Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(121)

“You carved up my Camaro.” It is pointless, stupid to even mention, but Kona too has gone back to the past. Keira’s words fill in what he didn’t know, the moments after he made her leave. “You went to Nashville?” She nods and Kona can only watch the dip of her chin and the straight line of her mouth. “But your car was totaled and you walked away from your family… how did you…”

“Mark Burke.”

She says the name with a smile, with a fondness that Kona doesn’t like. The jealousy is irrational and he tries not to let it consume him. Keira isn’t his. She hasn’t been his for a long time, but part of him hates that Burke was the one she turned to. He can’t push down that instant whip of anger deep enough and he knows his frown gives away what he’s feeling. Keira’s gaze follows him as he moves back toward the bar.

“Burke?” he finally says, trying to keep his voice even.

“He gave me three grand, put me on a bus.”

Kona works his jaw, unreasonably annoyed, unable to keep the bite out of his voice. “Burke did that for you? What did you have to do in return?”

She didn’t expect an insult. That much he can tell and as soon as it leaves his mouth, Kona regrets it. Keira lifts her chin, steps in front of him, comes too close. “Fuck you, Kona, it wasn’t like that. I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. I certainly didn’t have you. Don’t you dare judge me, especially when you don’t know shit about what I was going through and you damn sure don’t know why Mark did anything for me.”

He should apologize. He knows that. Kona feels the weight of emotions he thought he’d buried a long time ago, but Keira being here, right in front of him, her laying out the truth he doesn’t believe he’s ready for, has him consumed with anger. He isn’t a kid anymore. He isn’t the boy Keira knew. So why does being around her for less than a half hour have Kona reverting to the hot headed * he used to be?

Still, they have a son. Kona may have not been there for either of them, but that doesn’t mean he’d continue to play absentee father. He has to know that the boy will be protected. “So Burke helped you. He’s in your life? He’s in my son’s life?”

“Yes. He has been for years. He’s a good man.” Kona nods, steps away from Keira and walks back to the window to lean against it, hands on the glass. He can feel her stare, hears the soft steps she makes as she moves beside him, as she rests her back on the window. “So is his boyfriend, Kona.”

Kona’s neck pops when he whips his head toward Keira. “What?”

“Mark is gay,” she says, a smile quirking on her lips. “He came out to me before you and I ever broke up.” Kona lets his shoulders fall with a relief he has no right feeling. Keira had hurt him, she’d kept his son from him, but he was beginning to understand why. He was beginning to remember things the way they’d happened and not how he’d organized them in his memory. Keira’s half smile falls and she looks down at her hands, a distraction for what, he doesn’t know. “Mark didn’t want me to have to live under my mother’s thumb. He didn’t want me having to pretend like he was having to do. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had and he loves Ransom.”

Kona joins Keira against the window, hands rubbing down his face as he processes everything she’s told him. His mother, the lies, Mark freakin’ Burke and finding out he had a son—it is information overload and Kona looks down at Keira, watches the way she rubs her neck, how she leans her head against the glass, taking it all in. Could he forgive her? Had she forgiven him? Kona isn’t sure what comes next.

“Why not later? Why haven’t you told me since then?”

“And have everyone thinking I was a gold digging groupie? Please, Kona, give me some credit.”

Just as quickly as his anger faded, it comes back, flashing into his head as he glares at Keira. “So, you’re saying your pride kept my son from me?”

“No. Of course not.” Even Keira’s sigh has Kona angry. Why the hell is she frustrated? Why is she the one that can’t keep her hands still, lets her patience slip? “I’m saying that I worked really hard for a really long time to build a reputation, to build a name for myself so that I could feed and clothe my son. You don’t have any idea how hard it is for a woman in the music industry. You have no clue how many hands I’ve had to slap off my ass or how many redneck singers and producers that offered me a shot if I’d sleep with them when I was trying to get my songs recorded.”

Keira walks around the room, head shaking as though the memory of those years plays back again, exhausting her. “I had to take care of my son and I had to make sure I was careful not to take any easy ways out. In my business when you’re starting out only your talent and reputation is what separates the real artists from the posers. I wasn’t about to have anyone finding out my son’s father was the new rich darling of the NFL.

“Besides, the last time I saw you, you blamed me for Luka’s death.” She pauses and Kona can see her temper surfacing. It’s familiar and he can’t look at her, not without seeing her in that jail, raging at him. He closes his eyes to block out the memory and hears Keira coming closer. “You hated me, Kona. I didn’t want my son to see that anger. He is all I have. Aside from Leann, Ransom is my only blood. You had your mother, your grandfather and I didn’t think any of you would thank me for reminding you of what you’d lost, for landing on your doorstep with a baby you’d fathered with a woman you hated. Raising him was hard. He came early; I had high blood pressure and he was a full six weeks early. So I did what I could. I worked in a diner for years, waiting tables, cleaning my boss’s home and she helped as much as she could. Bobby became family, but she was almost as broke as I was. It was desperate sometimes, but it was something I did. I wasn’t about to throw all of that away by being called a gold digger or some slut that was coming out of the woodwork just as your star was rising. “