Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(112)
“Kaikamahine, enough.” Koa came behind Professor Alana, pulled her away from Keira and as he held his daughter against his chest, patted her back, the old man’s kind eyes went glassy and soft. He gave Keira a weak smile, an expression Keira thought was forced, but sincere. “Kona’s waiting, little one, go see him. He needs to see a friendly face.”
Keira walked away from Kona’s family, then, from the small sobs working out of his mother’s chest and the gentle kindness softening his grandfather’s features. But she couldn’t help thinking, as she walked through that metal door that the guilt she felt would swallow her whole.
Three a.m. that morning a wiry Dominican kid from the Seventh Ward decided Kona had a softer pillow than him. He knew the score. At age fifteen, he’d landed in juvie, after a couple of scrapes that had him at the wrong in of the NOPD’s knuckles. So when the kid jerked Kona’s pillow out from under him as he slept, Kona took it back. He took it back after he broke the kid’s nose and fractured his jawbone.
His lawyer mentioned “five years” in passing, like it was a small bit of time that Kona could handle without problem. Five years for standing there while Ricky killed two people. Five years, maybe more if he didn’t turn into a rat. They lawyer said the phrase like is was nothing, like it wasn’t the end of everything Kona had wanted for himself. Five years and his team would forget about him. Five years on the inside and his coaches would pretend they’d never heard his name. Five years would destroy him.
When the metal door opened, that awful creak whining in the large room as visitors waited their turn to see whatever brother, cousin, son or father they had to speak to through plate-glass, Kona held his breath. It wasn’t his mother coming back in to tell him what the lawyer heard about the deal the D.A. offered. It wasn’t his tutu kane returning to make more half-hearted efforts at pulling a smile from Kona. It was her. Keira.
She stepped nervously into the room and Kona had fleeting thoughts that the introvert had returned. She held herself, arms circling her waist and her shoulders slumped as she peeked around the room.
Kona hadn’t seen that pretty flush on her skin in months, but it was there now, coloring her pale cheeks, warming her dull blue eyes. Keira looked thinner somehow, younger to him, but Kona thought that might have to do with spending the past week in a huge room full of convicts. It had aged him, those men and the preview of what his life would be like if he refused to cooperate with the D.A.
He watched Keira’s eyes moving to each cubicle, searching until she found him among the seated *s slumping against the table, dirty telephone receivers to their ears talking to whatever friend or family that had been landed the task of visitation day. But unlike the old men and women, the rowdy, bored kids, Keira smiled, glowed with something Kona didn’t recognize.
He hated her for the way she looked. He hated her for the smile she gave him, the one he refused to return. He hated her for being there, reminding him of what he’d have to give up. And even though a small voice called to him, told him that Keira wasn’t to blame for the way Luka died, why Kona landed in the overfilled jail surrounded by stinky, bragging jackasses, the hurt was too great; the pain too sharp for Kona to listen.
Eyes on her, on those slow cautious steps Keira made toward him, Kona picked up the receiver, tried not to stare too long into her eyes, tried not to release the brewing anger that had kept him warm since he woke up in a hospital handcuffed to a bed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he told her, mouth pulled down hard, eyes sharp and narrowed. Kona barely managed to keep the shake out of his voice, to keep the phone still between his tight fist.
“I needed to see you. To check up on you, bebe.”
He closed his eyes, squeezed his lids tight. He wanted to erase the sight of her tears dotting her long eyelashes and the sweet, worried tone of her voice.
He breathed through his nose and that grip on the phone got tighter. “Me? I’m fine, Keira. I’m rooming with a hundred smelly *s who all claim they were set up. I’m good. I got a place to sleep, even if I have to fight to keep it and I have to shit in front of a room full of perverts who wanna know how big my dick is. Oh, I’m good, Keira.”
Her fingers shook and she had to hold the phone with both hands to keep it still. “I know you’re angry. I know this hurts more than anything—”
“Hurt? No. I don’t hurt. I’ve moved past hurt. I’m full on to rage, Keira. Fucking fury.” Kona emphasized his point with a slam of his free hand onto the desk in front of him and found no great pleasure at how Keira jumped with the sound. Her tears only pissed him off, made that heavy burn of anger in his gut bubble. Again, Kona closed his eyes, not wanting to see the tears. They were pointless. They were weak and Kona was tired of being weak. He was ashamed of what Keira had turned him into; how she made him forget the promises he’d made to himself about women. Still, as he looked at her, a quick glance that did not soften his rage, he could not block out that her shoulders shook and the tears came back harder. Kona rubbed his palm over his face, fingers pinching in his eyes. “I’m only talking to you because I want answers.”
He looked back at her, nostrils flaring when she rubbed her face on her sleeve. “Ok… okay.”
“How did you two know where I was?”
“Luka followed you.” A sniffle, another swipe of her coat on her wet face and Keira’s voice grew clearer. “A few months back. He said he followed you when you went out on runs for Ricky. When I told him you mentioned North Rampart, he said he had a good idea where you were.”