Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(89)
Luka and Tutu kane screamed at each other over the game board and when his mother stormed into the kitchen and started shouting at them like both were her rowdy kids, Kona pulled his pillow over his head, trying to drown out the noise.
A few minutes later the door to his bedroom opened a few inches. “Keiki kane?” his mother whispered, the venom gone from her voice. He didn’t want to talk to her. He knew she’d meddle, would at least bitch at him about Keira being there all day, about him continuing to date her even though she had told him it was a mistake. So Kona laid still, moving his chest in exaggerated breaths, hoping she’d buy him being asleep and when his door clicked shut, he pulled the pillow off of his face, smiling that she had left him alone.
He didn’t care that his mom hated Keira. The woman would hate anyone he dated; Kona was past worrying about her opinion. He only wanted Keira’s blue eyes open, free of the glassy shine he’d seen in them too much lately. Keira didn’t have it any easier. Her mother had only been too eager to ask about Kona, but not in a kind way. Cora unrelentingly continued her threats over the past few weeks and the pressure, the interrogations and the insinuations were wearing thin on his Wildcat.
When they were together, when he touched her, that worry disappeared. There was only the two of them in the whole damn world. In her dorm, in his car or hers, in the dark stacks on the top floor of the library, she was his, all alone. There were no interfering mothers. There were no pressures from friends and coaches. There was nothing but the soft lilt of Keira’s breath and that tight, warm heat of her body clamping around him.
Three weeks, maybe four, and already Kona was addicted to the taste and feel of her. It was better than the dragon, the poison he’d depended on for a year to make him stronger. Now Keira was his addiction. It’d started at the lake house, that first time, and continued the next day with her on the kitchen counter, hands clamped on the edge and Kona inside her, taking, giving, wanting the sensation of how they fit together, how perfect, how real they came together, to never end. She was his comfort. He was her strength and when they were apart, the world seemed grayer somehow to Kona, bleak and lifeless.
Two quick rings on his phone and Kona answered, not bothering to see whose number flashed across the screen.
“Wildcat?”
“Who?” The guy’s voice was gravel deep and Kona cursed himself, cursed Ricky for bothering him.
“What do you need, man? I told you last week, I’m out of product and I’m not selling that shit anymore.”
Ricky’s breath was heavy on the other line, a long sigh that had Kona sitting up, preparing for the threat he knew was coming. Instead, the * just laughed, small and quick, like Kona was a stupid kid being taught a lesson.
“Look at you being all aggressive, Kona.” He cleared his throat and the humor left his voice. “I don’t give a shit what you told me. I don’t care that you got off the juice to keep your girl happy.” Kona didn’t like Ricky talking about Keira. Not even a passing mention, but the dumbass kept doing it, just to screw with Kona, to lay that underlined threat at his feet, waiting for Kona to step over it. “You clean now, but you know you gonna come back whining to me when you start playing like shit. I know the game, man. And I also know if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been tossed off the team already. You owe me and when somebody owes me, Kona, I f*cking collect.”
Kona stood, kicked his backpack out of his way as he paced around his room, phone gripped between his fingers so tight he thought he might break the damn thing. He was already on edge, from cycling down from the juice and his worry about Keira being alone with her mother in that house. Ricky’s thug talk didn’t help. “Don’t threaten me, Ricky. I slip one word to the cops and…”
“What the f*ck you say to me?” That humorless laugh was back and when Ricky spoke again, the gravel in his voice had turned to glass. “You not that stupid, man. I know you not. You open your mouth and that pretty little bitch of yours gets bloody. You feel me?”
Kona was two seconds from tossing his phone across the room. He did owe Ricky, he knew that. Worst of all, Ricky knew that Kona understood what owing him meant. And if that motherf*cker laid one finger on Keira… he blinked, slumped down on his bed rubbing his eyes. “What do you want?”
“The week after Christmas, North Rampart. It’s the biggest shipment I’ve got coming in. Someone’s been blabbing to Dino Arceneaux. That * thinks he’s going to gank my shit before I get to it. I need you to be there so that don’t happen.”
Kona didn’t know what Ricky expected of him. He’d watched shipments before, but they were small, easily handled with one or two duffle bags in his trunk as one of Ricky’s boys headed back to New Orleans from Texas, having already picked up the shipment from someone else entering the border from Mexico. There was little danger in it and no real threat of being busted. Ricky always picked clean-cut guys for the transfer, sometimes a girl who looked a little like she could pass for someone’s twelve-year-old sister to deliver his shipments. Kona had always been nothing but muscle, had always been used for his size in case the shipment was light. He’d never been asked to chaperone a big shipment before. Dino Arceneaux was a juice head from Kenner with two muscle shops. He thought he was going to be Mr. Olympia. He thought he was Scarface, but he stood at barely 5’6 and didn’t have the balls to challenge anyone.