Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(3)

She blinks away that memory and pulls out an empty bowl when the volume on the television increases. Kona’s voice is louder now, clearer, and Keira moves to the pantry, fetches a small bag of popcorn and slams it into the microwave. The cadence of his voice has grown deeper, heavier with a rasp and there are no vestiges of his Uptown roots in the inflection. He belongs to the world now, not the city, not their university, certainly not to her. Keira’s heart skips double time, throbbing with each word she manages to hear from Kona’s interview.

Sixteen years and she still can’t manage to forget him.

Sixteen years and the heavy weight of his words to her still render her dumb.

“Walk away, Keira. Walk away from me and don’t look back.”

She did. He could hardly blame her for listening.

“Mom, it’s starting,” Ransom calls into the kitchen.

She takes a breath, then another and opens the microwave when it sounds. “Just a second, son. I’ll be just a second.”





The woman had looked older than her sixty-one years when she died. The picture accompanying the obituary tells him that much.

Kona pulls the newspaper closer to his face examining the hollow cheeks, the thin nose. He hadn’t thought of her in years. Not the dead woman. She’d always been an uptight, cruel bitch and he felt nothing save surprise at her passing. He had been convinced she was simply too mean to die.

Cora Michaels (nee Marquette) died peacefully in her home April 19th after a lengthy illness.

Peaceful was something Kona believed she didn’t deserve. Painful, kicking and screaming, he thought, befit her better. He skimmed the obituary until he found the name he was looking for.

She is survived by her daughter Keira Riley, and her niece Leann Marquette-Bankston.

Keira Riley.

Not Keira Riley hyphenated with another name. No husband? He knew not to get his hopes up. Keira is a bridge he burned long ago. His indifference had been the kindling, his words the bright spark that set flame to them both.

But he couldn’t stop himself from lingering on the memory of her smile. Absently, Kona rubs his thumb along the smooth scar on his cheek. A beer bottle in the alleyway of a bar they were too young to frequent had left its mark and still reminds him of her every day.

Of them.

Keira’s temper had been quick and sharp. His face was marked because he fell in love with a girl who didn’t like him touching a flirty waitress. God, how she’d raged that night. He’d loved every second of it.

“Wildcat,” he says to himself, a small chuckle moves out of his mouth at the memory. She swore she hated the nickname, but he caught her blush each time he said it.

Kona leaves the newspaper behind on the table, takes in the bustle below him in the city. Street cars gliding by, packed with tourists. Horns blaring, fingers lifted in the city’s greatest tribute to *s, cops parked in the medians, itching to pull anyone over and in the distance, the river—the great old girl that breathed the pulse of half the country’s struggle right into the Gulf. This city, his hometown, reminded him of years past, of her. His eyes glance back down at the paper and Kona retrieves Keira’s face, that smile again, the memory of her skin.

Was she here now? Had she finally returned to say goodbye to the mother she hated? Was it even possible that fate would bring them both back home? Now?

Had she forgiven him?

I will haunt you, Kona. When you think of me, see my face, hear my name, you’ll only remember that I loved you. You’ll remember that my love for you was never thin. You’ll remember this moment because it will be the biggest regret of your life.

She’d cursed him.

He can still see the pain in her eyes, the hollow shock that had transformed her features that day. He’d told her to leave. He’d told her he never loved her. All the grief he’d felt at that moment, Kona laid at Keira’s feet. Blame was a dagger he sliced into her heart, his own sorrow, his own pain, directed at the only girl he’d ever loved. He’d told her to walk away, he told her so many lies that went against everything he felt. But she had a future. At the time, he thought his was over. She deserved better than him, better than the uncertain fate he’d fallen into at twenty.

Keira’s curse stayed with him. There had been women; sometimes he cannot remember even one of their faces, but with her, the image is clear. Her soft, pale skin. Eyes like the sky, like the ocean trapped in a hurricane. That long, thick chestnut hair. There was no erasing her from his memory.

But now? No. It was too late. That bridge was ash by now, not even the splinters of its remains could be felt. She’d been gone from him for too long. But some nights, when the games are too rough, when his body aches from damage, from age, from too many years of exertion; he remembers how she would hold him, how every rake of her fingernails on his scalp brought him calm, how good it felt to protect her, love her completely. How she’d hum, her low, beautiful voice strong, comforting, as he lay on her chest finding the only real relief he’d ever felt, in the arms of the girl he loved.

No woman could erase her completely and nothing would ever compare to the sight and feel of his Wildcat.

The phone in Kona’s pocket chirps twice. The messages are endless, all saying much the same “meeting with the Steamers coaching staff at noon tomorrow,” or “interview with ESPN at five.” His manager is relentless. His fans are enthusiastic. His mother refuses to be rebuffed about him spending the morning with her.