My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella(4)
“Riley-Hale?” she asked Ransom.
“Yeah. It’s just that, I like our name. It’s who we’ve always been.” He glanced at Kona when he let out a particularly loud snore. Ransom chuckled, head shaking as he moved his gaze back to her. “But now Dad’s a part of us. Now we’re Hales too.”
Keira hadn’t considered what this marriage would mean for her son. She knew Ransom loved Kona. She knew the feeling was mutual and tentative plans of splitting time between New Orleans and Nashville had been made; that was, until Kona postponed the coaching position at CPU to offer commentary for the NFL. It kept him active in the league and, though there was nothing really to be done about it, it kept their names on the news and the media interested in their lives. The press loved their “second chance love story” and seemed unable to let go of the story of the man who’d abandoned his football career to devote his energies to his son.
“It’s temporary, Wildcat. Just until the end of the season.” That promise Kona made a month before and already Keira didn’t like how often he was gone, how consumed he was becoming with the attention he received.
She also didn’t like how Ransom had given up his life back home in Tennessee and Kona seemed totally unaware of the sacrifice. She suspected that beautiful little redhead her son spent most of his free time with eased the sting of uprooting himself from Nashville. But as she watched her son stare out the window, his eyes focused and wandering over the expansive sea beneath them, she realized that her son’s concern was real, that he wanted them all together and happy. His needn’t be the only sacrifice. “So you don’t think we should just take Kona’s name?”
Ransom shrugged, leaning against his seat. “I think that I’m just as much you as I am him, Mom. Besides, isn’t that what a marriage is? Two people becoming one?”
“Yes.” A smile threatened against her lips but she held it back, not wanting Ransom to see how ridiculously proud she was that he understood things better than some men twice his age. That pride usually only embarrassed him.
“So Riley-Hale is who we’ll be.” It wasn’t a question. Ransom shrugged his shoulders again, leaning his head back against the seat as though the matter was settled.
Her son was so like his father and sometimes when they were together those similarities were almost eerie. But in moments like this one, when Ransom’s opinions were logical, far too sensible for a kid of sixteen, Keira found he reminded her of her father, of the man that had raised her to mimic his ideals.
A small ache smarted in her chest at the thought of her dad, gone now for so many years. Her wedding, like all the other milestones in her life, was one he’d never see. And Bobby, the woman who’d become very much like a mother to Keira, would miss it too, not being healthy enough for such a long flight. But Bobby had been there when Ransom was born. She’d been there for so many happy moments, even more sad ones. Her father had not. His death robbed him of his only grandchild’s birth, the successes Keira had earned in the industry he’d so loved and that twinge of sadness, disappointment hit her unexpectedly as she thought about walking alone down the aisle. Then an idea came to her.
“I want to ask you something.” Turning to Ransom, shaking his arm to keep his eyes open, Keira felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “Would you give me away?”
Her boy looked just like Kona. They shared the same walk, had the same laugh, but his tender heart, the emotion he let slip onto his features? That was purely a Riley trait.
Ransom tried to recover, coughed as though her question had knocked the breath from him and flashed a casual grin over his mouth. “I thought you wouldn’t want anyone giving you away. I figured you’d see it as one man giving you away to another man like cattle or something.”
Keira didn’t hide that proud smile and ignored Ransom when he rolled his eyes at her. “No. I see it as my son finally leading me to his father.”
“Umm…” He was mildly flustered, Keira could tell, but true to form, the smart ass rolled his eyes at her. “I mean, if I have to.” Then he faced the window, eyes closed for just a moment with a smile denting his cheeks. But he slipped his hand over Keira’s and squeezed her fingers as though he’d liked her asking him more than he could admit. “It’s cool, Mom. I’ll do it.”
Kona loved Turtle Bay. As a poor kid in Kahuku, before his mom moved him and his brother Luka away from the island, Kona would watch the tourists along the beach, flooding Oahu with cameras, with white, pasty bodies looking for a little R& R. He loved the ocean, the way the cool blue water disappeared behind the horizon, how the stars at night were brighter than anywhere else in the world. Luka and Kona had spent many late nights sneaking into the pools at the resort, back when it was a Hyatt, as his Auntie Malia folded towels and cleaned rooms for barely enough money to keep them all fed.
Their plane made its decent and as Kona reached over Keira, glancing around Ransom and the island as it came into view, he was transported back to when he was a kid, before he knew what poverty was, before he knew to be embarrassed of how they’d lived.
Things were different now. Kona was successful, famous, and was there to marry his Wildcat, to do something he knew he should have done when he was twenty. He damn sure wasn’t a broke kid anymore.
“I need to warn you two.” A small nod of his chin and Keira and Ransom stopped to look at Kona, coming to a halt before they left the plane. “My family—our family—they’re a little… well, they’re a lot.”