At 3:00 a.m. that morning, a wiry Dominican kid from the Seventh Ward decided Kona had a softer pillow than him. He knew the score. At age fifteen, he’d landed in juvie, after a couple of scrapes that had him at the wrong in of the NOPD’s knuckles. So when the kid jerked Kona’s pillow out from under him as he slept, Kona took it back. He took it back after he broke the kid’s nose and fractured his jawbone.

His lawyer mentioned “five years” in passing, like it was a small bit of time that Kona could handle without problem. Five years for standing there while Ricky killed two people. Five years, maybe more if he didn’t turn into a rat. They lawyer said the phrase like it was nothing, like it wasn’t the end of everything Kona had wanted for himself. Five years and his team would forget about him. Five years on the inside, and his coaches would pretend they’d never heard his name. Five years would destroy him.

When the metal door opened, that awful creak whining in the large room as visitors waited their turn to see whatever brother, cousin, son or father they had to speak to through plate-glass, Kona held his breath. It wasn’t his mother coming back in to tell him what the lawyer heard about the deal the D.A. offered. It wasn’t his Kuku returning to make more half-hearted efforts at pulling a smile from Kona. It was her. Keira.

She stepped nervously into the room and Kona had fleeting thoughts that the introvert had returned. She held herself, arms circling her waist, and her shoulders slumped as she peeked around the room. 

Kona hadn’t seen that pretty flush on her skin in months, but it was there now, coloring her pale cheeks, warming her dull blue eyes. Keira looked thinner somehow, younger to him, but Kona thought that might have to do with spending the past week in a huge room full of convicts. It had aged him, those men and the preview of what his life would be like if he refused to cooperate with the D.A.

He watched Keira’s eyes moving to each cubicle, searching until she found him among the seated assholes slumping against the table, dirty telephone receivers to their ears, talking to whatever friend or family that had been landed the task of visitation day. But unlike the old men and women, tandhe rowdy, bored kids, Keira smiled, glowed with something Kona didn’t recognize.

He hated her for the way she looked. He hated her for the smile she gave him, the one he refused to return. He hated her for being there, reminding him of what he’d have to give up. And even though a small voice called to him, told him that Keira wasn’t to blame for the way Luka died, why Kona landed in the overfilled jail surrounded by stinky, bragging jackasses, the hurt was too great; the pain too sharp for Kona to listen.

Eyes on her, on those slow cautious steps Keira made toward him, Kona picked up the receiver, tried not to stare too long into her eyes, tried not to release the brewing anger that had kept him warm since he woke up in a hospital handcuffed to a bed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he told her, mouth pulled down hard, eyes sharp and narrowed. Kona barely managed to keep the shake out of his voice, to keep the phone still between his tight fist.

“I needed to see you. To check up on you, baby.”

He closed his eyes, squeezed his lids tight. He wanted to erase the sight of her tears dotting her long eyelashes and the sweet, worried tone of her voice.

He breathed through his nose and that grip on the phone got tighter. “Me? I’m fine, Keira. I’m rooming with a hundred smelly assholes who all claim they were set up. I’m good. I got a place to sleep, even if I have to fight to keep it and I have to shit in front of a room full of perverts who wanna know how big my dick is. Yeah. I’m fucking great.”

Her fingers shook and she had to hold the phone with both hands to keep it still. “I know you’re angry. I know this hurts more than anything—”

“Hurt? No. I don’t hurt. I’ve moved past hurt. I’m full on to rage, Keira. Fucking fury.” Kona emphasized his point with a slam of his free hand onto the desk in front of him and found no great pleasure at how Keira jumped with the sound. Her tears only pissed him off, made that heavy burn of anger in his gut bubble. Again, Kona closed his eyes, not wanting to see the tears. They were pointless. They were weak, and Kona was tired of being weak. He was ashamed of what Keira had turned him into; how she made him forget the promises he’d made to himself about women. Still, as he looked at her, a quick glance that did not soften his rage, he could not block out that her shoulders shook, and the tears came back harder, louder. Kona rubbed his palm over his face, fingers pinching in his eyes. “I’m only talking to you because I want answers.”

He looked back at her, nostrils flaring when she rubbed her face on her sleeve. “Oh…okay.”

“How did you two know where I was?”

“Luka followed you.” A sniffle, another swipe of her coat on her wet face, and Keira’s voice grew clearer. “A few months back. He said he followed you when you went out on runs for Ricky. When I told him you mentioned North Rampart, he said he had a good idea where you were.”

Kona leaned back, hand on the back of his neck. He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to call her all the stupid, insulting things in his head, the ones he’d silently whispered to her when he was supposed to be sleeping. It helped. It took away his grief. It made seeing her sting less. It made wanting her seem disgusting; a betrayal to his brother.

“Last question…”

“I have to tell you something.”

He watched her again, ignoring the smile she tried to force. How could she be happy? How could she think that their lives weren’t over? Luka was gone. His future was hopeless and this bitch smiles? What the hell does she have to be happy about?

Keira needed to understand how irrevocably they’d screwed up their lives. She needed to see that he had nothing to offer her; that he didn’t want her, not now, not ever again. If she’d just listened. If she’d just stayed back in Mandeville, Luka would have never…he would still be here.

“Unless you’re going to tell me my brother is alive, then I don’t wanna hear it.”

