Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(133)
“Not as much as the shit Ransom gives Keira.” He winces when Leann throws a cucumber peel at his head.
Ransom elbows his cousin, silently telling him to keep his mouth shut and Kona laughs, relaxes against his chair. “You give Keira problems?”
“No. Well, not anymore.” The boy sips from his glass. “Last summer there was some shi—” Leann clears her throat and Ransom waves her off. “Last summer I got talked into a race.” Tristan snorts, a disbelieving sound that has Kona laughing.
Ransom takes another drink, finishing off the tea until the melted ice rattles in the bottom of the glass. “Okay, so I don’t like people messing with me.” Head to the side as his eyes move over Kona and Ransom moves his chin at his father. “You can’t tell me people didn’t screw with you when you were my age.” He waves between them. “The size? The height?”
“Yep. I got that. Lu…” he winces, catching Keira gaze’s from behind the kitchen island when he looks up her. Kona feels stupid, awkward with how uneasy he is just uttering his twin’s name. “Luka too. We were always fighting, especially him, because he was tall and fat until he was about ten.” Kona shakes his head, blinking away the memory of his brother knocking out an sixth grader who tried telling the whole playground that the boys were stupid, had to have been held back since they were so much bigger than everyone else. “Anyway, last summer?”
The prompt has Ransom shifting his eyes down, sliding the empty, sweating glass between his hands. “Some big redneck with a Kawasaki Ninja starts talking shit, telling me his 900 can beat my GSXR.”
“Wait,” Kona says, stopping Ransom with a wave of his hand. “You drive a GSXR? How? You’re a kid.”
From the kitchen, Keira clears her throat, eyes narrowed as she glares at Ransom, motioning with her chin for their son to explain himself.
“Well, technically, I’m not allowed.” A quick shrug and the boy leans back in his chair, gaze moving around the table as he ignores Kona’s expression. “Mom didn’t know about it last year. Bobby, she, well, I guess you could say she’s my adoptive grandmother, she let me keep it at her house and Mom…”
“Neither one of them told me,” Keira says, leaning against the kitchen island. “And I gave them both hell for it too.”
Ransom glares at his mother, but the expression is quick, easily leaves his face when Kona clears his throat. “So this guy?”
“Right. Well, I tried walking away, but this * keeps talking smack, him and his boys following me out to the mall parking lot and man, I hate a bully. Especially one that only starts shit when his boys are around.” He looks up at Kona as though he needed his approval; as though Kona’s small nod would make his actions seem reasonable. So Kona gives his boy that nod, urging him with one gesture to continue.
“So I tell this Barney Fife jackass to ease off me and that there was no point arguing over a 900 racing a 950. ‘It’s not the engine, dumbass, it’s the rider,’ I tell him and he and his boys just start laughing at me.” Ransom looks down, voice lowering. “No one laughs at me.” Leann gets up from the table and the boy watches her leave, leaning lower over the table, voice almost at a whisper. “That * also bet me two large that he could beat me and there was no way I was gonna pass that up.”
Kona laughs, understanding the logic, remembering what it was like when his mother was tight with her cash and he and Luka would fight with punks eager to prove themselves. He’d made some nice bank in high school teaching a lesson to guys half his size.
“So we go to the West End, out to Centennial. It’s late, no one is around and we take the two miles twice and this idiot is all over the place. He had nothing on me, but he keeps on running his mouth the whole time we’re racing, calling me a punk, telling me I’m a stupid jock, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘shit man, whip it out and measure.’”
“Ransom!” Keira shouts from the kitchen and the boy flinches at the sound.
“Sorry, Mom. Anyway, so we take the curve, the redneck flips, wrecks that sweet little Ninja and I beat him by at least two hundred yards. I run to check up on him and the dude is crying. Literally crying like a freakin’ kid.”
Head in a shake, Kona can’t help smiling at his boy, a mix of approval and annoyance makes him wonder if he’s a bad father for feeling proud. “You won the bet.”
“Lot of good it did him.” Tristan says.
Ransom again jabs his cousin in the ribs. “Hey. My story, *.”
“Luka Ransom Riley watch your mouth.” Kona doesn’t buy Keira’s frown or the way she stomps into the dining room with a stack of bowls in her hands. “Marcus is eight years old and he repeats everything you and Tristan say.”
“Hey, his foul mouth isn’t our fault. You’ve heard Leann yell, Mom.”
From the kitchen, Leann throws a dishrag at Ransom’s head and he catches it.
“What happened with the bet?” Kona asks him, sliding his beer out of the way when Keira places a bowl in front of him.
She stands at his side, hands on her hips and Kona gets that she hates this story, that she’s not amused by how animated Ransom is retelling it. “There were two State Troopers tailing them the whole time. Our son spent the night in jail.”