Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(48)
“I told you I was out.”
The smile on Ricky’s face wasn’t good-natured, it wasn’t friendly and Kona’s gaze lowered to the sunflower seed cracking between his teeth. “Kona, you can’t just walk away.” The crowd started to clap, but Kona kept his eyes on Ricky, on that not-a-smile grin and the slip of his black eyes behind Kona. “No one just walks away.” Ricky stood, moved his chin toward the trail and Kona followed him, his gut twisted hard when he saw Keira just feet behind the second place runner. Her face was flushed and her hair was matted with sweat to her forehead. That tight track uniform exaggerated the curve of her hips and the generous round of her breasts. She looked gorgeous. She focused hard, eyes narrowed as she gunned for the finish line.
“I noticed you took off last night.” Kona didn’t care that Ricky was still talking. He didn’t care that he’d followed him, sought him out. His attention was on Keira and her blue track shorts, the way her skin pinked, deepened, the closer she got to the end of the trail. “She’s hot,” Ricky said, and Kona whipped his head around, blocked the guy from Keira’s view.
“You need to not look at her.”
“Calm down. I’m not gonna f*ck with your girl.” Hands on his jeans, Ricky dusted away the seeds from his fingers. His gray jacket was thin, but lined with padding. He shoved his packet of seeds in his pocket and Kona caught the glint of black metal in his waistband. “But Kona, shit happens when I don’t get my way.” Ricky watched Keira run past them. She cleared the finish, stopping a good twenty feet behind it with her coach jogging toward her, handing her a bottle of water and her sweats. “And I always get my way.”
Keira was already dressed, leaning on her knees to catch her breath. Kona didn’t want Ricky there. He didn’t want the threat of what Kona did for him to touch her. It took control, mammoth control, but Kona kept his hands in his pockets and didn’t move them around Ricky’s throat. “Stay the f*ck away from her.”
“I will,” he said, finally looking away from Keira. “You just make sure you pick up your phone.”
Kona followed Ricky until he passed the runners and their families and he tried not to frown too hard when the man stared at Keira again, when his eyes raked up her long legs. Kona approached her trying to cool his temper, trying to push back the thought that Ricky knew who he’d been waiting for.
Keira smiled when he approached, but he could tell she felt awkward, nervous.
“You came? I didn’t tell you about the meet.”
He took the towel from her hand and wiped her face dry. “I wanted to see you. Couldn’t sleep last night.” Kona smiled, loving how red her face was, how cool her skin felt. “You place?”
“Third.” The small smile that had been working on her face disappeared and she looked behind her at the two girls who’d finished ahead of her.
“That a bad thing?”
“It’s not first.”
He appreciated her irritation. They were both athletes. They both liked to win, third place was last place and he got why she was disappointed. Keira walked past him, headed away from where the runners and their coaches were standing. He followed after her. “Don’t they do ribbons or medals or something?”
She nodded, pouring the remainder of her water over her face. “Gotta keep moving so I don’t cramp. Walk with me.”
“Hey,” he said, stopping her with a tug of her wrist.
“What?” Keira rubbed the towel across her wet skin and stepped back when Kona stood in front of her.
This was new for him, chasing after a girl, trying to get her attention, but Kona didn’t mind that Keira was making him work. He didn’t mind that she let her competitiveness distract her. He wasn’t the center of her attention and, oddly, that didn’t bother him.
“You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Good. We’ll catch a bite when this is all over.” He waved to the runners and the coaches nodding their girls over. Kona walked with Keira back toward the other runners. He took her hand, ignored her expression when her eyes lingered too long at their fingers locked together. “Don’t have a heart attack or anything.”
Kona loved the sound of her laugh, how it made a quick snap of sensation work in his stomach. He enjoyed that feeling, let it fill him as he led her toward her coach, but his eyes moved around them, searching for the threat he didn’t want touching her.
He hadn’t stopped touching her. Not once, all night. At the restaurant Kona kept his calf right against hers as they sat at the crowded bar eating. On the levee, watching the street performers flip and dance around the French Quarter, he kept his hand flat against her back. As they walked back to his Camaro, he held her hand.
Keira liked the attention, but as they drove down Canal Street, his hand resting on her knee, she wasn’t sure what that attention meant exactly.
It hadn’t been a perfect date, the constant calls he ignored throughout dinner and as they walked the Quarter had been an annoyance, but Kona smiled at her a lot, held her close to him. He wasn’t perfect, but that’s what she liked about him.
“You wanna go to my place? Grab a beer?”
The streetlight above them was red and in its reflection Kona’s dark eyes looked shadowed. Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman” funneled out of the speakers as he stared at her, eyes low lidded and a clear question moving up his eyebrows. She opened her mouth to answer, something biting working its way up her throat, but the light changed and the * behind them laid on his horn.