Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(152)

“What?” It seems impossible to Keira. Twelve years? It didn’t make sense. How could he have found her and not known about Ransom? “You couldn’t… what?”

“I’d looked for years.” He moves his hands from his face, but Kona still rubs the back of his neck, glancing at Keira as though his confession pains him. “I took a year off after… everything and when I got back to CPU, I was different. I was miserable. Nothing was good for me. And I just existed.” Kona’s shoulders sag, his eyes finally staring right at Keira’s face. “I tried for two years to convince your mother and Leann just to tell me where you were. To give me a hint. They weren’t having any of it. You’d gone off the grid and no one knew where you were. If they did, they weren’t telling me.” Keira moves toward him, but stops short when he shakes his head. “I need to get this out. Please.”

“Okay.” She waits for him to continue and hates that his mouth is drawn down, muscles around his eyes tensed.

When Keira sits on the bed, Kona pulls his fingers together staring at them, unwilling, maybe unable, to look at Keira when he speaks. “So I just lived, played ball, went to class, I lived like a monk, Keira. I didn’t drink or sleep with anyone, I didn’t do anything but work my ass off because I was so lonely, so miserable without you, without Luka.”

She’d never once considered what life had been like for Kona without them. She believed he hated her. She believed he blamed her for Luka’s death. But she never believed that he was alone. He was Kona Hale and despite the scandal of his arrest and the loss of his brother, Keira always thought that he’d pick himself up, that he’d go back to his life the way it was before her.

But as Kona keeps his gaze on his clasped fingers, she understands that her assumptions had been wrong. He felt the loss she did, but there was no baby there to divert his pain.

“A year after I signed my first contract, I had enough money, I hired a P.I. The guy was good. But not good enough. It took him four years and one day he finally hands me this thick file. But I just… I couldn’t touch it.” He manages to look at her, shame, guilt working in his eyes. “I was scared what I’d find. It sat on my kitchen table for a week and then, September 11th happened and I couldn’t get past the fear that you’d been there, on one of those planes, in one of those buildings. I kept seeing you dead over and over, Keira.

“The P.I. told me you were in Nashville and I drove there from Florida. All night. I got to your place and no one was there. I was exhausted and frustrated and so I stopped at a hotel, needing a rest.” Kona’s chest expands, his inhale deep, his exhale weighted and then he pushes off of the dresser, sits next to Keira on the bed. “I was checking out, ready to go back, mad, frustrated and then…” Without looking at her, Kona takes her hand, moves it to his thigh to rub his finger on her palm. His voice is low, as though the memory is too much, like he needs the feel of her skin to strengthen him. “I walk past a ballroom and there you were, up on a stage, looking like an angel, singing, smiling. All I could do was watch you.” A slow lift of his chin and Kona watches her, eyes on her forehead, her mouth, slight, easy smile on his face. “You were so beautiful, so talented, lit from the inside, Keira and I was so proud of you.”

Those last six words were so heartfelt that Keira feels the sweet burn of tears in her eyes. Had she waited to hear that from him? Had she always needed someone to say those words to her and mean it? She realizes now that she did; she wanted Kona to understand, to respect her for the efforts she made, for the strength it took to walk away from everything she knew.

“And then, you leave the stage, land right in the arms of some guy I couldn’t see and you looked so happy, baby. You looked like you were finally smiling and it was real and you…” Kona’s fingers still on her palm, lay flat and the small grin against his cheek isn’t amused, more critical than happy. “I thought you were with that guy. I thought you’d forgotten me and so I just turned around and left. I got back home and burned the file.”

She remembers the night; Mark had tried convincing her for months, years to step out of the protection of their home, to show the world her talent. But the fear had always been there—the same fear that crippled her father. Keira had always feared she’d need to numb herself like he did just to perform. She’d made excuses to everyone, Luann, Mark, herself, and then that horrible day happened when the Towers fell, and her life, everyone’s lives, changed forever.

“That was a songwriter’s showcase,” she tells Kona, staring down at their hands. “I remember because Mark told me I had to do it. All those people died on those flights and I was too scared to do what I loved. It gave me the motivation to get over my stage fright. That… that was Mark you saw me with me, Kona.”

A small head shake as though he knew and then Kona came to his knees in front of her, arms on top of her legs as he holds her hips. “If had any idea… you being there… if I’d know about Ransom… if you’d told me, I would have walked away from everything. I wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought because I loved you.”

“And you would have blamed me.” Despite everything; what they were, what they’d created together, Keira knew he would have blamed her. It was inevitable. “I would have been the girl that destroyed the life you could have had.”