Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(78)

“Thanks, Leann.”

“Kona!” the girl called as he moved down the hallway. “Don’t you dare go see her. Those people will eat you alive!”





How dare you

Steal what’s left of me

The parts already thin

Toxic to my heart

Broken through my skin



Keira wanted to slam her Gibson against the wall. Nearly a month and the hook still would not come. It was the lake house, she knew. It was the confining walls of her girlhood bedroom and the constant pestering of her mother whenever her wine bottles were empty. Writer’s block was a myth, some excuse lazy people used when they weren’t producing perfection. Keira liked to think her block was more parental-related. Or, Hawaiian demon-related.

She hated being there. She hated that her mother never let her paint the pale pink walls or lose the ruffled comforter. She hated the white four poster bed and the lace on the canopy. She hated the stuffed animals arranged around the frilly white pillows against the headboard. She hated that her mother had not stopped asking why she was home and not at school. For the past four days. Every hour.

God, that woman was nosy.

In fact, the only thing Keira did like about this place was her balcony. Her parents had built this house just after they married twenty years ago. It was mammoth and brazen, way too much for three people, but Keira liked that it was nestled right on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. She liked during the summers when her mother and Steven took their yearly cruise that she and Leann could lay out on her balcony and bake their skin. She liked that her French doors and the trellis down the side of her railings made it easy to sneak out to be with her cousin and do things high schoolers did but had no business doing. She liked that on a full moon, she could sit out on her balcony, legs between the cast iron railings, hanging off the side, watching the glitter of moonlight over that water.

She’d take a thousand meddling lectures from her mother if it meant she got an hour looking out onto that water.

The doorbell rang, pulling Keira off her bed and into the en suite bathroom looking out of the window to investigate who had arrived so early in the day. Her mother and Steven were leaving that afternoon, another spontaneous trip to Atlanta that Keira suspected had something to do with how late Steven had been coming home from the city. “Smelling like something cheap and whorish off Bourbon Street,” her mother had told her. He did that often and each time, they took a week away and her mother came home with bags and bags of shit she would never use or wear.

Keira’s stomach landed somewhere around her knees when she saw Kona on the front porch, hand held over his eyes as he looked up.

“Shit.” She stood on her toes, stretching her neck to see him better but then the front door must have opened because Kona disappeared onto the porch and she heard the low murmur below. “Double shit!”

She couldn’t go down there, wouldn’t even attempt to interrupt whatever horrible thing she knew her mother would say to him. It was over. Done. She wasn’t going to see Kona again so the fuss she knew her mother would make was pointless. Keira had to let Kona go and though it made her feel like an * and a coward, she knew no one could make him run out of that house faster than her mother.

Still, that didn’t mean she had to let herself be kept in the dark.

She tried to be quiet as she lifted the window, hoped that the hinges wouldn’t squeak. But she had it up only halfway when she heard Kona’s voice, deep, tone polite.

“We have an assignment due next week and she hasn’t been in class. I was just checking on her since she’s been out. Um… ma’am.”

Oh crap. Mistake number one.

Her mother hated being called ma’am. In her mind, she still looked and felt like she was twenty. Thanks to her nutritionist and a great plastic surgeon.

“My daughter won’t be in class this week. I’d have thought Professor Miller would have told you this if you really were working on a project with Keira.”

She got on her knees, moving the small wood hamper directly in front of the window and she heard it then, that Kona grunt that told her he was losing his temper.

Keira could imagine what was happening downstairs. Her mother probably had a half empty glass of wine in her hand. She was probably still wearing those too tight yoga pants and the Gucci tank top. And Keira knew she was looking Kona over. He was impressive, caught the attention of every female with a pulse, but Cora Michaels wouldn’t be silently praising him. She’d be wondering how her precious daughter had lowered herself to befriend a boy “like him.” Like him generally meant not white, not local and not one of THEM.

Kona, on the other hand, Keira thought, would be attempting one of two things: either using that bright beautiful smile of his to worm his way into the house, or he’d be balling his fists up, feet apart and a constant rough growl working in his chest. Either way, she knew he wouldn’t cross the threshold. You just didn’t mess with Cora Michaels. You especially didn’t mess with her once she’d downed half a bottle of Moscato.

“Ms. Riley…”

“It’s Michaels, son. I haven’t been a Riley in a long time.”

He cleared his throat, covering another grunt. “My bad, Mrs. Michaels. I was just worried about Keira. She’s not answering her phone and…”

“Are you that boy from the hospital?”