Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(88)

It all sounded too simple, too perfect. Kona didn’t know Cora Michaels. That brief conversation with her the day before told him she wasn’t the kind of woman who just took whatever came her way. He had a feeling she’d spend the rest of her life trying to control Keira and Kona wondered, despite Keira’s claim that she could walk away, if she really would. She was strong, she was a fighter, but Keira ran away from things when she thought she’d be hurt. Would she run away from the person who could hurt her most?

“Hey,” she said, voice light, as though she hadn’t spent the past few minutes crying on his chest. “Let me make you some French toast. It’s my specialty.”

More of that running. It’s what Keira did. She was done exorcising her demons, for now at least, and Kona loved that smile, how open it was, how happy she seemed to show him another side of herself he didn’t know existed.

“Sounds good, Wildcat.”

But as she walked away from him, looking far too good for someone who was so broken, Kona wondered if she would fight when the time came. He wondered if she’d let him fight for her. He wondered how far Keira would have to run to keep that smile on her face.





Kona wondered if you could O.D. on tryptophan. He thought that might be happening to him. He was in his bedroom, two doors from the loud sounds of his tutu kane and Luka killing each other in a quick game of dominos, thinking that either the delicious Thanksgiving turkey sitting like a rock in his stomach was going to kill him—or else Keira was.

He pulled his yellow phone up for the fourth time and grunted when there was still no message from her. He hadn’t wanted her to leave. Karma was a ruthless bitch and that little lie she’d told her professors about being sick when she’d avoided him had come back to bite Keira in the ass. CPU had been ravaged by the flu and Kona worried that Keira’s sneezes and tiredness were clues that’d she caught the crud Leann had been battling for a week. Keira had come to his house for Thanksgiving, sniffling and coughing, but still giving him that sweet smile of hers. True, the dinner had been awkward with his mother and girlfriend pretending to be civil as they glared across the table at one another, but for the most part, shit didn’t start. That, he knew was due to his tutu kane.

His grandfather had asked him about Keira before she arrived. It was rare, something the old man didn’t normally do, but since neither Luka nor Kona had ever brought a girl home, he was curious.

“Does she have all her teeth?” Tutu kane had asked and Kona stared at the man for five full seconds, thinking his heart meds were making him loopy.

“What kind of question is that?”

The old man only shrugged and slapped Kona on the back. “A woman with all her teeth takes care of herself. I’m just wondering, Keikikane, if your milimili is gumming it.”

Kona laughed him, smiling wider at his tutu kane called Keira his beloved, shaking his head at how serious the old man stared at him. “She’s beautiful and smart and talented. She writes music and sings and yeah, she has perfect teeth.”

He should have never told him about the music because his grandfather spent the better part of the day hitting his bongos, which he never learned how to play properly, and asking Keira to guess what song he sang. Most she knew, others, the sly bastard tricked her with by singing island songs no one had ever heard. By the time he started in on “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” Kona’s mother trailed off deeper into the house, claiming she wanted to get the kitchen cleaned. Kona wasn’t sorry she left. All afternoon he’d noticed his mother’s overly calm stares at Keira; how both women ignored each other, how cool, indifferent his mother was to Keira.

His mother didn’t stay out of the way all night, but she played indifferent, kept throwing looks out toward the fire pit, watching him and Keira, curious. Kona caught Tutu kane’s wink when the woman left and Kona smiled, settling Keira on his lap and the bongo playing stopped while the football games came on.

It had turned into a great night, with Kona, Keira, Luka and Tutu kane sitting around the fire pit, listening to stories that Kona suspected his grandfather had invented. Each one had made Keira laugh and Kona was glad. It took her mind off of what she’d have to go home to; it kept her distracted from that long ride back to Mandeville and her mother who was still angry that Keira had chosen to spend Thanksgiving with Kona and his family and not her and her fake, wasted friends.

“You could stay,” he’d told her, holding on tight to her waist as she leaned against her Sunfire. “I could sneak you in and my mom would never know.”

“I’ll be fine. My mother will probably be passed out on Valium or wine, or both by the time I get back.”

Kona pulled Keira against him, nuzzling her neck, inhaling that sweet scent on her skin. He didn’t want her to leave. “You don’t know that for sure, Wildcat.”

She’d taken his lips then, long and slow, staggering Kona with a kiss that lingered. “Today was great.” Keira held his face and Kona thought she might say something more, something he’d been waiting for her to say to him, but that plump mouth closed up and she kissed him again. “You made this a perfect Thanksgiving.”

Kona had watched her taillights blink and brake as she drove down the street and though she promised to call when she got home, promised that if her mother tried smacking her, that she wouldn’t take it, he still felt sick, anxious that he wouldn’t be there to protect her.