Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(129)

Kona doesn’t like swallowing his pride. He’d do it, has done it a dozen or so times in his life, but apologies still taste bitter, dry on his tongue.

This time, though, as he drives up the street he hasn’t been on in decades, Kona will be eating crow for both himself and his manipulative mother.

He pulls the rental car across the street from the lake house staring at the large porch, the wide gables. It is simple on this side of the property; a pretty mammoth, well cared for despite the age. And on the other side, Kona recalls the fenced yard that leads down to a dock, out onto the smooth waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

He closes his eyes, seeing the rest of the property, knowing what is on the other side of that fence: the wrought iron trellis that leads to the second floor balcony. How many times had he climbed it? How many nights and early mornings had he shimmied up and down it, fingers avoiding the sharp pricks from the roses woven between the spaces to get into Keira’s room? A dozen? A hundred? He didn’t know.

Sometimes he’d taken the trellis slowly, worried that he’d fall, that it would give under his massive weight. Sometimes he didn’t care enough to worry; he’d been too focused on what waited for him inside. That body, that laugh, those fingers, that mouth. He would have crawled through glass to get to her. Once, he did.

Now Kona looks at the place, the blooming spring flowers, the full crepe myrtles and wonders about the woman inside. Her anger the day before had been like a poison, heady and thick. Kona doesn’t blame her.

His mother’s lies, the deception all made Kona feel stupid, simple. He wasn’t a dumb man. He was educated, he was moderately mature. So why had he not seen the way his mother deceived him? How could he have not believed in Kiera? They’d made headway, crossed the bridge from the past, began to forgive each other and in one afternoon, he let his mother strip that all away.

A visit to the punk kid working in the lab and one small threat in his frown and Kona had uncovered the truth.

“That professor lady, Mr. Hale, she paid me five thousand bucks! I couldn’t turn that down.”

Five thousand dollars destroyed Kona’s chance at knowing his son. And the boy was his. The lab kid confirmed it. Keira hadn’t lied. Kona had a son, not Luka.

Five thousand dollars and his mother took away another connection to blood, to family.

He’d let her threaten whatever he hoped to have with his son.

“Why did you do this?” he’d asked her, waving the aged, yellow check in his hand. The one she’d hastily written to Keira all those years ago. “Why would you lie?”

“I was protecting you. I will always protect you, Kona.” His mother’s tears had been real. The trembling in her limbs, the pale, washed out color of her skin. She’d been scared, petrified that Kona’s anger would have him walking away from her without ever looking back.

He couldn’t forgive her. He’d left her crying on her sofa, looking old, looking weak with no promises that he’d ever see her again.

From his car, Kona sees his son coming out of the front door. Tall, strong, wide shoulders, thick legs. He is beautiful; the most remarkable thing Kona has ever let his eyes land on. His son waves to the old woman trimming weeds from her flower bed the next yard over and then the boy runs on the sidewalk, iPod in his ears, head down, concentrating as he slips past Kona’s car.

He waits. Watches in the rearview mirror until his son disappears around the corner and Kona pops his neck, rubs his face before he leaves the rental.

A weird flash of déjà vu hits him as him heads up the front walk, palms sweating, heart jackhammering in his chest and when his ring on the doorbell goes unanswered and Kona hears the sound of a piano behind the front glass, he twists his head, glances inside to see Keira in front of the large Steinway.

Behind her, the patio doors are open, and the breeze from the lake blows her hair around her face. Kona stops breathing, feeling the rapid beat of his heart increasing.

My God, is she beautiful.

The grass needs mowing, is thick and Kona’s heavy feet crunch the blades as he walks around the house, to the back of the house. The fence has the same busted latch, the one he’d broken sixteen years ago, and so it is easy for Kona to slip right through the wood fence, just like he’d done at twenty, eager to get to Keira. He takes the same path up the walkway, noticing the gardenia bush next to the bathroom window is overgrown, small buds clustered between those shiny green leaves.

As he walks around the large AC unit, the tune of one of Keira’s songs, “Better Men,” flies off the patio tiles and Kona frowns. He hates that song. Hates it more now that he knows Keira wrote it with him in mind. Then her voice rings out above the notes and Kona feels the muscles around his mouth tighten.



You’re not special

You’re not a surprise

You laid me down with grins

Burned me with your lies

But don’t feel accomplished

Don’t think you’ve done anything new

‘Cause baby I’ve seen it all before

I’ve been burned by better men than you



It became an anthem for scorned women everywhere ten years ago and the second Kona discovered Keira had written it, he found the references a bit too familiar, the anger too sharp. His Wildcat had been angry for years and she capitalized on that anger.