Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(28)

Kona’s reaction was swift; a jerk back from her as though she’d leveled a quick fist into his stomach and he grabbed the doorknob. Keira saw the tension instantly return to his face. She guessed the headache had reemerged, that her words had erased any comfort her fingers had given him. But Kona didn’t complain, didn’t do more than open the door, funneling his anger away from her as he stared into the hallway.

“You don’t know me, Keira, and you don’t have a f*cking clue what I’m capable of.”





Dr. Steven Michaels, heart surgeon, was a nice enough man. He was intelligent. He was handsome enough and he was very safe. Keira liked to think of her stepfather as, vanilla, as beige. He was straight lines and defined boxes and expectations that one should never deviate from. Ever. “Planning,” he’d told Keira, “is the hallmark of sanity.”

Steven was also very boring.

When Keira watched her mother with her husband—at the dinner table, out at the movies, at parties with their friends—she often wondered if her mother had somehow acquired a lobotomy between her father’s death and her marriage to Steven. The two men could not be more different. Steven was a starched, cotton sheet that scratched against the skin. Keira’s father had been a vibrant old quilt, with soft threads woven and fitted together by time, by color, by heartache.

Steven—he insisted that Keira call him by his first name—also had little time for his stepdaughter. Keira was fourteen when her mother married the good doctor and he seemed about as interested in a relationship with her as he would be in getting a full-body tattoo. He treated her as decoration. She was a lamp. She was the silent little lamp that should be dusted, should fit in with the rest of the furnishings; perhaps interesting if there was a lull in the conversation, but not curious enough to invite a lengthy dialog.

And so Lamp Keira sat in the waiting room of Dr. Beige’s office because her mother had insisted, for at least the tenth time, she have lunch with her stepfather. Her motives edged toward the obvious and Keira suspected that the mysterious Mark Burke would make an appearance.

She really didn’t want Mark Burke to make an appearance.

“Keira,” she heard the middle-aged nurse say, peeking her head out of the office door.

She stood, the plastic, grey chair in the waiting room creaking as she moved. “Is Dr. Michaels ready?”

“He said he’d be about ten minutes. Here,” she passed Keira a dollar bill, folded in half. “Dr. Michaels said to grab a water out of the vending machine and he’d be ready for you by the time you get back.” The nurse’s mouth twitched, her eyes shot to Keira’s left and the shadow that approached behind her. A little nod of her head and Keira knew who to expect. “Mark will keep you company until your stepfather is ready.”

And just like that, Mark Burke stepped into Keira’s life. It only took a moment for the anger to surface, but unlike the freedom that Keira enjoyed at school—where she could lash out, argue against whatever situation made her angry—in Dr. Beige’s environment, Lamp Keira had to clamp down her temper.

Keira didn’t want to face him. She didn’t want to do anything but walk down the hallway and pretend that Mark Burke didn’t exist. She knew what this was: step one in her mother’s Grand Plan. She and Mark were supposed to meet. They were supposed to date and then decide, sometime later, that they should connect their Five Year Plans.

On her own, Keira would never be enough. Her mother wanted a Stepford Daughter. She wanted her to marry well, study hard and conform into someone Keira never had any hope of being. Pretty smile, pretty life, broken spirit.

Keira managed a smile, something she’d perfected as a kid, and then a quick nod to Mark before she led him out of the office and into the hallway.

“Nice to meet you.” Mark’s voice was pleasant, even, practiced, just like it should be and Keira tried not to laugh at the frozen smile on his face. He had a nice face, handsome with high cheekbones, a long, straight nose and full lips, smooth and very pink and his teeth were perfectly straight. Too straight. Too perfect. The idea came to Keira then, as Mark held onto that practiced smile, that he looked like a clone of every other boy she’d met in her mother’s social circle.

Hair: perfect.

Skin: flawless.

Teeth: expensive.

And just as something rude, something very un-Stepford began to make its way out of her mouth, Keira realized her expression likely mimicked Mark’s; that her hair and skin and everything else of hers was just as polished as his.

She felt like a hypocrite.

The vending machine was to her right and Keira stopped, staring up into Mark’s hazel eyes, hoping she would see something flicker, something alive and real and not practiced, moving there.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said when that too polished smile began to fracture, “but this was not my idea.”

And then the flawless Mark Burke laughed. Keira liked the sound. It was melodic, like the vibration of a wineglass, and kept tension from binding up her shoulders.

“I know that. Trust me, I know how this all works.” Mark ruffled his thick hair, scratching his nails through his bangs and Keira noticed that it was mildly floppy. It fell just an inch or two against his forehead, was dark, wavy. “Our parents,” he said, nodding toward the vending machine, “have ideas about status.” Mark waved off Keira’s offer of the dollar her stepfather had left for her and pushed his own into the machine, handing her a sweating bottle of water. “I think it’s in the water, personally.”