Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(155)
“Play.” She turns his shoulders, moves his wrist onto the keys.
“It won’t help.” Ransom’s jaw works, clenches as she holds his large hands steady on the piano. “No, Mom, I can’t. It won’t work. I can’t get it to work this time.”
“Then I’ll help you. Come on.” He hesitates, just for a moment and with one shuddering exhale, begins to play. The notes are sporadic, uneven as his fingers slip across the keys and Keira urges him, fills in the missing notes with her right hand, her left steady, still on his back. “That’s it. Good. Take your breaths. Count for me.” And he does; clipped, uneasy numbers, gritted through his teeth, but they come.
“One… tw… two…”
Keira wants to slap something, beat in Kona’s face, but she pushes the inclination away, focuses on the way Ransom’s eyes stare down at the keys, how his fingers aren’t as shaking as much. “Can you… will you sing with me, sweetie?”
Eyes squeezed tight, Ransom shakes his head, bending his back and she knows he is trying to lose himself in the music. She’s seen it too often from him. He wants to drift from his anger, become lost in the feel of the ivory on his fingertips and the vibration of the pedals at his feet.
He is wandering, out of touch with the calm he needs; broken by the ghosts of the past and Keira’s chest pulls tight, hating that her son has felt the sting that has lived in her for sixteen years. She never wanted this for him. She didn’t want her mistakes, her sin, to touch him. But it has and its bite is vicious and crippling.
The tune is familiar to her; something new, something that Ransom learned after hearing it one time on the radio. He plays by ear and she thinks he knows this song, that it lives inside him. It’s loss and pain and the fever that love brings; the numbing pull that loving someone can do. She doesn’t know all the words, but she’ll try. For her boy, she’d try anything to heal him.
Ransom doesn’t frown or flinch when she misses some of the words, filling them in with her own. He continues to play, notes clearer, surer and when she reaches the second verse, he picks up the song, voice shaking, a quiver trembling the lyrics, but the words come to him, strengthen him as he continues to sing.
The bridge, she knows because the words always manage to hit close to all the heartache Keira brought upon herself.
Funny you’re the broken one,
but I’m the only one who needed saving.
Ransom’s hair is wavy, tousled by his fingers, something he does when he’s annoyed, frustrated; another gesture he’s inherited from Kona and she pushes back a thick wave that has fallen onto his forehead. The touch has him pausing, forehead creased as he looks at her and then, he takes his hands off the keys and jerks up as he stares over Keira’s shoulder.
He is hers. Ransom has her talent for music. He has her easy nature, her need to make others comfortable. But that rage, that tiny fuse of calm comes from both Kona and Keira and it is that lit fuse that Keira sees now. Ransom kicks the bench back, nearly toppling her to the floor and her son darts toward his father standing in the patio doorway.
“Son… wait…” Kona tries, hands up.
“Don’t you call me that, *. I’m not your son.” Kona lets Ransom take him by the collar, lets himself be shoved against the wall before Keira can stop the boy. “No decent father would do that to his kid.”
“Ransom, don’t.” Keira’s hands on her son’s shoulders do nothing. “Please, he’s not worth it.”
Kona takes her words like medicine. He needs it; they cut deep, but he’d allowed something unforgivable. He wants more of Keira’s insults. He wants all of Ransom’s rage.
“Why would you do that?” His son shakes him again and Kona’s head goes back, hits the wall behind him. “What gives you the right?”
He can’t find words; there aren’t any. Kona can only stand there, staring down at his son, the boy who looks so like him, who Luka lives in all those small gestures and familiar expressions. The rage is thick, tangible and all Kona can think to do is reach out to touch it.
But Ransom jerks away from his reaching hand, pushes Kona’s chest again and he knows what his boy wants. It’s what he would want, what he always wanted when someone hurt him.
When the swing comes, Kona closes his eyes, relaxes the muscles in his face to feel the full impact of his son’s fist.
“Say something, motherf*cker!” Another swing, another stinging smart of Ransom’s knuckles against his jaw, and Kona opens his eyes, stares hard, anticipating. But his boy stops; his glare lingering, searching, then eyes lowering to follow the small bead of blood in the corner of Kona’s mouth.
Ransom steps back, lets his mother tug him away and Kona’s own anger brims forward, wanting more, needing more of that rage dealt against his skin.
“Come on, son.” Again he reaches for Ransom, but only manages to touch his sleeve. “That all you got? Come on!”
Keira follows Ransom as he steps away, one finger pointing at Kona, a warning he ignores.
“You don’t know me and you ruined my life.” Ransom’s kick against the piano bench cracks the wood, splinters it until the hinges break and scatter worn sheet music across the floor.
Kona sees so much of himself, so much of Luka in his son’s manic anger; his fists upturning all of Cora Michael’s fine, useless figurines on the bookshelf, his shouts as he breaks the pictures of a woman he had never known. Keira is crying, hand over her mouth, looking helpless and scared, and when she steps forward to stop their son’s outrage and aggression, Kona takes her shoulders and keeps her still against his chest while she tries jerking away from him. She doesn’t want his touch, he knows that, but Keira is overwhelmed, clearly clueless on how to stop this rampage. “No. He needs this,” Kona tells her. “He needs to get this out.” He hates how she leans away from him, how she jabs at his ribs, but he steadies her, holding her while Ransom’s fury is exhausted.