Thin Love(141)
“Even after I kicked her out of my room at the hospital, I wasn’t totally sure about what would come next. I didn’t know what I’d do. I thought maybe telling you about the baby would help you heal. I was so naive. But then the doctor comes in, lets me hear the faint, barely moving heartbeat and I knew, I just knew, there was no way I could destroy that life.” Keira lowers her forehead, rests it against the glass and when she speaks, her voice drops as though forcing the words out is like extracting a tooth without anesthesia. “I’d made it with you. You were everything to me then and we’d made this perfect little soul together. There was no way I was getting rid of it.”
Kona is surprised to see her tears; they are brief and she doesn’t let them linger on her face, but he sees that the memories consume her, that for her they are still real. “So I went to see you at the jail. I was going to tell you. I thought you’d get past… everything. I thought we could start over.” She looks at Kona, gives him a small frown. “You were so angry. You hated me. You blamed me for Luka. I understood that. And then you break up with me, tell me you don’t want me anymore and I knew. Right then and there—after the argument with my mother, after your mother telling me I’d never be good enough for you, that I’d ruin you—I knew the only thing I had left in the world was our baby. So I left.”
“You carved up my Camaro.” It is pointless, stupid to even mention, but Kona too has gone back to the past. Keira’s words fill in what he didn’t know, the moments after he made her leave. “You went to Nashville?” She nods and Kona can only watch the dip of her chin and the straight line of her mouth. “But your car was totaled and you walked away from your family… how did you…”
“Mark Burke.”
She says the name with a smile, with a fondness that Kona doesn’t like. The jealousy is irrational and he tries not to let it consume him. Keira isn’t his. She hasn’t been his for a long time, but part of him hates that Burke was the one she turned to. He can’t push down that instant whip of anger deep enough and he knows his frown gives away what he’s feeling. Keira’s gaze follows him as he moves back toward the bar.
“Burke?” he finally says, trying to keep his voice even.
“He gave me three grand, put me on a bus.”
Kona works his jaw, unreasonably annoyed, unable to keep the bite out of his voice. “Burke did that for you? What did you have to do in return?”
She didn’t expect an insult. That much he can tell and as soon as it leaves his mouth, Kona regrets it. Keira lifts her chin, steps in front of him, comes too close. “Fuck you, Kona, it wasn’t like that. I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. I certainly didn’t have you. Don’t you dare judge me, especially when you don’t know shit about what I was going through and you damn sure don’t know why Mark did anything for me.”
He should apologize. He knows that. Kona feels the weight of emotions he thought he’d buried a long time ago, but Keira being here, right in front of him, her laying out the truth he doesn’t believe he’s ready for, has him consumed with anger. He isn’t a kid anymore. He isn’t the boy Keira knew. So why does being around her for less than a half hour have Kona reverting to the hot headed asshole he used to be?
Still, they have a son. Kona may have not been there for either of them, but that doesn’t mean he’d continue to play absentee father. He has to know that the boy will be protected. “So Burke helped you. He’s in your life? He’s in my son’s life?”
“Yes. He has been for years. He’s a good man.” Kona nods, steps away from Keira and walks back to the window to lean against it, hands on the glass. He can feel her stare, hears the soft steps she makes as she moves beside him, as she rests her back on the window. “So is his boyfriend, Kona.”
Kona’s neck pops when he whips his head toward Keira. “What?”
“Mark is gay,” she says, a smile quirking on her lips. “He came out to me before you and I ever broke up.” Kona lets his shoulders fall with a relief he has no right feeling. Keira had hurt him, she’d kept his son from him, but he was beginning to understand why. He was beginning to remember things the way they’d happened and not how he’d organized them in his memory. Keira’s half smile falls and she looks down at her hands, a distraction for what, he doesn’t know. “Mark didn’t want me to have to live under my mother’s thumb. He didn’t want me having to pretend like he was having to do. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had and he loves Ransom.”