Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(127)

Then the flash of that boy in the Market returns to him and Kona pulls his hands away from his mother, stares over her head to the window and the fat blooms of hydrangea and roses lining the walkway outside. “It’s a funny thing; the women in my life getting into my business.” He looks back at her. “You’ve always messed with my business.”

She sits up straighter. “What are you saying?”

“You knew. You’ve known this whole time and you never told me.” They stare at each other, his mother’s eyes narrowing, playing a game, seeing whose tells will give away their hands. “He looks just like me, Mom. He’s me exactly.”

She stands, walks to the vase near the window, fiddles with the arrangement of magnolias and hydrangeas. “If he looks like you, it’s because you and your brother were so similar.”

His mother hated his anger, always said it was his father’s bad blood that had him lashing out. She’d never blame that defect on her family. And so she busies herself with the flowers, pulling out the stems, adjusting their height as though he hadn’t just accused her of lying to him for nearly sixteen years.

He couldn’t wait, felt his patience sliding through him. “Mom?” His tone is harsh, sharp and his mother jerks at the sound.

Finally she looks over her shoulder, and when she speaks her voice shakes. “I knew Keira was pregnant, son. Her mother told me the day after Luka…” She turns back to the flowers and the petals fall around the vase as her hands shake. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“By keeping my son from me?” Kona darts from the couch and in three strides, he’s behind her, fighting against himself to lower his voice to keep from punching something.

His mother faces him, twisting a dead flower in her hand. She stares at Kona’s collar, to the V-neck of his shirt and the silver chain that disappears underneath it. Then her eyes lift, are glassy. “By never telling you that the girl you thought you loved was carrying your brother’s child.”

“That’s not true.” Kona twists out of his mother’s touch, stepping back. He can’t breathe, can’t make his lungs inflate enough to catch a deep breath. “That can’t be true.” Luka and Keira? No. That just didn’t make sense. He glares at his mother, knees wobbling when he sees her tears. She’d told him her suspicions years ago; it had led to the biggest fight he and his twin had ever had. He’d bloodied Luka’s bottom lip and his brother had returned the favor by bruising his eye.

Keira had sworn she didn’t want Luka and then later, his twin told him what a jackass he was for even thinking he’d touch Kona’s girl.

They couldn’t have lied that well. They couldn’t have been together without Kona knowing.

“Luka told me, son,” he mother says, leading him into a chair near the window. She sits next to him, takes his hand and as a distraction, Kona wipes her face dry. “He told me he loved her, but he didn’t want to betray you any more than he already had.”

He refuses to believe her, brushes her hand from his arm when she touches him. His gut tells him that this is wrong, that it just can’t be true. But his mother was a good woman; she was a little overbearing, a little protective of him even now, but she would never lie about something like this. She would never taint Luka’s memory.

When she stands, steps back and stares down at Kona, he glances up at her, waiting for an explanation he’s not sure he wants to hear. “She named the boy Luka, didn’t she?” Kona opens his mouth, a question tipping his tongue, but she waves him off. “I kept tabs. He’s my grandson, after all, but I knew she’d never let us in their lives and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I knew how badly it would hurt.”

His head feels so heavy, like he’d had too much to drink and Kona leans forward, elbows on his knees and his hands covering his face. “Keira would have never, and Luka…” The thought of his twin is like a splinter in his chest; it always had been. Most days Kona could bury his memory, his face, so deep that he often forgets the sound of Luka’s voice. He doesn’t want this to be true. It is hard enough forgetting what Luka’s death had done to their family, what his loss had cost Kona; he couldn’t have this betrayal added to that pain.

It just can’t be true.

“Ask for a test. You’ll see for yourself.” Kona recognizes that tone; it’s the same one his mother has always used to end most arguments. She stands, walks away from him and lingers by the door. He can feel the weight of her revelation and the subtle joy he knows she gets now that she’s told Kona what kind of person Keira had been. “I’m sorry you had to find out like this, son. I know how much you loved them both.”

He thought he did, he thought, one day, he still could. Now, he just didn’t know.





Seething. It’s the only word Keira can think of to define the bubble of rage pounding in her mind. She can’t even look at Kona, but she feels his eyes on her, that steady glare she knows is in his gaze as they sit across a long conference table in his lawyer’s office.

The battle ax at Kona’s side is smiling.

Keira has suspicions. She knows how the old professor works. She was always Kona’s one flaw—the thing that annoyed Keira the most about him when they were together. He’d believe anything that mean bitch told him. A slip of her gaze at that wide, phony smile and Keira knows it was her idea to ask for a DNA test.