Keira was naked, lying on her stomach. It took a moment for her thoughts to organize, to remind her that it was Kona’s bed she was sleeping in. It was his large hand settled on her lower back. It was Kona last night that made her body ache.

She smiled, flashes of them together, him taking her hard, then loving her and loving her again, playing like a slow loop in her mind. His touch, his mouth, his lovely, wide dick had brought her to the brink over and over. She thought no one could come that much; that the female body wasn’t capable of that many orgasms. Kona disproved all that.

A quick glance down her body and Keira saw the marks, lovely, faint purple bruises, several teeth marks that she would wear like a badge of honor. They could last a week, maybe two, and the idea of more of them, twins to the colors across her skin, given to her in the weeks ahead…

The thought of the weeks ahead wiped the smile from Keira’s face.

They only had three more weeks until summer’s end. Steven’s estate would be organized by then. Those poor kids he never met, those abandoned women he treated like whores would get what remained. They’d have it all in three short weeks. And then what? Where would she be? Nashville? Here with Kona?

He cared about her. She knew that. He loved Ransom. Keira had seen that in every glance Kona shot their son’s way. He was proud of the boy she’d raised. He wanted to be a part of the man Ransom would become.

But where would that happen? Would he leave New Orleans and the opportunities here, to live with them? Did he want to live with them?

Despite the mention of “always,” they hadn’t discussed much last night. They teased each other, tortured each other with their tongues, with their bodies, but Kona didn’t say he still loved her. They hadn’t made plans for what would happen next.

He still hadn’t apologized. Not for what he’d told her that day. It was stupid, she knew, to hold onto that anger. It made no sense for that hurt, that betrayal, to fester in her chest. She had Ransom. He’d been the offering Kona had made for his sins without ever knowing. Keira shouldn’t still be angry. But she thought she still needed the words. She needed that “sorry.”

A quick roll on her back, and Keira watched Kona sleep. There was a small grin on his face, and his features were relaxed—forehead smooth, mouth unclenched; sated, happy. She wanted to stare at him. She wanted to spend the day watching him sleep. Keira wanted to curl against his chest, have his arms around her. But for how long?

And then her life in Nashville came back to her. The responsibilities she’d created for herself. The obligations.

Keira closed her eyes, feeling a hefty weight of guilt and remorse coiling in her chest. She’d spent the night with Kona free of worry; free from anything that would take her attention from his touch, his smell. She’d acted like a teenager without a care in the world. The last time she did that, she’d ended up shattered, broken, and her belly swollen by a baby.

Ransom could stay with Kona. The thought made her heart shutter, but it’s what her son needed. He’d be with Leann, with Tristan, and finally have the father he needed. But Keira? Coming back here, with all the ghosts of the past eager to consume her? No. She couldn’t do it.

Turning away from Kona, she eased off the mattress, movements slow, quiet, as she searched the room for her clothes. She’d leave him a note. He’d have to understand. She had a life back in Tennessee, and Kona wasn’t a part of it. He had his own plans, his own obligations.

“Where are you going?” He sat up, thin sheet around his waist, dipped so Keira could see the hard grooves of his stomach, the deep indentions near his hips.

She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t let him change her mind. He’d argue with her, try to convince her that she should stay. She just… couldn’t.

“It’s late,” she finally said, fastening her bra, ignoring how delicious Kona’s deep voice sounded, how his hair was rumpled from sleep. “I’ve got things to get to today.”

She upturned the thick duvet on the floor searching for her shirt and noticed Kona’s head turning, eyes on his clock. “It’s 7:00 a.m. What could you possibly have to do at 7:00 a.m.?”

“I’ve got a meeting.” It was a lie, a bad one, but Keira didn’t look at him, kept her intentions off her face. Keira’s shirt was wrinkled, and she shook it out. “So do you.” Back to him, she sat on the mattress, picking lint off her shirt before she tugged it on. Behind her, Kona slipped to the end of the bed, just the sheet covering him, and she closed her eyes when he touched her, stopping her as she tried to dress.

“Hey. What is this?”

