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 sound of his KuKu 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 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 KuKu.

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 or Kona had ever brought a girl home, he was curious.

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

“What kind of question is that?”

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

Kona laughed at him, smiling wider that his kuku 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, Kuku.”

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, seemingly 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 he and Keira, curious. Kona caught Kuku’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 Kuku 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. “I know that 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. “I know that 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.

Luka and Kuku screamed at each other over the game, 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. 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 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 asshole 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 fucking 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 off the juice and his worry of Keira being alone with her mother in that house. Ricky’s threats didn’t help. “Don’t threaten me, Ricky. I slip one word to the cops and…”

“What the fuck 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 motherfucker 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 asshole 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.

“Man, if I do this for you, you gotta cut me loose. I’m serious. I don’t want in this shit anymore. I just want a clean break.” Kona could practically hear Ricky thinking. He knew getting out wouldn’t be easy. He knew Ricky liked having him around to scare off punks like Dino, but Kona was done being his muscle. He wanted free from the weight of Ricky’s bullshit.

Finally, the man exhaled, released the sound that Kona thought was a little too calm and a little too forced. “Fine. You do this shit for me and I won’t bug you no more, but Kona, everything has to run smooth…I mean fucking perfect. No fuck-ups.”

“I got you.”

“I mean it, man. I’d hate to have to…”

“I said I got you. I’m not a kid. You don’t have to warn me.”

He ended the call before Ricky could threaten him again. Or Keira. Flat against his mattress, Kona covered his eyes with his arm, heart slamming as Ricky’s voice ran over and over in his mind like a stuck track on a busted CD player. 

That pretty little bitch of yours gets bloody.

Kona wanted out; he’d wanted out for over a year, when Luka started seriously bitching at him about dealing. It was too much, and Kona always felt dirty— pathetic—when he sold for Ricky. He didn’t want that life. He didn’t want any of it to come near Keira. If that asshole touched her…if anyone touched Keira—Kona sat up, gripping his phone again, not bothering to check for her message, and when her voicemail picked up immediately, Kona ended the call, moving around the room for his keys.

He knew he was being paranoid. He knew she’d probably crashed on her bed as soon as she got home, but Kona couldn’t ignore the need to see her again: that crushing urge to touch her, to make sure no one had bothered her. And behind that protective need lay a more urgent want. Kona needed to be calm, to feel the world disappear for just a moment. There was only place he could find that peace.

Keira dreamt between notes. Not every night. Not every dream was filled with lyrics— only the good ones. Most mornings she couldn’t remember them, but when she did, she heard the soft rasp of her father’s voice and felt his rough fingers smooth on the inside of her wrist. In those good dreams he was always happy, always proud. He was young, full of the potential she remembered him feeling before everything turned to darkness. Before his life clouded with the burden of expectancy and the disappointment that colored most of Keira’s childhood memories

The dream that night wasn’t dark, and Keira suspected it came from being happy that day, from being around Kona and his family. There had been laughs, broken apart only by the cool stare his mother gave her, and the overwhelming sadness she felt once she was driving away from the city, away from Kona.

Keira dreamt of her father, of them together, smiling easily, happy, and the strum of twin guitars, both Hummingbirds, both his, that pushed back reality. In that dream he sang in a loud, clear voice, encouraging her, praising her talent. He sang Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” something she knew wasn’t for her. Keira thought it might have been for her mother, but the woman in the song sounded nothing like the woman who threw her best china at her father’s head. The song her father sung was slow, slower than Morrison’s version, and as her father sang it, his voice carried around them, kissed into her consciousness, and Keira sat fascinated, amazed at his emotion, at the joy on his face. It was a song about falling in love, falling hard and deeply and completely. It was a love Keira told herself she was inching toward with Kona.

 “Nothing less, sweetie.” Her father’s smile didn’t break when he spoke to her. “Nothing less than crazy love will ever be good enough for you.”

Keira felt the soft impression of lips on her back, and she smiled, still caught in that dream, slipping somewhere away from it until she knew Kona was in her bed. Eyes blinking open, that smile grew and she exhaled, released a great swell of satisfaction when Kona moved his mouth to her neck.

“You didn’t call.” Keira rolled on to her back, catching Kona’s face between her fingers as he lowered over her. She didn’t like the frown on his face and decided to make it leave with her mouth over his. “I was worried,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her forehead.

“I fell asleep. I meant to…” a yawn interrupted her excuse, and Keira covered her mouth. “That drive takes it out of me.” Another quick kiss she hoped reassured him. “I’m sorry.”

He moved her head, inching it to one side then the other and Keira laughed at the steely way his gaze moved over her face. “She didn’t…?”

“She was passed out when I got home and Steven wasn’t here.” Keira sat up, brushing her hair off her face as she climbed onto Kona’s lap. “She doesn’t make it a habit, you know, and my life here isn’t an afternoon special.” When he started to argue, she shut him up with another kiss. “You gotta stop worrying so much. I told you, I won’t let her smack me around anymore. You give me a reason not to cave.”