“But Kona…”

“No!” Another slam of his fist, this time on the glass and a guard closed in, his presence a small warning that Kona should get a handle on his temper. The desk under his elbow was Formica, an ugly harvest gold color that reminded him of bad seventies sitcoms. He leaned against it, taking cool breaths, trying to calm. “Why the fuck didn’t you stay, Keira? Why couldn’t you let me handle this shit on my own? Why didn’t you stay home?” He looked up at her pissed off when his eyes burned. “Why?”

“Kona, please…” Keira put her own hand against the glass, leaned on her arm and Kona had to shut his eyes again. He couldn’t stomach seeing her like this. He couldn’t stand the anger he felt, that deep, alien need to attack her. It felt abnormal, it felt like defeat. “I’m so sorry about Luka, but he told me…months back when I found out you were on that shit…” she sniffed again, her fingernails scratching against the glass. “He told me if I ever thought you were in trouble to call him. I…I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to protect you. I still want to protect you.”

She blamed Luka? His paranoid, anxious brother? Keira took her own guilt and shoved it at the feet of someone who couldn’t defend himself. Convenient, insulting and when Kona acted, moved to scream at her, the guard to his right leaned against the wall, his cocked eyebrow all the warning Kona needed. He pulled the phone in both hands, lowered his forehead against it as he let his breath come in quick, pull away the urgent desire to slam his fist against the brick wall behind him.

He cleared his throat, let one last deep inhalation move out of his lungs and Kona was able to meet Keira’s eyes again. “It’s done. There’s nothing left for you to protect me from, Keira, except yourself.”

The pale skin darkened and the lips Kona had grown so used to kissing, pulling comfort from, stopped shaking. Keira sat up, shoulders straight, attention unwavering as she watched him, analyzed ever twitch he tried to still on his face. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m done with this shit.” He waved his freehand between them. “I’m done being your little bitch. I’m done pretending that I feel something for you.”

I’m a fucking liar, he thought.

“What are talking about?”
“You’re a stupid bitch, you know that? You think I only wanted you? You think I was only seeing you? You actually believed that whole ‘I love you’ bullshit?” 

Kona should have found some sick pleasure from the expression on Keira’s face. He should have laughed at her. He should have felt vindicated somehow that his words moved like poison over her features—fractured the impassive frown until fury made her mouth dip hard. But there wasn’t satisfaction in that look. If felt, instead, like a gut punch, one of his own design. But he had to try. He had to make her walk away before he forgot his anger, before her tears, the smile she’d tried mustering up for him, made him forgive what she’d cost him. If he didn’t have that rage, he’d be left unprotected.

“Kona, don’t do this. Please.”

“Don’t fucking beg, Keira. It makes you look common.”

She saw his lie. He could tell; it was in the slow way she closed her mouth, how her tears dried. How no more spilled down her face.

 “Walk away, Keira. Walk away from me and don’t look back.” When she hesitated, kept staring at him as though she expected him to change his mind, like his heart wanted him to do, Kona hung up the phone, moved his chair back and motioned for the guard, not wanting to hear any arguments. He barely offered her a glance and even that was dismissive: an afterthought she didn’t deserve. And it was that disregard, the way Kona acted as though she meant nothing, that had Keira reacting.

Then, his Wildcat broke, kicked her chair back and screamed, interrupting the conversations all around them. Keira swung back, beat the receiver against the holder over and over and over again until it was only shards of plastic hanging together by gauges of wire. Her rage shocked Kona, had him reaching forward, knocking against the plate glass to calm her. “Stop it! Are you crazy, Keira?”

“Oh I’m crazy, you selfish asshole.” The guards had her, struggled with her before she had finished screaming, but Kona could not tear his gaze from her face; her rage was primal, had him fighting back that unnatural desire to hate her; had him desperate to touch her, to forgive her.

She struggled against a heavyset guard who held her against his large stomach until Keira settled, lifting her hands so that he would loosen his hold and still Kona watched her, mouth open, heart thundering. Her words were muffled behind the wall of plastic glass, but he knew her so well, caught every muted sound that left her mouth.

“I’m walking away and leaving you alone. I’m walking away because I have to save myself. But you fucking remember this: I will haunt you, Kona. When you think of me, see my face, hear my name, you’ll only remember that I loved you. You’ll remember that my love for you was never thin. You’ll remember this moment because it will be the biggest regret of your life.”    

Keira jerked out of the guard’s hold, and Kona watched her hair, those soft chestnut waves he loved to kiss, loved twisting in his fingers when he took her. He would never touch them again. He would never touch Keira at all. He’d done this. Convinced himself that this was what he wanted. Leaving Keira was his sacrifice—the absolution he’d willingly paid for his twin’s death. He told himself that he hated her, that he’d never really loved her, but as the door closed behind her and Kona was ushered into the hallway, back down to his bunk, the swing of her hair, the rage and betrayal that bunched up her face, would not leave his mind.

He would never see her again.

He would never touch her again.

The thought crippled Kona, made his stomach twist, made a sharp blister of desperation coil and pinch in his gut. He ran for the bathroom with a guard trailing behind him, yelling his name, telling him to stop, and Kona did, finally. Right inside the bathroom. He fell to his knees, scared, angryand desperate and Kona threw up in the toilet.