She looked at him, gave him a brief, dispassionate kiss. Her smile was forced, that touch too brief, and she knew Kona wouldn’t buy that she wasn’t hurrying away from him. “This is me getting dressed. That’s all this is.” She gave him another quick peck and came off the bed picking up her jeans from the dresser.

“I know what this is,” he said, not stopping when she sighed.

“What are you talking about, Kona? I’m just getting dressed. I can’t stay in bed all day.” Her jeans were up, zipper fastened, and Keira decided to be flippant; not to let on to why she was really leaving. She couldn’t linger there, couldn’t put off what had to be done. She tried not to watch him as he slid from the bed; the sheet fell back and his wide back, that gloriously naked ass didn’t jiggle or flinch as he pulled on his jeans. 

One black ballet slipper was under the dresser, the other somewhere Keira couldn’t see, and she stopped, stepped back when Kona stood in front of her, hands holding her arms. “You’re running.” 

“No, I’m not.” Even to her own ears, those words came out too quickly.

Kona walked back, leaned against the dresser, and she moved around the room, finally spotting her shoe underneath the bed. She felt cold, chilled by the loss of his hand on her, by the way he folded his arms watching her. “If this isn’t you running then why were you trying to sneak out before I got up?”

“I was going to leave you a note.”

“A note?” Kona pushed off the dresser, coming too close to her, his large body intimidating, his mouth hard. “That’s what I get from you? After last night? I get a note?”

He always had to make everything difficult. He couldn’t just let her leave, could he? Wouldn’t let her walk away and she knew that. Since the night of Ransom’s party. She knew if she kissed him he would keep coming for her. He would come for her until she broke him. Until he broke her again. Like the last time.

Patience gone, Keira threw her shoe on the floor. “What the hell did you expect? You thought we’d fall back into it again? You thought I’d sleep with you and then what, exactly? We’d all be one big happy family?”

He didn’t like her anger; she could tell. Those massive hands were at his side, clenched into fists. “I didn’t think anything past you wrapped around me, but why does the idea of us have you running out like I’m some fucking douchebag you slept with when you were drunk?” Keira wouldn’t listen to this. He was being irrational, stubborn. She tried leaving, moving around him to reach the door, but he was faster, wider and blocked her path easily. “Because I’m not. Whatever else you think, I’m not just some fuck, and you damn well know it.”

“I never said you were.” People don’t change, things do. Kona was proof of that, and the idea was unsettling. It was infuriating. “God, you still do that shit.”

“What do I do?”

“You get these stupid self-deprecating ideas in your head and then run with them. You think you know me so damn well, think you know what’s going on in my head. You always did that and it drove me crazy.”

Hands over his face and a low, frustrated noise rumbling in his chest, Kona frowned at her. “What else am I supposed to think? You were sneaking out, trying to avoid this conversation.”

“I was not.” She pulled away from him when he reached for her, slipped on her shoe, but he still wouldn’t budge from in front of the door. “Kona, let me go. Please. I’ve got things to get through today and I don’t have time to smooth your ego because you didn’t get the chance to kick me out.”

A small twist of his head and Kona’s mouth dropped open, but he recovered, blinking as though he hadn’t heard that insult for what it was. Keira knew she was grasping at straws, searching for something that would push him away or at least move him from the door. Still, Kona’s anger was quick, face reddening as he glared down at her. “Shit, why don’t you tell me what kind of person you think I am, Keira? You think I fuck anything that throws it at me and then toss them out?” Her dismissive shrugged only stoked his anger further. “If you thought so little of me then why the hell were you with me last night?”

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t watch him, scrubbed her hands over her face to block out his anger, his shock. “I shouldn’t have been. It was a lapse in judgment brought on by too much time on Memory Lane.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You wanted me just as much as I wanted you, and now you’re running because you don’t want to admit the simple truth.”

“And what do you imagine that simple truth is?”

Kona was in front of her in two small steps, hands back on her shoulders, despite her struggling away from her. “You and me. It’s still there. It’s there even more than it was when we were kids. It hasn’t changed, it hasn’t left us, and I doubt it ever will.”

“God, Kona, please stop this.” Keira wished that wasn’t true. She wished that whatever she felt for him had died the day she boarded that Greyhound. But he was right. She’d known how right he was since the second she saw him in the Market. No matter how much time had passed or how many miles separated there was no extinguishing that flame between them.

