Thin Love(162)

“Oh I remember. Still have the scar.”

“Exactly.” Keira curls her arms together, tightens them over her chest. “That’s not healthy. That just wasn’t healthy.”

“Maybe not, but I remember a few other things too.” For a moment, Ransom is forgotten. Kona leans forward, shifts around to face her leaning on his elbow, gaze catching her, making her still. “I remember you staying with me at the hospital when my grandfather had his heart attack, even while my mom made it clear she didn’t want you there.” He moves closer still, pulls her arms loose so he can rub the inside of her wrist. “I remember you being the only one who told me I wasn’t pathetic. No one ever loved me like you did; unconditional, unwavering. You never set limits. Not once.”

Keira knows he’s right. She knows that amid all that insanity, that crazy, dangerous passion, there was real love. They were unhinged. They were volatile, obsessed, but all of that desire came from what they felt for each other.

Still, age, maturity told her passion didn’t mean healthy. It didn’t mean that something so wild and manic could be normal. “That was the problem. No limits. Having no limits meant I was reckless. We were both reckless. It’s how we got him.” She nods toward Ransom doing laps on the field and Kona turns away from her as they both watch their boy.

“You sorry about that?” he says, eyes still on their son.

She doesn’t hesitate to answer him. “Not for one second.”

“And neither am I.”





It’s the cymbals that stop her breath.

Three small taps that break across the crowd of well-wishers—Kona’s friends, the players he practices with, Leann’s that have come to wish her son a happy birthday, that hum a soft, sweet melody straight into Keira’s heart. She knows this song. So does Kona and it takes only the small movement of her gaze, weaving around dancing bodies, right to his dark eyes for Keira to understand he recognizes it too.

He doesn’t watch her, not immediately. Body relaxed against his chair and that wide, long arm outstretched on the table as he moves his glass of scotch between his fingers, Kona’s expression is blank, perhaps bored for the three long breaths Keira can’t seem to release.

And then, a twist of his bottom lip and his eyes flick right to hers.

She knows he’s remembering it—the song, that night, them alone in her too pink bedroom.

Above her, the lights of the ballroom dim, the party slowing to welcome the heat of dancing bodies and the soft seduction that Dave Matthews whispers out from the speakers. But Keira only half notices how dark the room becomes, how thick the air grows. Kona’s gaze is heated, leveled at her like a kiss across her skin and Keira can’t take it; not the rush of memory or how the man sitting across this ballroom seems to remember what this song, what that night, had meant to her. How it had changed them both. Keira stands, backs away from the table in search of lighter air and freedom from the look Kona gives her.

She needs a reprieve from him, from that song that shoots flashes of memory heavy in her mind. She still sees it all so clearly, feels his large hands on her naked thighs, the way his teeth raked across her collarbone. How he cupped her, teased her, how wide he felt inside her.

Keira suppresses the shudder that chills her skin and she slips through the crowd, finding the quiet of the city below her on the balcony. New Orleans shines in front of her—slow activity of blinking headlights, the low, almost unrecognizable refrain of a trumpet in the distance and for a moment she closes her eyes, focuses on that horn, hoping it will vanquish the flash of overwhelming memory.

Behind her, the opulent party continues. Ransom seems happy, drunk on the attention, on the praise Kona has given him all night, the introduction to players he’s long admired. She is happy for her boy, overwhelmed that he is now sixteen. But the night, the crowd, her laughing, dancing son are momentarily forgotten as that endless song persists, taunts her. She moves away from the glass doors, to an empty table hidden next to an alcove, hoping she’ll go unnoticed.

She doesn’t know why she is still here. New Orleans isn’t home anymore. Her stepfather’s estate could be settled over the phone, through emails and faxes. If she went back to Tennessee, there would be no complications. No former college sweethearts who wrecked her life. No hints of him wanting back in to see how much more damage he could do to her.

He hasn’t forgotten. There have been too many lingering stares shot in her direction, too many times he saw fit to touch her arm, direct her into a room with his hand on the small of her back.

She knows what he wants, but the idea of reliving the past is too much, too confining.