Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(160)
He doesn’t knock or ring the bell when he reaches the door and he’s unsurprised that his mother is sitting in her recliner, a crossword in her hand. Ransom is in the foyer, hanging out of sight when Kona waves him back.
Staring at his mother, Kona feels very little. Anger would be easy, and if he was the same person he was sixteen years ago, that anger would be fueling him now as he watches the older woman’s eyes look up. But he doesn’t feel anger, not anymore. The fury he felt this morning when he left his lawyer’s office and caught the headshakes around him in reception, when he watched that grainy video of Ransom, left him the moment he saw Ransom and Keira that morning in front of playing the piano, voices sliding together perfectly. Anger was useless when his son was hurting. He’d known his mother had played another card, she always would and Kona decided to stop this. Now. For them. His family; the only family he wanted.
Now, he felt nothing for his mother. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to hate her and part of him knows that he’d been indifferent toward her for years, when every bit of sage wisdom she’d given him always seemed to benefit her as well. She’d encouraged him toward endorsements. She’d insisted that he hold out for more money in his contract negotiations, even though Kona didn’t really care about the money.
His mother’s eyes stare heavy at him over the rim of her glasses and she exhales, a bored, slow sound that annoys Kona.
There are deep wrinkles around her eyes, across her forehead and Kona realizes that she looks even older somehow, as though she’d aged in the few weeks since he’d last seen her.
Her gaze is calculating, slow as Kona stands in front of her. “You have anything to say because really, Mom, this is a level of shitty that is low even for you.”
Pursed lips and a sag against her chair makes her look defeated, worn, but his mother still lifts her chin, still seems determined not to cower. “You forced my hand, Keiki kane.”
“Did I? Really?” A quick urge to slam his fist into the wall comes to him, but Kona controls it, grabs the back of the sofa between his fingers.
“You know that everything I have ever done was to protect you.” She pulls off her glasses and sets them on the table next to her recliner. “That girl is no good. You have had a great career because she wasn’t around to distract you. A family, Kona?” She waves her hand as though his son, Keira, is some sort of pathetic ideal of a real family and to her, Kona thinks, that’s what they were: pathetic, somehow not suitable, not real. “A life with her? No, son. It would have only set you off the course we have worked so hard for.”
“We haven’t worked hard for shit, Mom.” He breathes through his nose and his grip on the sofa tightens. “I have. It wasn’t you busting your ass in weight rooms or on the field. It wasn’t you sacking quarterbacks or trying not to get your ass handed to you by *s who wanted to see if they could take down the giant. That was me. There was no we.”
His mother sits up straight, slaps her hand against the arm of her chair as though she’s insulted. “I pushed, Kona. I pushed you to succeed. Where would you be without me?”
“In Tennessee with Keira and my son. I might have been poorer but at least I would have been happy. I wouldn’t have been alone.”
“Kona, you’ve always had me.”
“No, Mom, I didn’t. I had Luka. I had tutu kane. I had Keira and then like that,” he snaps his fingers,” I didn’t have any of them. I was left with you, doing whatever I could to make you happy.”
She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and scoff, closing her eyes as though she needs to funnel in her patience, as though Kona is being simple, stupid. “This is pointless. It’s done. The boy will go back with that girl and you’ll go on to play again. It’s best that way.”
He notices a small movement on her top lip, as though she is repressing a scowl and Kona watches her, eyes narrowing. He makes her wait, considers those wrinkles, that hard set of her mouth as though she’s awaiting a counter argument. But Kona only has one. “Ransom?”
His son steps into the room, hands in his pocket and the moment his mother watches Ransom walk, sees his stature, his expression, she gasps.
“Kanapapiki!”
“No, Mom, I’m the son of a bitch.” His mother’s face is unguarded, naked and he knows she’s seeing what Kona had that day at the Market. She sees Kona at sixteen, maybe glimpses of Luka and the thought makes Kona smile. The shock is there, right on her face, in her open mouth, in the rounded way her eyes widen.
“I wanted you to see him, Mom.” Kona stands, comes to his boy’s side. Her shock is evident, and Kona thinks there may be some remorse, a little hint of guilt that he recognizes in her tightly held expression. But he doesn’t have any sympathy for her. She had taken things too far. She had kept too many things hidden from him.
There would come a day, he knew, when he’d forgive her. Maybe he has already, but he would not see her after he left with his son through that door behind them. He had given his mother his life; let her take and take and insist until he was numb that it was what he really wanted, until her need had nearly destroyed everything Kona truly wanted for himself.
“I wanted you to look at my son’s face. It will be the only time you’ll be able to.” She jerks her attention back to Kona. “This is the boy whose life you tried to ruin today. This is the face of your hatred. My boy. My blood.”