Still, she couldn’t have him. She wouldn’t. Sometimes you sacrifice so much, give so much to others that you forget to save something for yourself. Keira didn’t know how to have what she wanted anymore. She’d forgotten how to be greedy for the happiness she once had. “You and me, we aren’t going to happen. We will never happen again.”

In the weeks she’d been around him, Keira had noticed the changes. Kona was calmer, easy going. He had relaxed, and time and distance seemed to have taught him control, discipline. He no longer let his anger control him. He wasn’t jealous or possessive. He rarely screamed at her, not since he’d met Ransom. That all changed now, and the man in front of her reverted to the hotheaded linebacker he’d once been.

A collectible football in a glass case on the dresser was the first victim of Kona’s rage. Then, the bench at the foot of the bed got kicked, shot across the room before Kona faced her; his hands shaking, his control slipping as he battled against wanting to touch her, reaching for her, and stepping away, out of her space. Finally, swallowing, fingers scrubbing his face, running through his tousled hair, Kona’s shoulders lowered, defeated, worn.  “Why are you doing this?”

She wanted him to understand. They had come too close to the past last night. The gripping, the tugging, the hard passion, it had all been her, what she wanted, but Keira’s loosened control scared her. She couldn’t be that girl again. She would never be that girl again.

“Because love isn’t like this. You and I weren’t in love.” She ignored how tightly he closes his eyes, as though hearing the truth was like a slap to his face. “We were addicted to each other, you just never understood that. You liked the chase and then you liked my temper, and it all just escalated.”

A rough growl and Kona’s voice lifted in a shout. “Don’t tell me what I felt…what I feel. You don’t know me; you aren’t in my head.”

“That’s exactly my point. We aren’t kids anymore. This isn’t you and me on campus making out after a game. We have a son. We have responsibilities, and you keep forgetting that. You keep forgetting the bad. You never remember the bad.” Keira couldn’t take that expression, the hard stare, the disappointment, his anger. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight praying he’d let her go, wishing that she really wanted him to. “God, Kona, you act like I was this great thing to you, like what we were was the greatest thing that ever happened to you.”

He moved quick, like a shot, and grabbed her face, fingers gentle, but firm on her face. “You were.”

The truth stunned her, silenced her until all she heard was his breath, the labored way he exhaled, the fierce, steady widening of his eyes. He broke her heart with that look, with the desperate way he leaned his forehead against her.

She tried for calm. Keira tried to collect herself, slow her heartbeat, but Kona smelled too sweet; his touch felt too right. Walk away. Walk away and don’t look back.

“And I’m not anymore.” She pulled his hand from her face, trying to turn away, not wanting him to know how much he affected her. “I won’t be again.”

“Keira, please.” He stood behind her, but didn’t touch her. She was grateful for that at least. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this.”

“You can’t, Kona. There’s nothing left to fix. We tried once, and it nearly broke me. I…gave you everything. I gave you absolutely everything I had, and you took it all.” Kona’s shadow lengthened across the dark floor, his wide arms curled up, hands on the back of his neck as though he had to restrain himself from touching her. “You were greedy for it, and it still wasn’t enough. And now, now you come back into my life, and you want it all again. You want more.” One glance over her shoulder and Keira looked down, unable to take the tremble moving his chin. “I can’t give you that. I won’t. You aren’t my life anymore. You can’t be. Ransom is.”

“What are you talking about, Keira? Of course it was enough.”

She turned, tears in her eyes and she leaned out of his touch when he reached to wipe them away. “Then why did you give me up? If I was so important to you, meant so much to you, why did you push me away? And why the hell did you not fight for me?”

His voices went soft, eyes shifting from the floor to Keira’s face. “I didn’t know how. Not then.”

“Well, I did.” A quick, annoyed wipe against her cheek and Keira lifted her chin, aching to sound proud, brave. “I fought, Kona. I spent the past sixteen years fighting and trying to make sure I didn’t become a cliché.  And I didn’t. I am more than that. All that fighting I did, worked. It worked too well. I gave you too much. I gave Ransom what was left. I don’t have anything more to give.”

