happening to him. He was in his bedroom, two doors from the loud sound of his KuKu and Luka killing each other in a quick game of dominos, thinking that either the delicious Thanksgiving turkey sitting like a rock in his stomach was going to kill him or Keira was.
He pulled his yellow phone up for the fourth time and grunted when there was still no message from her. He hadn’t wanted her to leave. Karma was a ruthless bitch and that little lie she’d told her professors about being sick when she’d avoided him had come back to bite Keira in the ass. CPU had been ravaged by the flu and Kona worried that Keira’s sneezes and tiredness were clues that’d she caught the crud Leann had been battling for a week. Keira had come to his house for Thanksgiving, sniffling and coughing, but still giving him that sweet smile of hers. True, the dinner had been awkward with his mother and girlfriend pretending to be civil as they glared across the table at one another, but for the most part, shit didn’t start. That, he knew was due to his KuKu.
His grandfather had asked him about Keira before she arrived. It was rare, something the old man didn’t normally do, but since neither Luka or Kona had ever brought a girl home, he was curious.
“Does she have all her teeth?” KuKu had asked him and Kona stared at the man for five full seconds, thinking his heart meds were making him loopy.
“What kind of question is that?”
Kuku only shrugged and slapped Kona on the back. “A woman with all her teeth takes care of herself. I’m just wondering, Keiki kâne, if your milimili is gumming it.”
Kona laughed him, smiling wider that his kuku called Keira his beloved, shaking his head at how serious the old man stared at him. “She’s beautiful and smart and talented. She writes music and sings and yeah, she has perfect teeth, Kuku.”
He should have never told him about the music because his grandfather spent the better part of the day hitting his bongos, which he never learned how to play properly, and asking Keira to guess what song he sang. Most she knew, others, the sly bastard tricked her with by singing island songs no one had ever heard. By the time he started in on “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” Kona’s mother trailed off deeper into the house, claiming she wanted to get the kitchen cleaned. Kona wasn’t sorry she left. All afternoon he’d noticed his mother’s overly calm stares at Keira; how both women ignored each other, how cool, indifferent his mother was to Keira.
His mother didn’t stay out of the way all night, but she played indifferent, kept throwing looks out toward the fire pit, watching he and Keira, curious. Kona caught Kuku’s wink when the woman left and Kona settled Keira on his lap and the bongo playing stopped while the football games came on.
It had turned into a great night, with Kona, Keira, Luka and Kuku sitting around the fire pit, listening to stories that Kona suspected his grandfather had invented. Each one had made Keira laugh and Kona was glad. It took her mind off of what she’d have to go home to; it kept her distracted from that long ride back to Mandeville and her mother who was still angry that Keira had chosen to spend Thanksgiving with Kona and his family and not her and her fake, wasted friends.
“You could stay,” he’d told her, holding on tight to her waist as she leaned against her Sunfire. “I could sneak you in and my mom would never know.”
“I’ll be fine. My mother will probably be passed out on Valium or wine, or both by the time I get back.”
Kona pulled Keira against him, nuzzling her neck, inhaling that sweet scent on her skin. He didn’t want her to leave. “You don’t know that for sure, Wildcat.”
She’d taken his lips then, long, slow, staggering Kona with a kiss that lingered. “I know that today was great.” Keira held his face and Kona thought she might say something more, something he’d been waiting for her to say to him, but that plump mouth closed up and she kissed him again. “I know that you made this a perfect Thanksgiving.”
Kona had watched her taillights blink and brake as she drove down the street and though she promised to call when she got home, promised that if her mother tried smacking her, that she wouldn’t take it, he still felt sick, anxious that he wouldn’t be there to protect her.
Luka and Kuku screamed at each other over the game board and when his mother stormed into the kitchen and started shouting at them like both were her rowdy kids, Kona pulled his pillow over his head, trying to drown out the noise.
A few minutes later the door to his bedroom opened a few inches. “Keiki kane?” his mother whispered, the venom gone from her voice. He didn’t want to talk to her. He knew she’d meddle, would at least bitch at him about Keira being there all day, about him continuing to date her even though she had told him it was a mistake. So Kona laid still, moving his chest in exaggerated breaths, hoping she’d buy him being asleep and when his door clicked shut, he pulled the pillow off of his face, smiling that she had left him alone.
He didn’t care that his mom hated Keira. The woman would hate anyone he dated; Kona was past worrying about her opinion. He only wanted Keira’s blue eyes open, free of the glassy shine he’d seen in them too much lately. Her mother had only been too eager to ask about Kona, but not in a kind way. Cora unrelentingly continued her threats over the past few weeks and the pressure, the interrogations and the insinuations were wearing thin on his Wildcat.
