Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(68)

She dropped her keys, trying to unlock it, trying to hurry as Kona shouted at Luka, as he tried fighting against the small crowd that had gathered.

“No, brah,” she heard Luka tell Kona. “Let her go.”

And the last thing she heard before she shut her door and fired up the engine was Kona’s ragged voice screaming her name.





Keira couldn’t sleep. Her mind was pumped full of adrenaline and guilt, her heart twisted like someone had a grip on every inch of the muscle.

She hated Kona.

That’s what she told herself. Hate was easy. Hate, she was used to. She had practice with pushing her feelings down deep, with ignoring any semblance of affection. She should never have wanted him. Wanting only led to disappointment.

But the girl tonight with her arms around Kona, with her lips rubbing precariously close to his ear, had Keira questioning those repressed feelings she’d felt over the past weeks. God knew how much she wanted Kona. She liked his kisses. She loved the way he looked at her. She loved the way his skin smelled after he’d run to the library with no time to shower after practice.

He did things to her body that she wasn’t used to. They’d flirted. They’d made out and afterward, each time, she felt her body burn. He never pushed. He never asked for more than what she offered and it drove her insane.

And Kona’s mouth, his hands, his skin made her wonder why she held him off, why she hadn’t pushed, hadn’t asked for more. Keira closed her eyes and long red hair, shattered the darkness. The girl had been actually pretty, not like the familiar, vapid clones on campus. She stuck out. Of course Kona would take what she offered. The thought of it made her sick. Keira knew he wouldn’t change. Weeks and weeks she had lied to herself, had repressed the knowledge that he was a beautiful, popular athlete who could have his pick of anyone he wanted. She hated that Kona made her doubt herself, made her feel somehow subpar. But even through her anger and pain she had to acknowledge that if the last weeks had told her anything, it was that Kona wanted her too. Maybe not forever, but he definitely wanted her.

He wanted her like air, like breath. He’d showed her in every lingering glance, in the small movement of his fingers down her neck, in the calm, settled way he rested against her chest while she raked her nails through his hair.

Keira tightened her eyes at the memory of his lips on her neck. Her traitorous nipples hardened, and her skin felt fevered as she lay in her bed remembering what his tongue had felt like on her neck, his fingers just under the clasp of her bra, working inside her, making her come so hard she thought she might pass out. A quick shudder moved across her skin and Keira had to turn on her side, pull her knees up to shake off the sudden hum that throbbed between her legs.

She couldn’t shake the image from her mind or the feelings from her body. Kona might want Keira, but that didn’t mean he wanted only her. There were over a two thousand available girls on campus. It seemed like they all were after Kona. What was she compared to them? She was one of the crowd. One of the many.

And tonight, with him acting like a maniac, her getting aroused, so needy by his anger, brought back the sudden, ugly image of Kona on the ground with blood pouring from his cheek.

Aggressive tendencies. That’s what the doctor had told an eleven-year-old Keira she was fighting against. It was that buried, angry thread of rage that Keira had experienced the moment her mother had flippantly broke the news to her: “Your father put a pistol to his temple and killed himself, Keira.” And not ten minutes later, “Try not to carry on at the funeral.”

Her mother had made it clear that she was to hide what she felt; told her that tears were something only infants were allowed and so Keira swallowed up that grief, the rage that being left without her beloved father had kindled in her heart. She stowed away that anger, those tears, because that is what she was expected to do. That’s what ladies did. They shouldered others’ burdens, and ignored their own.

Pills helped when necessary, as did years of therapy, but then Kona Hale entered her life and that angry little girl forgot that she was supposed to breathe when rage hit her. She forgot that she should count, let the anger pass. He brought it out in her with little effort and tonight had been the catalyst, the tipping off point of frustration and heat, and desire denied, that sent Keira over the edge.

It wasn’t an excuse. It didn’t allow for reason or tell Keira that swinging a cold bottle at Kona’s face was in the least understandable. She felt like a freak, an unhinged monster and Kiera buried her face into her pillow, hiding from her guilt. The tears came again, harder, sharper than the ones she’d cried the day before when had Kona left her room.

Leann’s bed lay empty. Michael got her attention on weekends. Michael got her cousin’s attention most days. But it was Saturday night, game night, and Leann’s priorities were on her man and not her unbalanced, violent cousin. Keira understood that. But it didn’t make her feel any less alone.

Anger, lust, shame, they all coiled together, shot straight to Keira’s core, aching, throbbing and she felt stupid and unstable and thought she should touch herself, maybe hit something, to try to release the pent up feelings inside. She didn’t know which she wanted more - the emotional release or the physical one.

The clock on her bedside table blinked three a.m. and Keira wondered if Kona had been patched up, if he’d calmed, if he’d left the bar bloody, but not alone.