Ohana Legacy: Thin Love Series Bundle, page 34
part #1 of Thin Love Series
Her mother kicked up from the chair, sending it sliding behind her. “You’re being irrational, Keira, just like your father. I knew this would happen. I knew it the second that boy walked into my house. That’s why I did what I needed to.”
That ache in Keira’s chest shifted, dropped like a stone into her stomach. “What are you talking about?” Her mother looked over her head, to the I.V., over at the monitor that timed Keira’s heartbeat and she knew, just by the way her mother avoided her glare, how she rubbed her fingers on the bedrail, that the woman had somehow set the entire mess in motion. “What did you do?”
Shoulders lowering, her mother still refused to look at Keira. “I heard you talking about North Rampart and I knew what he was doing.” A small glance at Keira’s face and then her mother’s voice rushed out, excuses, rationale that probably sounded sensible in her mind. “I knew it was something you didn’t need to be around so I left a message with Steven’s golf buddy Detective Wilson. He took care of everything else.”
Keira let her eyes dip closed, unable to look at the woman for another second. “You called the cops.”
“I was protecting you.”
Her mother’s protection had cost them all, Kona’s twin most of all. When she opened her eyes and spoke, Keira’s voice sounded flat, resigned. “You killed Luka.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing to that boy.” The bedrail raddled against the mattress when her mother hit it. “Kona killed Luka the moment he decided to be a thug.”
“Get out.”
“I most certainly will not...”
“Get out of my room,” she told her, voice even, steady, brimming with a threat. Keira watched her fingers, the rough calluses on the tips from playing and she wished she had her Gibson. She needed the calm it brought her. Her mind was set and she promised herself she wouldn’t look at her mother again. The lies, the betrayal, the smothering dominance the woman had always settled over Keira felt too thick, too full. “Get out. Now.”
She didn’t rage at her mother liked she wanted. Keira didn’t even enjoy the way the woman’s chin wobbled or how she visibly released her calm. But Cora Michaels didn’t move, seemed incapable of doing anything more than stare at her daughter as though she was finally seeing her clearly for the first time. But it was a reaction that had come too late for Keira; an honest expression of respect she no longer needed.
Three slow pumps onto the call button and Keira’s nurse entered the room, that bright smile vanishing when she watched Keira and her mother staring back and forth. “I want her out,” she told the nurse. “I don’t want to see her anymore and I damn sure do not want an abortion.”
“She’s your mama...”
“I don’t care.” Again, she closed her eyes, moving her fingers to her temples, trying to ease the pound there. “I’m legally responsible for myself and I don’t want this woman or her husband anywhere near me.”
Two small steps and her mother reached for her. “Keira...”
“Get. Out.”
And for once, the woman listened. For once, she didn’t exhaust herself exerting her will over her daughter, and when she walked out of that hospital room, Keira felt the heavy weight of her mother’s presence leave with her. It moved from her shoulders, from her chest and finally Keira could breathe.
***
A yellow brick wall greeted Keira as she waited in the Orleans Parish Prison lobby. The clerk copying her driver’s license moved the card between her plump fingers as though she was looking for a flaw, some small indication that Keira’s I.D. was a fake.
She still felt sore, achy and the fresh bout of morning sickness that Leann was convinced was psychosomatic, had Keira feeling woozy and uncomfortable, like her skin had been pulled taut over her bones. Only three days out of the hospital, three days since she’d determined never to see her mother again, and Keira sat waiting for a suspicious jail clerk to tell her it was okay to walk through those heavy metal doors to speak with Kona. Keira didn’t know what she’d do or where she’d go the next day. She only knew she had to see Kona. She had to tell him about the hope growing inside her.
“Miss?” the clerk called and Keira jumped to her feet, pulling her I.D. and a Visitor’s badge under the glass in the metal dip of the desk. “Ten minutes until the end of the last visiting period. You’ll have a half hour with the inmate and then I need that badge back.”
She’d arrived twenty minutes earlier, scribbled her name on a faded form attached to a clip board. Keira glanced at that list, spotting a name that filled her with unease and the rumble in her stomach only got worse. “Lalei Alana.” Kona’s mother, and then, under that name, “Koa Hale,” his grandfather.
Keira closed her eyes, not eager to see either of them. It wasn’t fear of what they’d say to her that had her ready to bolt from the room, but the heavy weight of guilt she felt. Luka had gone with her to rescue Kona. He’d gone willingly, eagerly, but he’d gone because Keira had called him. He’d gone because, like Keira, he wanted to rescue Kona. That wasn’t an excuse. Luka had still ended up dead and Keira didn’t think Kona’s family would thank her for leading Luka to that death.
A screech from the large metal door that opened to the visitor’s area brought Keira’s attention away from the Admin desk and when she saw Professor Alana walking through it towards her, several thoughts came to her. The first was that the woman looked older. The death, the burden of burying your own child and the empty future of another seemed to wear on her; it was written in the unkempt wrinkles on her linen shirt and the loose fitting hang of her worn jeans. She had always walked with her chin uplifted, shoulders back and her stance elegant, but the woman who caught her eyes, who slammed the door shut behind her, slumped her shoulders, took sloppy steps toward Keira.