When they were together, when he touched her, that worry disappeared. There was only the two of them in the whole damn world. In her dorm, in his car or hers, in the dark stacks on the top floor of the library, she was his, all alone. There were no interfering mothers. There were no pressures from friends and coaches. There was nothing but the soft lilt of Keira’s breath and that tight, warm heat of her body clamping around him.
Three weeks, maybe four, and already Kona was addicted to the taste and feel of her. It was better than the dragon, the poison he’d depended on for a year to make him stronger. Now Keira was his addiction. It’d started at the lake house, that first time, and continued the next day with her on the kitchen counter, hands clamped on the edge and Kona inside her, taking, giving, wanting the sensation of how they fit together, how perfect, how real they came together, to never end. She was his comfort. He was her strength and when they were apart, the world seemed grayer somehow to Kona, bleak and lifeless.
Two quick rings on his phone and Kona answered, not bothering to see whose number flashed across the screen.
“Wildcat?”
“Who?” The guy’s voice was gravel deep and Kona cursed himself, cursed Ricky for bothering him.
“What do you need, man? I told you last week, I’m out of product and I’m not selling that shit anymore.”
Ricky’s breath was heavy on the other line, a long sigh that had Kona sitting up, preparing for the threat he knew was coming. Instead, the asshole just laughed, small and quick, like Kona was a stupid kid being taught a lesson.
“Look at you being all aggressive, Kona.” He cleared his throat and the humor left his voice. “I don’t give a shit what you told me. I don’t care that you got off the juice to keep your girl happy.” Kona didn’t like Ricky talking about Keira. Not even a passing mention, but the dumbass kept doing it, just to screw with Kona, to lay that underlined threat at his feet, waiting for Kona to step over it. “You clean now, but you know you gonna come back whining to me when you start playing like shit. I know the game, man. And I also know if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been tossed off the team already. You owe me and when somebody owes me, Kona, I fucking collect.”
Kona stood, kicked his backpack out of his way as he paced around his room, phone gripped between his fingers so tight he thought he might break the damn thing. He was already on edge, from cycling down of the juice and his worry of Keira being alone with her mother in that house. Ricky’s threats didn’t help. “Don’t threaten me, Ricky. I slip one word to the cops and...”
“What the fuck you say to me?” That humorless laugh was back and when Ricky spoke again, the gravel in his voice had turned to glass. “You not that stupid, man. I know you not. You open your mouth and that pretty little bitch of yours gets bloody. You feel me?”
Kona was two seconds from tossing his phone across the room. He did owe Ricky, he knew that. Worst of all, Ricky knew that Kona understood what owing him meant. And if that motherfucker laid one finger on Keira...he blinked, slumped down on his bed rubbing his eyes. “What do you want?”
“The week after Christmas, North Rampart. It’s the biggest shipment I’ve got coming in. Someone’s been blabbing to Dino Arceneaux. That asshole thinks he’s going to gank my shit before I get to it. I need you to be there so that don’t happen.”
Kona didn’t know what Ricky expected of him. He’d watched shipments before, but they were small, easily handled with one or two duffle bags in his trunk as one of Ricky’s boys headed back to New Orleans from Texas, having already picked up the shipment from someone else entering the border from Mexico. There was little danger in it and no real threat of being busted. Ricky always picked clean-cut guys for the transfer, sometimes a girl who looked a little like she could pass for someone’s twelve-year-old sister to deliver his shipments. Kona had always been nothing but muscle, had always been used for his size in case the shipment was light. He’d never been asked to chaperone a big shipment before. Dino Arceneaux was a juice head from Kenner with two muscle shops. He thought he was going to be Mr. Olympia. He thought he was Scarface, but he stood at barely 5’6 and didn’t have the balls to challenge anyone.
“Man, if I do this for you, you gotta cut me loose. I’m serious. I don’t want in this shit anymore. I just want a clean break.” Kona could practically hear Ricky thinking. He knew getting out wouldn’t be easy. He knew Ricky liked having him around to scare off punks like Dino, but Kona was done being his muscle. He wanted free from the weight of Ricky’s bullshit.
Finally, the man exhaled, released the sound that Kona thought was a little too calm and a little too forced. “Fine. You do this shit for me and I won't bug you no more, but Kona, everything has to run smooth...I mean fucking perfect. No fuck ups.”
“I got you.”
“I mean it, man. I’d hate to have to...”
“I said I got you. I’m not a kid. You don’t have to warn me.”
He ended the call before Ricky could threaten him again. Or Keira. Flat against his mattress, Kona covered his eyes with his arm, heart slamming as Ricky’s voice ran over and over in his mind like a stuck track on a busted CD player.
