Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(46)

Mom scooted closer, avoiding my busted ankle to sit next to me on the bed. Kona watched her, eyes guarded and tight before he looked down at me. “Don’t you think this is a good opportunity…” The tone of her voice, that sad, small placating timber made me feel sick. Pity wouldn’t help. I didn’t want anyone’s pity.



“I don’t know what the hell I think right now, Mom. I’m a little…shit.”

“It’s not the end of the world.” Kona rested his arms against the bed railing, trying his hardest not to act as panicked as he looked. “Football isn’t everything. You have other talents…”

“And other opportunities,” Mom added, giving me a genuine smile.

I didn’t need my Mom and Dad fixing my problems. My problems were mine to own, mine to handle and just then, the day, the circumstances overwhelmed me. There was a blanket of hopelessness that fell over me, something that made my chest feel heavy and the listless, uncontrollable urge to lash out and wound came over me. I hated feeling so weak.

“Have you two already got my life mapped out for me because I’d love to hear it. Honest. I mean, I have no idea where I’ll be in a month, but please, go right ahead and tell me what I should do.”

That stung. I saw that my rudeness had landed hard, hard enough that my mom stood up from the bed, shuffling to the foot of it as though she needed a moment to contain her disappointment.

Kona, however, had no such problem. If I was being an *, he was the first to call me on it. “For starters,” he said, standing straight enough so he could look down at me, disappointed. “Maybe you can give up the whiny attitude and stop taking shit out on us.”

“Kona…” Mom tried, but the small plea died on her lips when my father jerked his chin at her.

“You’ve always babied him too much,” Dad said, frustrated.

“Maybe you haven’t babied him enough,” she countered.

“Keira, he’s twenty-eight. He’s a grown damn man.” He looked back at me, shoulders still stiff. “Something like this happens, keiki kane, and you decided how you’ll handle it right from the beginning.”

I hated them bickering, especially over me. I hated that the sinking weight in my chest had only grown heavier the louder my parents’ voices rose. “And you’re going to tell me how?”

“No. I’m not. Neither is your mother.” Kona got a little closer, leaning one hand on the mattress next to my head. “You’ve got to figure that shit out for yourself. You either take these lumps and deal with them or you lay on your back and bitch about how unfair life is.” He stood then, crossing his massive arms over his wide chest. “But I gotta say, I can’t believe you’ll take up the second option. Not with how your mother raised you. Not with all that ass kicker blood you’ve got running through those veins. We don’t run, keiki kane. That’s just not who we are, is it?”

That stare was steely cold, meant to boost my confidence, meant to call me out for being a little punk. But that weight felt like forever, as though not even my father’s words ringing true could ease it.

Still, I wouldn’t have him see me weak. I’d get no pity from him, I knew that. “No,” I answered, nodding once when my father watched me. Then came the small voice, nearly silent but firm, the one that reminded me who I was. The one that surfed above the doubt, the anger to tell me I could survive this.

I just had to be willing to try.

The door swung open and my gaze stayed on my coach and the two team doctors that followed him into the room, with my agent trailing behind. Whatever those men had to say would change things for me. And it was up to me to figure out what to do with that change when it came.





You kill your darlings

Because it is easy.

Because you like the bristle of sabotage.

Because you hurt yourself

Wanting only the solitude that you

Pray

Breeds absolution.

In the end

There is only

The sinner you made of yourself.





Ten





“So Kiki Jefferies works at Tulane now. Admissions.”

“The redhead with the…”

“The one and only.”

“And?”

“And what?” My cousin didn’t bother hiding his smile. Even with the quick shrug that was supposed to make me believe he didn’t care about running into his freshman year crush, the knucklehead grinned like an idiot who had never heard of subtlety. “I’m busy as hell.”

“Man, you should never be too busy for that.”

He stopped rolling the wrap around my ankle to shift his attention to my face. There was too much shock, too much humor staring back at me. “Says the man that hasn’t had any in how long?”

A quick lift of my middle finger and that * laughed. Tristian hadn’t aged much, despite the hectic schedule he kept, working through his internship. There were no lines around his eyes, even at twenty-six, even though I knew he didn’t get more than four or five hours of sleep a night. He still had way too much energy and even when he wasn’t running around like a dog at the hospital, that insane man was at the gym exerting himself enough that he could manage to get his brain to switch off and land a few hours of sleep.