Thin Love (33 page)

Kona tried to find her. After the win. After his coaches and brother pulled him out onto the field. After Fleming played when Robins had enough of Kona’s distraction, the half-hearted speed of his hustle.

Kona hadn’t even cared that the cameras followed him onto the sideline or that they caught Robins’ screaming at him. Keira was gone. After she walked away from him, Kona forgot that he was supposed to be a winner. He forgot everything but how she looked at him. She was disgusted. She was disappointed. That hurt worse than Robins screaming at him on national TV.

Later, when they’d barely managed the win, Kona sat in Robins’ office expecting more of his yells, expecting the man to tell him he could kiss his spot on the team goodbye.

“The transition from first to second year is shitty, Hale.” Robins’ voice didn’t raise. The man didn’t seem as angry as he had on the field when Kona’s efforts were half-hearted, barely managed. Robins instead sat with his elbows on his desk and his fingers together, giving Kona a stiff frown. “It’s not every player that can hack it.” Kona couldn’t even look at him. He kept his eyes down, focused on the pitchfork and horns of the blue devil in the rug under his feet. “I gotta be honest, Hale. I thought you were one that could.”

“I am,” he said, though his voice sounded too weak, unconvinced.

“What’s that?”

Finally, Kona looked at his coach, sitting up straight. “I can hack it, Coach. I’ve just got to figure out some shit and then I’ll be good.”

Coach Robins moved his jaw, thumb and forefinger rested on the side of his face as he watched Kona. The man was thinking, Kona could see that clearly and he held his breath, counted the click of the old clock on the wall as the second hand moved around the face. Four, five, six… and then Robins released a sigh. “I’ve been there, son. Trust me. Women will hurt you, but sometimes if you’re lucky, you find the one that takes the shit away.” Kona closed his eyes, cursing himself and how easy he was to read. “You think you found that one yet, Hale?”

“I don’t know, Coach.”

“Then you haven’t. You’ll know when you do.” Robins backed away from his desk and opened the door, dismissing Kona with no more than a nod, but before he left that room, Robins tapped his shoulder. “You get your head on right and I’ll let you back on the field, but you’ve got some work to do. I’m gonna be hard on you, understand that now, but I think you got a shot, Hale. Don’t fuck it up.”

Fuck ups were something Kona was good at and he left his coach’s office thinking that a subpar performance on the field wasn’t the worst one he’d have to make up for.

Kona had tried Keira’s dorm the second he left the stadium, knowing even his teammates wouldn’t want him around at Lucy’s after the half-assed job he did that night. And Luka, well, Kona still hadn’t let the great well of anger and betrayal he felt toward his twin settle. He knew it would. He knew he’d have to let it go, but that night, as he drove to Graham, thinking of excuses to make to his Wildcat that didn’t sound stupid or pathetic, Kona decided he’d deal with his big mouth brother later. He had to see her. He had to take that disappointed frown off her face.

But Keira wasn’t at Graham. She wasn’t anywhere. Kona would wait, he thought. He believed she needed the night. She needed time. She needed to take a breather from him and he would give it to her.

He had not expected that wait to be so long.

Sunday he called and got no answer.

Monday he stood outside their English class, eyes alert, head leaning over the crowd, but Keira never showed.

By Tuesday, Kona was desperate. He searched the track, thinking Keira might need a run, but no one was there. He tried the library, the cafeteria, her dorm two more times, all the while blowing up her phone like his life depended on her answering. Still, no answer, no response. Even the girls in her dorm were tightlipped, which never happened when Kona flirted, when he flashed his smile.

When Wednesday morning rolled around, Keira was a no-show for English and Miller wouldn’t tell him why Keira had missed class again. He came just shy of knocking the man out, but decided that would do him no favors. He headed back to her dorm. He didn’t care that his huge body blocking the hallway outside caught stares, low whispers about him being a stalker. After four hours, Leann showed up with her man Michael, and Kona stood, shoulders square, heart pounding.

“Kona, she’s not here. She won’t be here for a while.” Kona barely registered Michael at Leann’s side, how the guy stood in front of her.

“I have to see her. Where is she?”

“She’s not here.” This came from Michael and Kona was mildly impressed at the way he looked up at him, like he wasn’t intimidated at all. The guy was a few inches shorter than Kona and, like everyone else, much thinner with less bulk. Kona thought he looked like a thug with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and a bad, poorly executed tattoo on the side of his neck. Prison tat, or one that was made to look like that.

Kona didn’t care that Michael looked like he wanted a tussle. He didn’t have time for that bullshit. He needed to find Keira. He had to explain.

“Leann, she won’t answer my calls. She didn’t show up to class this week and you know how much she loves it.” He took a step closer to her, hoping she caught the desperation he knew was on his face. “Please. I just wanna know if she’s okay. Is she sick? Does she need anything?”

“Listen, man, just back off,” Michael said, before Leann could answer Kona.

Hand on her boyfriend’s chest, Leann pushed Michael back and surprisingly, he retreated. “You tell me what happened, and maybe I can answer some questions for you.” In Leann’s expression, Kona saw confusion and a great bit of curiosity.

Keira hadn’t told her cousin what she’d walked in on. She’d kept his dirty little secret. That should have made Kona feel good. That should have had him relaxing, knowing that she still cared if she wasn’t telling everyone who listened what a dumbass he’d been. But all Kona felt, looking at Leann’s expectant expression, was stupid and weak and itching to rifle the campus until he found Keira.

Finally, when Michael inched forward again to do Kona had no clue what, Kona rubbed his neck, trying to find something he could say that would pacify the girl.

“I fucked up. I fucked up way worse than any time before.” Curious, he moved his chin at her. “What did she say to you?”

