My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella(34)
Those dark eyebrows moved together as Kona grabbed the box. “You can’t sleep because of a Christmas present? Baby, I’d love anything, everything, you give me.”
Keira covered her nervous laugh with a cough that didn’t hide her anxiety. When Kona put the box on the mattress to fold his hand over her fingers, she shook her head. “Just… God, sweetie, just open it.”
He looked wary, concerned, but Kona grabbed the box and loosened the ribbon. Before he lifted the lid, Keira held her breath, watching his face closely, measuring his expression for any sign of disappointment or fear. There wasn’t any.
It took just a few seconds, then Kona’s gaze jumped to hers. He wiped the ball of his palm inside his eye and then sat up quickly, pulling the pacifier from the box. Keira caught the play of emotions on his face, expressions shifting from confusion, then worry, then straight to joy.
“You…” he sat up straighter, tilting his head to stare right in her eyes. “Are you messing with me, Keira because that would be so f*cking low?”
She shook her head, squeaking out a “no” when his full lips curled up.
“How long have you known?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“What? You’re serious? Two weeks and you didn’t tell me?”
Kona jumped off the bed and when Keira caught that quick streak of fear drawing down his mouth, her worry leveled up until her chest felt tight.
She hated that he wouldn’t look at her. He couldn’t keep his eyes on that pacifier, stared at it like that small piece of rubber and plastic would clear away his confusion. “You’re… why are you mad?” she asked him, hating how weak her voice sounded.
“What? Mad?” And then he was back on the bed, dropping the pacifier, filling his hand with Keira’s hips, kissing up her neck, over her face. “Baby, my heart is about to crack through my chest.” Kona brought those big hands Keira loved so much to her face, and he held them there. She’d never seen him look so happy. She’d never seen that his eyes well up so quickly, or him be so dismissive of the tears that spilled down his face. “I think I’ve never been happier in my life. A baby? You’re giving me another baby? Oh, Keira why in God’s name would I be mad? This is better than winning the SuperBowl, better than being first round on the draft! This is like my birthday and orgasms and chocolate ice cream all smashed together! Mad? Are you crazy? I told you months ago, if it was up to me I’d have a thousand babies with you.”
And Keira knew why his face had become so wet, why Kona kissed her so hard, held her hips still so he could lift up her shirt and lean his ear against her stomach as though he might be able to hear the tiny baby growing inside of her. He’d missed all of this with Ransom. Circumstance, pride, ego, fear, they had all taken Ransom’s start in life from Kona. Keira knew he’d have given anything to get those years back and now they had the chance to relive it, to experience this all together.
“Baby,” he said, sliding up her body, flippantly wiping his face dry. “I’m just… thank you. God. Just thank you so much.” Kona pulled Keira down against his chest curling his arms around her back tight as though she would fly away if he didn’t keep her there. “Only you, Wildcat, only you could give me this. Only you could make my heart this damn full.”
And Keira knew what he meant, how those low spoken words were small compared to the well of joy that moved through them both. He was hers. He belonged to her completely and Keira was happy to never be meant for anyone but Kona.
Their lives might not always be easy, God knew it certainly had been a tortuous, hazardous road to get to that Christmas night snuggled against each other in their bed. But Keira knew she wouldn’t have traded a second of the fight she and Kona had given themselves.
Each struggle was a lesson in learning how to manage without the hope of tomorrow. Each disappointment taught her what mistakes to correct, which to avoid and every moment that they had been apart, every time that she had felt lonely, desperate or scared, each and every time had led her back to Kona, back to her always, to the arms of her beloved.
Shadows have weight. They reach and cover, devour and sometimes, when the shadows are so big, they seem insurmountable and you fear they will consume you. They feel thick, clot in your chest and every time you fail, every time you have to struggle to win, those shadows grow.
My father’s shadow was massive, just like him, just like I was going to be someday. He was not an easy man to follow. His records, his successes were overwhelming achievements fueled by the fear of loss, by desperate ambition. He’d struggled. He’d lost some mighty big battles and somehow those hurdles in his way urged him, made him want more, need more. He’d told me once, “If you’ve ever been hungry, you’ll never be full.” That didn’t come from him. My father isn’t a philosopher. What he is, what added weight to that shadow of his, was accomplishment, gratification and the seemingly impossible reality of honest, real, consuming love.
He found that kind of love with my mother. She, too, cast a large shadow. Even more than my father, my mother struggled, but she did her struggling alone, almost a kid herself, with only the minor support of friends that were equally as lost as she was.
And together? When my parents finally found each other for good and that uncontrollable, blind love that had begun when they were just kids in college, ripped apart anything I thought I knew about love. The shadow they cast together was impossible to walk behind.