“You have a lot of nerve coming here,” Professor Alana swatted at her eyes, brushing back the hair falling from her loose bun. Keira didn’t jerk away from her when she gripped her elbow, or when she pulled her toward the back of the lobby. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
She wouldn’t believe it. In all honesty, Keira didn’t care if Kona hated her right then. She knew telling him about the baby would change things. She knew him; she knew how he’d blame himself for Luka’s death. He needed a glimmer and Keira wanted to give him that. “I don’t care, Professor Alana.” She twisted out of the woman’s grip and stepped away from her. “I need to talk to him.”
The woman lifted her eyebrows, her gaze working over Keira’s face and then she sighed, sitting on the seat to her left before she opened the purse on her lap. “This is about that baby.” She kept her eyes downcast, her fingers rustling through her purse until she withdrew her checkbook. A swipe of her pen and the woman tore out a check, shoving it at Keira without a word.
Five hundred dollars. Alana thought her grandchild’s life was worth five hundred dollars. She spotted the Memo and Keira crumbled the check between her fingers.
“To fix Kona’s lapse in judgment?”
“What else would I call this?”
Keira’s heart would not soften, despite the bags under the professor’s eyes or the dark circles that told her sleep had not been easy for her. She understood the heartache, felt echoes of her own father’s death in the shadows beneath Professor Alana’s eyes, but she wouldn’t be written off. She would not let her mother or Kona’s decide the course of their lives. He had a right to know about their baby. Despite his possible anger at her, despite the gut-wrenching loss she knew he must be feeling, he still had to know that hope would come to them.
“I don’t want your money. Take this.” She waved the wrinkled check back at the professor, then slipped it in her back pocket when the woman only glared at her, top lip twitching.
Professor Alana grabbed Keira’s arms and shook her twice. “I will not let some stupid bitch ruin my son’s future. You say a word to him about that damn baby and I will destroy you, little girl. I promise you that.” Her fingernails bit into Keira’s skin and she tried to break away, to pull out of the woman’s touch. “You’ve already taken one son from me, you will not take Kona!”
“Kaikamahine, enough.” Koa came behind Professor Alana, pulled her away from Keira and as he held his daughter against his chest, patted her back, the old man’s kind eyes went glassy and soft. He gave Keira a weak smile, an expression Keira thought was forced, but sincere. “Kona’s waiting, little one, go see him. He needs to see a friendly face.”
Keira walked away from Kona’s family, from the small sobs working out of his mother’s chest and the gentle kindness softening his grandfather’s features. But she couldn’t help thinking, as she walked through that metal door that the guilt she felt would swallow her whole.
Three a.m. that morning a wiry Dominican kid from the Seventh Ward decided Kona had a softer pillow than him. He knew the score. At age fifteen, he’d landed in juvie, after a couple of scrapes that had him at the wrong in of the NOPD’s knuckles. So when the kid jerked Kona’s pillow out from under him as he slept, Kona took it back. He took it back after he broke the kid’s nose and fractured his jawbone.
His lawyer mentioned “five years” in passing, like it was a small bit of time that Kona could handle without problem. Five years for standing there while Ricky killed two people. Five years, maybe more if he didn’t turn into a rat. They lawyer said the phrase like it was nothing, like it wasn’t the end of everything Kona had wanted for himself. Five years and his team would forget about him. Five years on the inside and his coaches would pretend they’d never heard his name. Five years would destroy him.
When the metal door opened, that awful creak whining in the large room as visitors waited their turn to see whatever brother, cousin, son or father they had to speak to through plate-glass, Kona held his breath.
It wasn’t his mother coming back in to tell him what the lawyer heard about the deal the D.A. offered. It wasn’t his Kuku returning to make more half-hearted efforts at pulling a laugh from Kona. It was her. Keira.
She stepped nervously into the room and Kona had fleeting thoughts that the introvert had returned. She held herself, arms circling her waist and her shoulders slumped as she peeked around the room.
Kona hadn’t seen that pretty flush on her skin in months, but it was there now, coloring her pale cheeks, warming her dull blue eyes. Keira looked thinner somehow, younger to him, but Kona thought that might have to do with spending the past week in a huge room full of convicts. It had aged him, those men and the preview of what his life would be like if he refused to cooperate with the D.A.
He watched Keira’s eyes moving to each cubicle, searching until she found him among the seated assholes slumping against the table, dirty telephone receivers to their ears talking to whatever friend or family that had been landed the task of visitation day. But unlike the old men and women, the rowdy, bored kids, Keira glowed with something Kona didn’t recognize.
He hated her for the way she looked. He hated her for the smile she gave him, the one he refused to return. He hated her for being there, reminding him of what he’d have to give up. And even though a small voice called to him, told him that Keira wasn’t to blame for the way Luka died, why Kona landed in the overfilled jail surrounded by stinky, bragging jackasses, the hurt was too great; the pain too sharp for Kona to listen.
