Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(79)

Crap. Here’s she goes.

“Sorry?”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re that boy my husband told me Keira was with while he treated your grandfather. He said you two looked a little friendly.”

“We are… um… friends.”

Keira had to withhold her laugh. Kona was many things to her, but friend wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t like Leann. She didn’t spill her secrets to him, well, not all of them. He didn’t know who she was, not really. Not… really. At least, that’s what Keira told herself; it was the tiny lie that kept her from running down those stairs. “Friends.” But Keira was pretty sure friends didn’t touch each other the way she and Kona did. Friends didn’t hide things behind your back. They didn’t lie to you. They didn’t reach into your heart and squeeze down hard, trying to fracture the thin, barely-there fibers with lies and deception.

“How friendly are you with my daughter?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Because you know she’s seeing Mark Burke. They’ve been together for several months now.”

Keira wanted to crawl under the sink and hide. Kona knew better, he’d been with her more than Leann and he’d know there was no way she could fit in a date with Mark. Besides, Kona had won that round at Nathan’s and Mark had backed away without a fight. He had to know her mother was goading him.

“Keira and I are friends, Ms. Michaels,” he lied and Keira was grateful. She’d told Kona how ridiculous her mother was, how she wouldn’t understand their relationship. “It’s not my business who she dates. She was at the hospital when my grandfather was brought in and she was very sweet to me, helped me out when I had no idea what to do.”

There was a pause and Keira could picture her mother sipping her wine, allowing it to fuel her arrogance. Part of her was humiliated. She hadn’t wanted Kona to ever have to deal with her insane, drunken mother. That’s why she’d never asked him to come home with her for weekend. But she knew if she went downstairs, if she interrupted the verbal lashing her mother was preparing, then Kona would smile, would touch her, would call her Wildcat and all her defenses would crumble. He was good at that, the whole making her crumble thing. Keira was weak around him. She didn’t have the strength to completely walk away from him. He was too consuming and so she kept herself in that bathroom, holding onto every word he spoke. She’d missed his voice, his arms, his mouth, those beautiful eyes. But she wouldn’t let herself cave. Her heart couldn’t take another break and she was so afraid Kona’s juicing wouldn’t stop. What he was doing to himself, to his future, to his life, would be what broke that damaged heart of hers until it was nothing but dead filaments.

“Well, as I said, she won’t be back to school this week. She’s not feeling well. We think she may have picked up that virus that’s going around. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re busy and don’t have time for random visits.”

“Can you please tell her I stopped by?”

“Sure.” The door slammed before the word had left her mother’s mouth. It took ten full seconds, which Keira counted, for her to hear the quick rumble of her mother’s feet on the stairs. Keira jumped down off the hamper and darted back onto her bed just as three quick taps rapped against her door. Her mother didn’t wait to be asked in.

“Keira, that boy…”

“What boy?” She wouldn’t give her mother an inch, but just didn’t have the energy to fight. She knew the lecture would come, but she’d take it in stride, just as she had with all the stupid meddling the woman had given her during the past four days.

“That Hispanic boy.”

“Diego?”

Her mother’s lips twisted into a purse and Keira had to bite the inside of her bottom lip to keep from laughing. “No. Not him. The other one. From the hospital?”

Keira lowered the book she was pretending to read and looked over it at her mother. “You mean Kona?”

“That’s the one.” She sat on Keira’s bed as though she was gently inquiring and not gearing up for an investigation. “He was just here asking about you.”

“Was he?” When Keira tried crack the spine of her book open, her mother jerked it out of her hand.

“It is rude to read while someone is speaking to you.”

“I think it’s ruder to interrupt someone while they’re reading.”

She pushed on Keira’s leg, giving it a soft tap with the book in her hand. “Sit up now.”

“Mother, I have no idea why Kona was here. We’re just classmates.”

Her mother was doing that weird, suspicious calculating sneer with her mouth—twisting again, but this time there was a definite pull on her top lip. “You would have not spent hours holding that boy’s hand at the hospital if he was just a friend and he would not have driven forty-five minutes outside the city, looking the way he did, if you were just classmates.” Keira hadn’t gotten a good look at him, but he must have taken extra care with his appearance if her mother noticed. She actually seemed mildly impressed. When Keira didn’t answer, when she pulled her knees against her chest and acted as though she had no clue what her mother was implying, Cora’s weird sneer became exaggerated and she clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “I have told you once before,” now she frowned and the sneer became a scowl of disgust. Keira knew the “time before” she mentioned was her very brief rebellion with Diego, “it isn’t wise to befriend the wrong sort of people.”