Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(150)
“No I’m not.” Even to her own ears, those words come out too quickly.
Kona walks back, leans against the dresser and she moves around the room, finally spotting her shoe underneath the bed. She feels cold, chilled by the loss of his hand on her, by the way he folds his arms watching her. “If this isn’t you running then why were you trying to sneak out before I got up?”
“I was going to leave you a note.”
“A note?” Kona pushes off the dresser, coming too close to her, his large body intimidating, his mouth hard. “That’s what I get from you? After last night? I get a note?”
He always has to make everything difficult. He can’t just let her leave, could he? Won’t let her walk away and she knows that. Since the night of Ransom’s party. She knew if she kissed him he would keep coming for her. He would come from her until she broke him. Until he broke her again. Like the last time.
Patience gone, Keira throws her shoe on the floor. “What the hell did you expect? You thought we’d fall back into it again? You thought I’d sleep with you and then what, exactly? We’d all be one big happy family?”
He doesn’t like her anger; she can tell. Those massive hand are at his side, clenching into fists. “I didn’t think anything beyond your being wrapped around me, but why does this feel like you’re running out like I’m some f*cking douchebag you slept with when you were drunk?” Keira won’t listen to this. He is being irrational, stubborn. She tries leaving, moving around him to reach the door, but he is faster, wider and blocks her path easily. “Because I’m not. Whatever else you think, I’m not just some f*ck and you damn well know it.”
“I never said you were.” People don’t change, things do. Kona is proof of that and the idea is unsettling. It’s infuriating. “God, you still do that shit.”
“What do I do?”
“You get these stupid self-deprecating ideas in your head and then run with them. You think you know me so damn well, think you know what’s going on in my head. You always did that and it drove me crazy.”
Hands over his face and a low, frustrated noise rumbling in his chest, Kona frowns at her. “What else am I supposed to think? You were sneaking out, trying to avoid this conversation.”
“I was not.” She pulls away from him when he reaches for her, slips on her shoe, but he still won’t budge from in front of the door. “Kona, let me go. Please. I’ve got things to get through today and I don’t have time to smooth your ego because you didn’t get the chance to kick me out.”
A small twist of his head and Kona’s mouth drops open, but he recovers, blinking as though he hadn’t heard that insult for what it was. Keira knows she’s grasping at straws, searching for something that will push him away or at least move him from the door. Still, Kona’s anger is quick, face reddening as he glares down at her. “Shit, why don’t you tell me what kind of person you think I am, Keira? You think I f*ck anything that throws it at me and then toss them out?” Her dismissive shrug only stokes his anger further. “If you thought so little of me then why the hell were you with me last night?”
“I don’t know.” She can’t watch him, scrubs her hands over her face to block out his anger, his shock. “I shouldn’t have been. It was a lapse in judgment brought on by too much time on Memory Lane.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You wanted me just as much as I wanted you and now you’re running because you don’t want to admit the simple truth.”
“And what do you imagine that simple truth is?”
Kona is in front of her in two small steps, hands back on her shoulders, despite her struggling away from him. “You and me. It’s still there. It’s there even more than when we were kids. It hasn’t changed, it hasn’t left us and I doubt it ever will.”
“God, Kona, please stop this.” Keira wishes that wasn’t true. She wishes that whatever she felt for him had died the day she boarded that bus for Nashville. But he’s right. She’s knows how right he is. Still, she can’t have him. She won’t. Sometimes you sacrifice so much, give so much to others that you forget to save something for yourself. Keira didn’t know how to have what she wanted anymore. She’d forgotten how to be greedy for the happiness she once had. “You and me, we aren’t going to happen. We will never happen again.”
In the months she’d been around him, Keira had noticed the changes. Kona was calmer, easy going. He had relaxed and time and distance seem to have taught him control, discipline. He no longer let his anger control him. He wasn’t jealous or possessive. He rarely screamed at her, not since the party. Not since he’d met Ransom. But now the man in front of her reverts to the hot head linebacker he’d once been.
A collectible football in a glass case on the dresser is the first victim of Kona’s rage. Then, the bench at the foot of the bed gets kicked, shot across the room before Kona faces her; his hands shaking, his control slipping as he battles against wanting to touch her, reaching for her, and stepping away, out of her space. Finally, swallowing, fingers scrubbing his face, running through his tousled hair, Kona’s shoulders lower, defeated, worn. “Why are you doing this?”
She wants him to understand. They had come too close to the past last night. The gripping, the tugging, the hard passion, it had all been her, what she wanted, but Keira’s loosened control scares her. She can’t be that girl again. She will never be that girl again.