Eyes on her, on those slow cautious steps Keira made toward him, Kona picked up the receiver, tried not to stare too long into her eyes, tried not to release the brewing anger that had kept him warm since he woke up in a hospital handcuffed to a bed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he told her, mouth pulled down hard, eyes sharp and narrowed. Kona barely managed to keep the shake out of his voice, to keep the phone still between his tight fist.
“I needed to see you. To check up on you, baby.”
He closed his eyes, squeezed his lids tight. He wanted to erase the sight of her tears dotting her long eyelashes and the sweet, worried tone of her voice.
He breathed through his nose and that grip on the phone got tighter. “Me? I’m fine, Keira. I’m rooming with a hundred smelly assholes who all claim they were set up. I’m good. I got a place to sleep, even if I have to fight to keep it and I have to shit in front of a room full of perverts who wanna know how big my dick is. Oh, I’m good, Keira.”
Her fingers shook and she had to hold the phone with both hands to keep it still. “I know you’re angry. I know this hurts more than anything—”
“Hurt? No. I don’t hurt. I’ve moved past hurt. I’m full on to rage, Keira. Fucking fury.” Kona emphasized his point with a slam of his free hand onto the desk in front of him and found no great pleasure at how Keira jumped with the sound. Her tears only pissed him off, made that heavy burn of anger in his gut bubble. Again, Kona closed his eyes, not wanting to see the tears. They were pointless. They were weak and Kona was tired of being weak. He was ashamed of what Keira had turned him into; how she made him forget the promises he’d made to himself about women. Still, as he looked at her, a quick glance that did not soften his rage, he could not block out that her shoulders shook and the tears came back harder, louder. Kona rubbed his palm over his face, fingers pinching in his eyes. “I’m only talking to you because I want answers.”
He looked back at her, nostrils flaring when she rubbed her face on her sleeve. “Oh...okay.”
“How did you two know where I was?”
“Luka followed you.” A sniffle, another swipe of her coat on her wet face and Keira’s voice grew clearer. “A few months back. He said he followed you when you went out on runs for Ricky. When I told him you mentioned N. Rampart, he said he had a good idea where you were.”
Kona leaned back, hand on the back of his neck. He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to call her all the stupid, insulting things in his head, the ones he’d silently whispered to her when he was supposed to be sleeping. It helped. It took away his grief. It made seeing her sting less. It made wanting her seem disgusting; a betrayal to his brother.
“Last question...”
“I have to tell you something.”
He watched her again, ignoring the smile she tried to force. How could she be happy? How could she think that their lives weren’t over? Luka was gone. His future was hopeless and this bitch smiles? What the hell does she have to be happy about?
Keira needed to understand how irrevocably they’d screwed up their lives. She needed to see that he had nothing to offer her; that he didn’t want her, not now, not ever again. If she’d just listened. If she’d just stayed back in Mandeville, Luka would have never...he would still be here.
“Unless you’re going to tell me my brother is alive, then I don’t wanna hear it.”
“But Kona...”
“No!” Another slam of his fist, this time on the glass and a guard closed in, his presence a small warning that Kona should get a handle on his temper. The desk under his elbow was Formica, an ugly harvest gold color that reminded him of bad seventies sitcoms. He leaned against it, taking cool breaths, trying to calm. “Why the fuck didn’t you stay, Keira? Why couldn’t you let me handle this shit on my own? Why didn’t you stay home?” He looked up at her pissed off when his eyes burned. “Why?”
“Kona, please...” Keira put her own hand against the glass, leaned on her arm and Kona had to shut his eyes again. He couldn’t stomach seeing her like this. He couldn’t stand the anger he felt, that deep, alien need to attack her. It felt abnormal, it felt like defeat. “I’m so sorry about Luka, but he told me...months back when I found out you were on that shit...” she sniffed again, her fingernails scratching against the glass. “He told me if I ever thought you were in trouble to call him. I...I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to protect you. I still want to protect you.”
She blamed Luka? His paranoid, anxious brother? Keira took her own guilt and shoved it at the feet of someone who couldn’t defend himself. Convenient, insulting and when Kona acted, moved to scream at her, the guard to his right leaned against the wall, his cocked eyebrow all the warning Kona needed. He pulled the phone in both hands, lowered his forehead against it as he let his breath come in quick, pull away the urgent desire to slam his fist against the brick wall behind him.
He cleared his throat, let one last deep inhalation move out of his lungs and Kona was able to meet Keira’s eyes again. “It’s done. There’s nothing left for you to protect me from, Keira, except yourself.”
The pale skin darkened and the lips Kona had grown so used to kissing, pulling comfort from, stopped shaking. Keira sat up, shoulders straight, attention unwavering as she watched him, analyzed ever twitch he tried to still on his face. “What?”
“You heard me. I’m done with this shit.” He waved his freehand between them. “I’m done being your little bitch. I’m done pretending that I feel something for you.”
I’m a fucking liar, he thought.
“What are talking about?”
“You’re a stupid bitch, you know that? You think I only wanted you? You think I was only seeing you? You actually believed that whole ‘I love you’ bullshit?”