“Wildcat…” whatever Kona wanted to say, lay trapped in his throat and he cupped her face, took her lips like he owned them. In the back of her mind was the small worry that Kona would catch whatever funk was making her throat hurt and throbbing in her head, but he felt too good, his large arms were too comforting. They fell back, worked each other up, but Keira felt him holding back; she felt him hesitate, not putting enough of himself into those kisses or lazy rubs against her body.

“Hey.” She brought her hand to his cheek. “Where are you tonight?”

“I’m here, baby.” Kona’s small peck that Keira guessed was supposed to be reassuring only made her worry even more. When she moved her lips away from another attempted kiss, his shoulders fell, and Kona leaned on his elbow to hover over her. “Ricky called me.”

“Kona…”

“I know. You don’t have to get mad. I told him I was out, after this last job.”

Keira refused to let that small hint of anger simmering around her mind grow. She took a breath, deep enough to fill her lungs until her body forced it out. It was an attempt at calm. The day had been too good, that dream, too prophetic. She wouldn’t pick a fight with him.

Keira toyed with the hem of Kona’s hoodie, wrapping the drawstring around the tip of her finger just as he’d done all those months ago in Miller’s class. “When?”

“A week after Christmas.”

She laughed, rolling her eyes at how closely Kona watched her, as if he were waiting for her to explode. “At least he’s giving you the holiday off.”

“It’s the last one,” he said, ignoring Keira passive aggressive jab. He pulled the drawstring off her finger and laid on her chest, tapping her hand once so she’d move her fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to do it, Wildcat, but he’ll hurt…the people I care about.”

She wasn’t stupid, and Kona knew it. She heard the lingering threat, the one she knew he tried to hide from her. “He’s all talk, baby. People like him work off of fear, and me getting hurt, he thinks, is your greatest fear.”

Kona sat up, moving his hands on either side of her head. “It is. Nothing scares me more. It would kill me if something happened to you because of me. It would kill me if something happened to you in general, but especially if it was my shit that got you hurt.” Kona lowered over her, hands back on her face, so close she could feel the heat of his breath moistening her skin. “My love’s too thick, Wildcat.”

She couldn’t help herself, she kissed him then, harder than before, wanted to say what had flirted on her tongue for weeks; what her logic and defenses forced back down her throat each time Kona told her he loved her. Kona had never asked her to say it back to him. He waited, like always, never pushed, but just then, when he backed away from her, when he simply stared at her, she saw the question in his eyes, that quick flicker of need she knew had nothing to do with his fear for her safety or the ache for her body. He wanted the words.

“Why don’t you sing for me?” he asked, and Keira had not expected that question.

 “What?”

“You never sing for me. I’ve heard you through your door and I know you play for Leann, but you never give me that. You let me inside, Wildcat.” Kona fingered the neck of her t-shirt and let his palm rest over her heart. “But you never let me inside. Why?”

They’d slept together in her tiny dorm bed and some nights, when Kona snored at her side, Keira would look at him, really look at him—at that perfect, chiseled face and the small brown spots that dotted over his cheeks—and she’d mouthed the words she’d written just for him. Other times, she’d hum them, sliding up the notes, hoping that they filtered into his dreams; a soft whisper of everything she felt for him. But she had never been brave enough to sing when he was awake. She’d never lowered all those walls, not completely, not enough for him to notice.

When Keira didn’t answer, Kona rolled onto her pillow, moving his arm across his forehead. “It’s fine, Wildcat.”

Now who’s running?

He held her hips when she straddled him, but the worry was still in his eyes, the worry and the frustration and Keira wanted that tension gone. It was time. It was past time.

“Kona?” His gaze came up, caught hers and he waited. “I’ve never loved anything like I love you.” The corner of his mouth lifted, and Keira smiled at the release of some of his worry. “Mine is thick, too, and sometimes it scares me. Sometimes I think I know what Paul D. meant.” Keira settled lower over him, chin on his chest, and she liked that Kona played with her hair, that he pretended she couldn’t feel how quickly his heart pounded. “I love you like a song,” she said, knowing he’d understand what that meant, knowing he knew she couldn’t love anything more. She kissed him and sighed against his mouth when Kona’s arms came around her waist, loving how tightly he held her to him. “My father taught me this song when I was eight, and it broke my heart. I only sing it when I wanna remember how good that felt.”

Keira left the bed with Kona sitting up against the headboard. She sat in front of him with her Gibson on her lap and her fingers strumming against those familiar strings. “This is how much I love you.” The intro came back to her easier than blinking, that heart-plucking vibration she’d heard in her dream. She kept her voice low, her strums light, but her eyes didn’t move from his face as she sang about the love she wanted to give him, about the crazy love that was meant for him alone.