Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(130)
There is a manic expression on her face as he watches her. Hair flapping against her shoulders and her fingers pounding the keys, Kona touches his chest, a habit he’s acquired when he feels pressure, when he needs to feel something that centers him. Now the one thing that always made him feel better, calmer, sits only a few feet away from him, her angry voice beautiful and bellowing as she sings about an *, a loser who took what he wanted and walked away.
He closes his eyes, steeling himself, trying to make the race of his heart settle. When the music dies abruptly, Kona opens his eyes, gazes straight ahead and focuses on Keira’s frown as she stares at him.
She doesn’t take her fingers from the keys. She doesn’t leave the piano at all. But the severe frown remains, stays fixed before Keira turns away from him and her fingers move slower, calmer, the song haunting and sad.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks, coming through the open doorway.
Her stubbornness has not diminished in all this time and Kona is not surprised that she ignores him; that the poison he felt from her the day before is still toxic.
Keira wears a simple pair of jeans and a thin sleeveless black tank that hugs her small waist and pushes up her beautiful breasts. Kona can’t help but stare at the perfect curve in her back, at the subtle way her body dips and bends and he has to remind himself he isn’t here to gawk at her or hope for things he can never have again.
The melody changes, shifts to something he recognizes and a quick ache squeezes in his chest as Keira plays Mary J’s “Not Gonna Cry.”
“Keira, please. I’m trying to apologize.”
Hands flat against the keys, she whips her gaze to him, that ever-present glare only hardening. “Apologize for what, Kona? Letting your mother call me a whore?” Her attention returns to the piano and her fingers hit the keys in soft taps. “Or did you want to apologize for not believing me?” Striking the ivory harder now, Keira’s arm shakes and Kona steps next to the piano. “Maybe you want to apologize for allowing your mother to lie about your brother and me. Maybe, I dunno, maybe you wanna apologize for acting like a sackless wonder while she and that Twinkie of a lawyer spoke for you.” Another glare at him and her fingers still. “That was very manly, Hale.”
He takes the venom without arguing. She’s right. Every word is a punishment, something Kona knows he deserves. But he still has to make his apologies. Keira straightens up, takes her hands from the keys when he kneels next to the seat.
“Yes. For all that. She’s manipulative and she didn’t care about insulting my brother’s memory.” He has to stop himself from touching her when some of the stiffness of her frown softens. “Yes, I was a punk. I let her convince me that you’d lied. It’s not an excuse, but I never realized how long she’d planned this. I didn’t speak up. I didn’t try to stop her. I’m an * who doesn’t deserve to meet my son. I don’t deserve a lot of things, Keira.” Kona closes his eyes, tries to ignore the pout on her lips and had badly his wants to kiss them. “But I’m here, on my knees asking you to forgive me. I’m here because I want to know my son. Will you let me? Please, Keira?”
She inhales, shoulders moving up, and then Keira returns her fingers to the keys. “No.”
And Kona is disregarded, ignored again when Keira hides behind those notes. On the drive over, he promised himself he wouldn’t get angry; that he’d take whatever she gave him and accept it. He’d let her take the lead in this. She’d been the one raising the boy on her own. She’d been responsible for him when she was barely old enough to know what that meant.
But Keira Riley did something to Kona. Always. Only she could make his stomach clench, bubble with frustration, with quick, easy anger and her dismissal has that burn stirring in gut. “You are being stubborn as hell.”
Kona shoots up on his feet, stepping back when Keira kicks the bench away, when she slams the cover over the keys. “Yes I am, you *.” She takes a step and Kona feels that bubble of anger shift, lower. He doesn’t want to get worked up by this, but the deep shade of red on her cheeks and how her eyes are lit with fierce rage, has Kona’s dick twitching, makes his fingers buzz. He watches her move toward him, wondering if she’ll lash out, annoyed with himself when he hopes she does.
“I will not ever let you treat my son like that. I will not put him in a situation where you or your mother can hurt him.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You don’t have a say in it.” Another step and Kona stops retreating, curious what she’ll try. “He is my son and you cannot meet him. I don’t want you near him and if that bitch ever thinks about contacting him…”
“She won’t. I promise, you, she won’t.”
“You think your word means anything to me? You think your promises are worth anything at all?”
The twitching stops, completely reverses. He had grown hard the louder her voice grew, realizing that he missed her passion, the quick anger that never failed to turn him on as a kid. It was fire; something Kona hadn’t experienced with a woman since Keira busted the jail’s telephone receiver. But her mentioning his broken promises takes away that excitement, replaces it with a cocktail of guilt and frustration.
“This isn’t about you and me, Keira. Fuck! You don’t get that? I’m not here to win you back.” Kona’s hands fly to his hair, rub the back of his head and he turns away from her, looks out at the lake to keep his anger in check.