Kona pulled his top lip between his teeth, and a hard line formed between his eyebrows as though he hated hearing the truth. “I would have been there. You have to know, if you’d told me, I would have dropped my entire life to be at your side, to fight for you, to protect you…both of you.”

She stared at him, shocked that he seemed to actually believe that. “No. You wouldn’t have. Your mother would have never let you. I was the haole whore she hated. The stupid slut that had her son forgetting about all her plans. And you listened. You were the good little boy obeying her.” Kona touched her arm, took a step, looking as though he needed to feel her, to hold her, but Keira was too worked up, too annoyed with herself, with him, to take his comfort. She pulled out of his grip. “You still are. Even today, she’s still got her clutches into you. You still wouldn’t fight for me.”

“I walked away from her, Keira. It’s been weeks…”

“She’ll come back, and you’ll let her. I can’t be around that. I…I can’t let Ransom around that woman. She wins every time, Kona. She always did. She’s your blood, and who are we?”

This time Kona didn’t let her pull away from him. This time, he moved forward, taking her shoulders, fingers firm as though he couldn’t let her go; as though he’d never let her go.

“You’re my family. Keira, you and Ransom, you’re my everything. No one else matters to me. I know I don’t deserve you. I know I threw everything we were away.” He stepped closer, hands on her face, thumb rubbing against her cheek. “You won’t ever know how it killed me. But I was scared. My brother died because of me, and I was so angry at myself, I hated myself for what happened to Luka. I was afraid that I was falling, that I was digging my own grave, and I wouldn’t drag you down with me.” There was a strange look on Kona’s face, eyes closing, head shaking, and he looked pained, conflicted, as though he warred with his thoughts, weighed and measured the logic of saying whatever was in his head. Finally, he loosened his grip, stepped back to pace before he leaned on the dresser, hands over his face. “I…I found you once. About twelve years ago.”

“What?” It seemed impossible to Keira. Twelve years? It didn’t make sense. How could he have found her and not known about Ransom? “You couldn’t…what?”

“I’d looked for years.” He moved his hands from his face, but Kona still rubbed the back of his neck, glancing at Keira as though his confession pains him. “I took a year off after…everything and when I got back to CPU, I was different. I was miserable. Nothing was good for me. And I just existed.” Kona’s shoulders sagged, his eyes finally staring right at Keira’s face. “I tried for two years to convince your mother and Leann just to tell me where you were. To give me a hint. They weren’t having any of it. You’d gone off the grid, and no one knew where you were. If they did, they weren’t telling me.” Keira moved toward him, but stopped short when he shook his head. “I need to get this out. Please.”

“Okay.” She waited for him to continue and hated that his mouth was drawn down, muscles around his eyes tensed.

When Keira sat on the bed, Kona pulled his fingers together staring at them, unwilling, maybe unable, to look at Keira while he spoke. “So I just lived, played ball, and went to class. I lived like a monk, Keira. I didn’t drink or sleep with anyone, I didn’t do anything but work my ass off because I was so lonely, so miserable without you, without Luka.”

She’d never once considered what life had been like for Kona without them. She believed he hated her. She believed he blamed her for Luka’s death. But she never believed that he was alone. He was Kona Hale, and despite the scandal of his arrest and the loss of his brother, Keira always thought that he’d pick himself up, that he’d go back to his life the way it was before her.

But as Kona kept his gaze on his clasped fingers, she understood that her assumptions had been wrong. He’d felt the loss she did, but there was no baby there to divert his pain.

“A year after I signed my first contract, I finally had enough money and I hired a P.I. The guy was good. But not good enough. It took him four years, and one day he hands me this thick file. But I just…I couldn’t touch it.” He managed to look at her—shame and guilt working in his eyes. “I was scared what I’d find. It sat on my kitchen table for a week and then, September 11th happened and I couldn’t get past the fear that you’d been there, on one of those planes, in one of those buildings. I kept seeing you dead over and over, Keira.

