Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(132)

He excuses himself, walking down the hall to the bathroom and that smell follows him. He slips in and out quickly and hits the light, starts to make back for the dining room where his son is talking to his cousin Tristan and Leann while Keira takes a phone call. But then the light from the back of the house glints against the framed photos on the wall and Kona stands in front of a row of pictures, all of Keira, her as a child, graduating high school, her on the docks outside with her Gibson on her lap.

Fleetingly, he wonders if she still has it, but the thought has him feeling guilty, remembering how she’d almost lost her father’s prized Hummingbird; how it had been his fault.

Kona rubs a thumb over the scar on his cheek and is about to leave the hallway and the shameful memories those pictures had pulled from his mind, but he hears Keira’s voice, steps silently toward it as she talks on the phone in the office.

A slip of light falls onto the hardwood at his feet through the crack in the door and Kona looks down at the grain and edges of that oak wood. He knows he has no business listening. Nothing she says has anything to do with him. He shouldn’t care that her voice is affectionate, pitched high.

“Oh, I know, sweetie, don’t worry about that.” Southern folks call everyone sweetie. Or honey. Or sugar. It is custom. It is habit, but Keira saying that word, saying it with that soft tone, sets Kona’s teeth on edge. He doesn’t know the woman she is now, but as a girl she’d reserved her pet names for him. He leans his head against the wall, listening, praying that the tone will harden, that she’ll stop using those endearments.

“No,” she says, clearing her throat. “I don’t know. He’s here now and it’s okay. Well, it got okay after we screamed at each other.”

Walk away. He isn’t eager to hear Keira insulting him, talking about him like he is an *. But you are an *, he tells himself. Hello, DNA test! Still, the small chuckle Keira releases keeps him rooted to that shadowed space next to the door. He wants to hear a name. He wants to know what she’d say to the guy who brings out Keira’s pacifying, sweet tone.

“The end of summer, at least. I think Ransom is going to try to get into a camp, maybe one at Tulane and I’ve got to settle all the shit with Steven’s estate.”

Tulane? Hell no. No son of his would be practicing at freaking Tulane.

“Are you going to be okay for that long? I hated leaving you.”

Kona feels a cramp in his stomach, one that twists up his esophagus and he tells himself to push down that sensation. It shouldn’t matter to him that Keira probably had someone back in Nashville. She is a beautiful woman. She is strong and confident. She is talented and smart, he’d never kidded himself into believing she’d be without a man. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t jealous. That doesn’t mean he’d stop listening.

“Bobby, no. I can come home if you need me. I’m serious. Of course… well, no, but…” Keira’s words rush out, and Kona can hear the frustration, the worry in her voice. “You know I will. Okay. Yes. Yes, of course. I love you, sweetie.”

Four small words that feel like a gut punch.

Three words that Kona hasn’t uttered to anyone in sixteen years.

Keira says them easily. She says them like she means them and Kona can’t listen anymore.

“You know I will. Sure. Yes. Yes ma’am.”

Bobby, he thinks. The boss Keira said helped her out. Kona tries to pull the instant, stupid-looking relieved smile from his face as he walks into the dining room, waving off a slice of cornbread Ransom has lifted from the oven as he sits at the table.

“So Kona, you back for good?” Leann asks and Kona looks at her, needing a distraction so he won’t stare after Keira when she returns to the kitchen.

He nods to Ransom, a small thanks when the boy sets a bottle of Abita in front of him. “I don’t know yet, Leann. My agent is trying to work something out, but the Steamers’ defensive line is pretty strong.”

“One of the best in the league,” Ransom offers, taking a sip of his sweet tea.

Another nod and a swig from his bottle and Kona shrugs. “We’ll see how spring training goes. I’m set to start with them in July, but I’ve been putting out feelers on some other things.” Leann grins at him and Kona gets the feeling her question had been polite, that she’s not all that interested in who Kona signs with.

Leann sits at the table peelings cucumbers, slapping her son’s hand from the bowl of clean vegetables and fussing at her younger son when he runs through the dining room with wet feet. “Outside, you little monster.”

Kona’s gaze follows the boy and he smiles at his white blonde hair, at the low growl of a laugh he makes when his mother continues fussing. “Two boys?” Kona says to her moving his chin between the little guy running out onto the patio and the one sitting next to Ransom as both boys check their phones.

“Yes. Two was plenty.”

“You don’t dance anymore?” He was curious, trying to catch up, trying like hell not to watch Keira as she moves around the kitchen.

“I do. I own a studio in Kenner.”

“That’s good. Owning a business will keep you out of trouble.”

“Then maybe my boys should think about it.”

Kona’s grin grows as he nods at Leann’s boy across the table from him. “You give your mom hell?”