“Nothing really. Just that you fought and she was done with you.” Those words felt like a knife straight in his chest, but Kona brushed the pain back, pushed it away until it was only a dull ache. “Then her mom called and… shit…” It wasn’t a total slip, but Kona caught the meaning and the fact that Keira would retreat to her mother’s house told him just how mad she was. She hated her mother.

“Thanks, Leann.”

“Kona!” the girl called as he moved down the hallway. “Don’t you dare go see her. Those people will eat you alive!”

How dare you

Steal what’s left of me

The parts already thin

Toxic to my heart

Broken through my skin

Keira wanted to slam her Gibson against the wall. Nearly a month and the hook still would not come. It was the lake house, she knew. It was the confining walls of her girlhood bedroom and the constant pestering of her mother whenever her wine bottles were empty. Writer’s block was a myth, some excuse lazy people used when they weren’t producing perfection. Keira liked to think her block was more parental-related. Or, Hawaiian demon-related.

She hated being there. She hated that her mother never let her paint the pale pink walls or lose the ruffled comforter. She hated the white four poster bed and the lace on the canopy. She hated the stuffed animals arranged around the frilly white pillows against the headboard. She hated that her mother had not stopped asking why she was home and not at school. For the past four days. Every hour.

God, that woman was nosy.

In fact, the only thing Keira did like about this place was her balcony. Her parents had built this house just after they married twenty years ago. It was mammoth and brazen, way too much for three people, but Keira liked that it was nestled right on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. She liked during the summers when her mother and Steven took their yearly cruise that she and Leann could lay out on her balcony and bake their skin. She liked that her French doors and the trellis down the side of her railings made it easy to sneak out to be with her cousin and do things high schoolers did but had no business doing. She liked that on a full moon, she could sit out on her balcony, legs between the cast iron railings, hanging off the side, watching the glitter of moonlight over that water.

She’d take a thousand meddling lectures from her mother if it meant she got an hour looking out onto that water.

The doorbell rang, pulling Keira off her bed and into the en suite bathroom looking out of the window to investigate who had arrived so early in the day. Her mother and Steven were leaving that afternoon, another spontaneous trip to Atlanta that Keira suspected had something to do with how late Steven had been coming home from the city. “Smelling like something cheap and whorish off Bourbon Street,” her mother had told her. He did that often and each time, they took a week away and her mother came home with bags and bags of shit she would never use or wear.

Keira’s stomach landed somewhere around her knees when she saw Kona on the front porch, hand held over his eyes as he looked up.

“Shit.” She stood on her toes, stretching her neck to see him better but then the front door must have opened because Kona disappeared onto the porch and she heard the low murmur below. “Double shit!”

She couldn’t go down there, wouldn’t even attempt to interrupt whatever horrible thing she knew her mother would say to him. It was over. Done. She wasn’t going to see Kona again so the fuss she knew her mother would make was pointless. Keira had to let Kona go and though it made her feel like an asshole and a coward, she knew no one could make him run out of that house faster than her mother.

Still, that didn’t mean she had to let herself be kept in the dark.

She tried to be quiet as she lifted the window, hoped that the hinges wouldn’t squeak. But she had it up only halfway when she heard Kona’s voice, deep, tone polite.

“We have an assignment due next week and she hasn’t been in class. I was just checking on her since she’s been out. Um… ma’am.”

Oh crap. Mistake number one.

Her mother hated being called ma’am. In her mind, she still looked and felt like she was twenty. Thanks to her nutritionist and a great plastic surgeon.

“My daughter won’t be in class this week. I’d have thought Professor Miller would have told you this if you really were working on a project with Keira.”

She got on her knees, moving the small wood hamper directly in front of the window and she heard it then, that Kona grunt that told her he was losing his temper.

Keira could imagine what was happening downstairs. Her mother probably had a half empty glass of wine in her hand. She was probably still wearing those too tight yoga pants and the Gucci tank top. And Keira knew she was looking Kona over. He was impressive, caught the attention of every female with a pulse, but Cora Michaels wouldn’t be silently praising him. She’d be wondering how her precious daughter had lowered herself to befriend a boy “like him.” Like him generally meant not white, not local and not one of THEM.

Kona, on the other hand, Keira thought, would be attempting one of two things: either using that bright beautiful smile of his to worm his way into the house, or he’d be balling his fists up, feet apart and a constant rough growl working in his chest. Either way, she knew he wouldn’t cross the threshold. You just didn’t mess with Cora Michaels. You especially didn’t mess with her once she’d downed half a bottle of Moscato.

“Ms. Riley…”

“It’s Michaels, son. I haven’t been a Riley in a long time.”

He cleared his throat, covering another grunt. “My bad, Mrs. Michaels. I was just worried about Keira. She’s not answering her phone and…”

“Are you that boy from the hospital?”

Crap. Here’s she goes.

“Sorry?”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re that boy my husband told me Keira was with while he treated your grandfather. He said you two looked a little friendly.”

“We are… um… friends.”

Keira had to withhold her laugh. Kona was many things to her, but friend wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t like Leann. She didn’t spill her secrets to him, well, not all of them. He didn’t know who she was, not really. Not… really. At least, that’s what Keira told herself; it was the tiny lie that kept her from running down those stairs. “Friends.” But Keira was pretty sure friends didn’t touch each other the way she and Kona did. Friends didn’t hide things behind your back. They didn’t lie to you. They didn’t reach into your heart and squeeze down hard, trying to fracture the thin, barely-there fibers with lies and deception.

“How friendly are you with my daughter?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Because you know she’s seeing Mark Burke. They’ve been together for several months now.”