“The P.I. told me you were in Nashville, and I drove there from Florida. All night. I got to your place, and no one was there. I was exhausted and frustrated and so I stopped at a hotel, needing a rest.” Kona’s chest expanded, his inhale deep, his exhale weighted and then he pushed off of the dresser, sat next to Keira on the bed. “I was checking out, ready to go back, mad, frustrated and then…” Without looking at her, Kona took her hand, moved it to his thigh to rub his finger on her palm. His voice was low, as though the memory was too much, like he needed the feel of her skin to strengthen him. “I walk past a ballroom, and there you were, up on a stage, looking like an angel, singing, smiling. All I could do was watch you.” A slow lift of his chin and Kona watched her, eyes on her forehead, her mouth, slight, easy smile on his face. “You were so beautiful, so talented, lit from the inside, Keira. I was so proud of you.”

Those last six words were so heartfelt that Keira felt the sweet burn of tears in her eyes. Had she waited to hear that from him? Had she always needed someone to say those words to her and mean it? She realized that she had; she wanted Kona to understand, to respect her for the efforts she made, for the strength it took to walk away from everything she knew.

“And then, you leave the stage, land right in the arms of some guy I couldn’t see, and you looked so happy, baby. You looked like you were finally smiling and it was real and you...” Kona’s fingers still on her palm, lay flat and the small grin against his cheek isn’t amused, more critical than happy. “I thought you were with that guy. I thought you’d forgotten me and so I just turned around and left. I got back home and burned the file.”

She remembered the night; Mark had tried convincing her for months, years, to step out of the protection of their home, to show the world her talent. But the fear had always been there—the same fear that crippled her father. She’d made excuses to everyone, Leann, Mark, herself, and then that horrible day happened when the towers fell, and her life, everyone’s lives, changed forever.

“That was a songwriter’s showcase,” she told Kona, staring down at their hands. “I remember because Mark told me I had to do it. All those people died on those flights, and I was too scared to do what I loved. It gave me the motivation to get over my stage fright. That…that was Mark you saw me with me, Kona.”

A small head shake as though he knew and then Kona came to his knees in front of her, arms on top of her legs as he held her hips. “If had any idea…you being there…if I’d know about Ransom…if you’d told me, I would have walked away from everything. I wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought because I loved you.”

“And you would have blamed me.” Despite everything; what they were, what they’d created together, Keira knew he would have blamed her. It was inevitable. “I would have been the girl that destroyed the life you could have had.”

“No. You would have been the girl that saved me.” Kona sat up on his knees, coming closer, bringing one hand to her neck. “You were the girl that saved me. I haven’t been a saint. In fact, I tried to drive you from my head, tried to erase you completely, but Keira, you’re a part of me. You and Ransom, you’re the best part of me.”

“Kona, we can’t—”

“You’re scared, I know,” he interrupted her, palm back on her cheek, voice strong, fierce. “I don’t care about what could happen, baby. I don’t care about all the shit we did to each other in the past. I only know that when you’re around, when I’m near you, in you, everything else falls away. You make it stop. You always have.” He moved closer, leaning his forehead against hers. “You still do. And it will never be enough unless you’re mine. I’ve always been yours, Wildcat. I’ve always belonged to you completely.” He came back to her side, pulling her onto his lap. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away. I’m sorry you were alone.” Kona’s voice cracked and his fingers against her hip tightened. “I’m sorry my son never knew me. I’m so fucking sorry I lied to you. Keira, I’m sorry.”

She’d waited for those words. They’d become the tiny bud of expectation that fed her hungry soul. She had wanted to hear “I'm sorry” and “forgive me” even as she sat in the back of a Greyhound, a frightened kid, lost to the comfort that she’d let vanish from her heart.

Now he said it like he meant it. Those precious words left Kona’s mouth like a promise, like the desperate appeal for absolution of a dying man.

Two simple words that she had chased, had kept brimming, stoking in her heart and until this moment with the giant holding her; her Samson humbling himself, waiting until she'd grant his pardon, Keira realized that forgiveness had come to her a long time ago. 

It came when she felt Ransom swimming in her womb, telling her with sharp jabs and quick thumps that he would fill the empty spaces left by Kona’s betrayal. He was the promise of something she thought had died.

It came to her when the nurse put a swollen, bright-eyed boy in her arms, and she thought her chest would splinter from the thick love bursting in her heart.

