Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(65)

“Aly Cat!” He patted my back, eyes on Keira, as always. In all the years I knew them, I’d never seen a man fawn after his woman the way Kona did. “Look at my boy out there with my nani pilialo.”

He swayed again and I caught Kona around the waist. “You okay, cheri?”

It took him a moment, several of them as he watched my face as though he was trying to remember my name but then Kona smiled, the same grin I fell asleep to every night with Ransom. Kona’s laugh was loud, shook his entire body. “I’ve never been happier in my life.”

“Wi, looks like it.”

He moved away from me then, keeping himself upright with his hand on the wall just over my head. “You know what would make me the happiest bastard ever?”

On the dance floor Ransom twirled his mother, dipping her so low that Keira nearly knocked her head on the floor.

“What’s that?”

My attention was on Ransom and a smile froze on my face as I held the moment in my chest, letting it push back the worry the past few months had kindled inside me. It would be fine, all of it. I knew that. Those random thoughts of a future that was years away, the idea that we would never have everything we wanted, it meant nothing, not when there was love and laughter. Not when we always remembered what was important—me and Ransom and this family.

“Not yet, I know, maybe a couple more years, Aly Cat,” Kona nudged me, getting my attention. “Soon as you’re married, the two of you, I want a grandson. Ke aloha pēpē. He’d be nani, wouldn’t he? With your green eyes and keiki kane’s strength.”

I felt my face drain of color but Kona was too drunk to notice it. I realized that as soon as he turned back to the dancing still going strong across the room.

“We’re not even engaged and haven’t…we aren’t even thinking about…”

“I know, Aly Cat, I know.” Kona wrapped his arm around me, squeezing my shoulder as he wobbled a little. “But soon.” He leaned his head back, that smile widening as though he could see his future laid out in front of him and the sight of it made him giddy. “Grandsons and granddaughters and this house full of pēpēs. That’s what’s important, isn’t?” When he looked down at me, tipping a knuckle under my chin I made sure to smile, to keep my chin from wobbling or for those threatening tears to spill. “For our name to live on and on. For you to be part of us forever.”

But I couldn’t. It was still weeks before my doctor confirmed it. But I knew. There was nothing to be done. The endometriosis had gotten too bad. My only option was a hysterectomy. There would be no sons for Ransom. No grandchildren with green eyes cursing in Creole for Kona and Keira. Not with me.

Kona wobbled away from me that night, not realizing the damage he’d done. Likely not meaning to hurt me at all. He loved me, I knew that. They all did. He wanted me bound to them permanently. Forever. Ohana meant always to Ransom and his family. But that night I realized our always had an end date.





If

I had my way

There would be magic.

Spells that weave, conjure.

Enchantments that brings you back to me

If

I had my way

There would be time

Collecting spells, potions

Endless nights that make you smile.





Sixteen





At fifteen, I met my father. There was too much time, too much betrayal lying between my birth and that day he’d come to the lake house begging my mother to forgive him. Begging her to let him know his son. Mom was a stubborn ass sometimes. It’s where I got it from, but she’d always sworn I was the best of both her and Kona.

“The peacemaker,” she’d called me that first night after Kona had left and we sat side by side, feet propped up on those patio loungers watching the clear black sky above us. “You kept me from killing him.”

“Someone had to.”

But I’d known she protested too strongly. She’d sworn that things between her and Kona had died the day she’d left New Orleans for Nashville. Mom had promised me that night, that after the summer, I’d be the only one in a real relationship with Kona.

“I’m not interested in him…like that.”

But she couldn’t excuse away the way she’d watched him from the kitchen while he sat talking to me and Tristian that day or why, when she sang with me that night, she’d blushed deeper, shook just a little because Kona couldn’t keep from watching her. Not me, her.

And months later when the summer wore on and Kona inched closer to being a real father to me, looks began to pass between them. They didn’t realize I took it all in. They didn’t know I caught a vibe pulsing between them because I was a real, live human with a pulse and any real, live pulse-having human would have caught that damn vibe.

That summer we became a family. One small lie—a purported last minute invite to a concert—had left my parents all alone for the first time in sixteen years. No way two people sharing that vibe could be expected to behave.

And they hadn’t. I assumed. Never wanted the details about what they’d gotten up to that particular night, but since then, after a minor stumble or two, we were a family. A complete, full time family.

Thirteen years and two siblings later, that family was fractured. All because, I suspected, some dumb * who wanted something that wasn’t his, and had found some desperate bitches to see to it that he got it. Dad had a right to know, but first, I needed to be sure he was okay.