Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(153)
“No. You would have been the girl that saved me.” Kona sits up on his knees, coming closer, bringing one hand to her back, the other on her neck. “You were the girl that saved me. I haven’t been a saint. In fact, I tried to drive you from my head, tried to erase you completely, but Keira, you’re a part of me. You and Ransom, you’re the best part of me.”
“Kona, we can’t—”
“You’re scared, I know,” he interrupts her, palm back on her cheek, voice strong, fierce. “I don’t care about what could happen, baby. I don’t care about all the shit we did to each other in the past. I only know that when you’re around, when I’m near you, in you, everything else falls away. You make it stop. You always have.” He moves closer, leaning his forehead against hers. “You still do. And it will never be enough unless you’re mine. I’ve always been yours, Wildcat. I’ve always belonged to you completely.” He comes back to her side, pulling her onto his lap. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away. I’m sorry you were alone.” Kona’s voice cracks and his fingers against her hip tightens. “I’m sorry my son never knew me. I’m so f*cking sorry I lied to you. Keira, I’m sorry.”
She had been waiting for those words. They’d become the tiny bud of expectation that fed her hungry soul. For so long, she had been wanting to hear “I’m sorry” and “forgive me” even as she sat in the back of a bus bound for Nashville, eighteen and frightened, lost to the comfort that she’d let vanish from her heart.
Now he was saying it like he meant it. Those precious words left Kona’s mouth like a promise, like the desperate appeal for absolution of a dying man.
Two simple words that she had chased, had kept brimming, stoking in her heart and until this moment with the giant holding her; her Samson humbling himself, waiting until she’d grant his pardon, Keira realizes that forgiveness had come to her a long time ago.
It came when she felt Ransom swimming in her womb, telling her with sharp jabs and quick thumps that he would fill the empty spaces left by Kona’s betrayal. He was the promise of something she thought had died.
It came to her when the nurse put a swollen, bright-eyed boy in her arms and she thought her chest would splinter from the thick love bursting in her heart.
Forgiveness came on the wings of time, when she forgot how deeply Kona wounded her, when she veiled the blinding pain his words had caused.
She forgave him and he’d never known it. She forgave him and in her mind, somewhere among the lost memories of the girl who loved him, she forgot that Kona’s betrayal had been a gift all along.
Keira has to know what today meant, what tomorrow would bring for them and so she lifts his head, hoping that in her eyes he sees the plea, understands that she needs a promise he won’t break. “Kona… do you… do you still love me?”
There is no tension in his face, no self-effacing frown that tells her his guilt has overwhelmed him. Kona looks, in fact, like a man who has been given a reprieve from his sin; like he’s been given another chance at freedom. “Wildcat…” he takes a breath, head shaking. “I never stopped.”
He leaves her in his bed, body exhausted, worn from a morning of touching, pleasing and then Kona kisses Keira on the temple, pulls her hair off her face.
“I’ll be back in two hours. Don’t you move from this spot.”
“Couldn’t if I wanted to.” She stretches, snuggles against those warm blankets that smell of them and lets Kona kiss her one more time. “Hurry home.”
“I like that. You saying home.”
She doesn’t know what her dreams were, can’t remember the details, but Kona’s arms were around her, his lips on her neck, down her back and Keira smiles in that half-awake, half-asleep bliss. Then, her cell on the bedside table screams her out of that languid dream and Keira sits up, naked, the sheets sliding down her body.
Ransom’s picture comes across her screen, him flipping the bird while blowing the camera a kiss and Keira accepts the call, yawns as she answers it. “Son, it’s only ten a.m. Why are you…?”
“Why’d he do it, Mom?”
His tone is elevated, shaking and Keira’s heart instantly starts thundering in her chest. He is upset, crying and the rattle in his voice tells her he is having an episode. “Sweetie, what is it? What happened?” She immediately leaves the bed, scrambling around the room to find her clothes with her cell sandwiched between her shoulder and ear. “I’ll come get you right now. I want you to be calm.”
“Calm? You want me calm? The hell with calm, Keira.”
He only called her by her first name when his rage had crested, when he was beyond the point of controlling it. “Ransom…”
“I am so f*cking done with him.” She knows he is aiming for rage, anger, but the curse word comes out in a heavier shake, in a quiver that makes Keira’s stomach churn. “I thought he gave a shit. I thought Kona really…”
“Sweetie, I want you to breathe and tell me what’s going on. I’m in the dark here.”
“Turn on the television.” And then, the line goes dead.
Keira is torn, thoughts scattered by what she should do. She thinks of calling him back, but she knows her son, knows he’ll only ignore her call. She thinks of calling Kona, then Leann to make sure Ransom is okay, but sense returns to her and she pulls on her clothes, thumbing through her phone to see if Ransom had left any messages, if Leann had. When she finds none, Keira sits on the edge of the bed, clicking on the TV and she pushes her feet into her shoes.