Forgiveness came on the wings of time, when she forgot how deeply Kona wounded her, when she veiled the blinding pain his words had caused.

She forgave him, and he’d never known it. She forgave him, and in her mind, somewhere among the lost memory of the girl who loved him, she forgot that Kona’s betrayal had been a gift all along.

Keira had to know what today meant, what tomorrow would bring for them, and so she lifted his head, hoping that in her eyes he saw the plea, understood that she needed a promise he wouldn’t break. “Kona…do you…do you still love me?”

There is no tension in his face, no self-effacing frown that told her his guilt had overwhelmed him. Kona looked, in fact, like a man who had been given an absolution from his sin; like he’d been given another chance at freedom. “Wildcat…” he took a breath, head shaking. “I never stopped.”

 

 

 

He left her in his bed, body exhausted, worn from a morning of touching, pleasing, and then Kona kissed Keira on the temple, pulled her hair off her face.

“I’ll be back in two hours. Don’t you move from this spot.”

“Couldn’t if I wanted to.” She stretched, snuggled against those warm blankets that smelt of them and let Kona kiss her one more time. “Hurry home.”

He paused, grin stretching as he rubbed the pad of his thumb along her bottom lip. “I like that. You saying home.”

She didn’t know what her dreams were, couldn’t remember the details, but Kona’s arms were around her, his lips on her neck, down her back and Keira smiled in that half-awake, half-asleep bliss. Then, her cell on the bedside table screamed to her from that languid dream and Keira sat up, naked, the sheets sliding down her body.

Ransom’s picture came across her screen, him flipping the bird while blowing the camera a kiss and Keira accepted the call, yawned as she answered it. “Son, it’s only 10:00 a.m. Why are you…?”

“Why’d he do it, Mom?”

His tone was elevated, shaking, and Keira’s heart instantly thundered in her chest. He was upset, crying and the rattle in his voice told her he was having an episode. “Sweetie, what is it? What happened?” She immediately left the bed, scrambling around the room to find her clothes with her cell sandwiched between her shoulder and ear. “I’ll come get you right now. I want you to be calm.”

“Calm? You want me calm? The hell with calm, Keira.”

He only called her by her first name when his rage had crested, when he was beyond the point of controlling it. “Ransom…”

“I am so fucking done with him.” She knew he was aiming for rage, anger, but the curse word came out in a heavier shake, in a quiver that made Keira’s stomach burn. “I thought he gave a shit. I thought Kona really…”

“Sweetie, I want you to breathe and tell me what’s going on. I’m in the dark here.”

“Turn on the television.” And then, the line went dead.

Keira was torn, thoughts scattered by what she should do. She thought of calling him back, but she knew her son, knew he’d only ignore her call. She thought of calling Kona, then Leann to make sure Ransom was okay, but sense returned to her and she pulled on her clothes, thumbing through her phone to see if Ransom had left any messages, if Leann had. When she found none, Keira sat on the edge of the bed, clicking on the TV and she pushed her feet into her shoes.

The channel was on ESPN, and Keira stood, phone falling to the floor when she saw the grainy video on the feed, playing over and over. The commentators were analyzing what they saw, heads shaking in disapproval and Keira pushed up the volume, stomach twisting as that damn video replayed.

“…at the time he was fourteen.”

“Big guy for someone so young.”

“Just like his father.”

“And speaking of his father, Hale’s camp claims that Kona is aware of his son’s, and this is a direct quote, folks, ‘volatile, emotional problems’ that they are ‘trying to combat with medical and psychiatric treatment.’”

“Well, Bryan, that’s a lot for Hale to take on, and I have to wonder if the Steamers will still consider a contract with him. Seems like he should be sticking closer to home than in New Orleans.”

“Absolutely, look, Bob, here it is again. Hale’s kid picks this boy up and bam, right through that plate glass.”

Keira didn’t need to see the highlights. She was too familiar with that stupid video. Ransom at fourteen, hands on the collar of Mikee Sibley, a junior twenty pounds lighter than her son. She closed her eyes, seeing it as it played out, just as the principle had shown her the day she’d been called into an emergency meeting.

“Ms. Riley, we simply cannot have this. He won’t be welcomed back.”

Keira’s body was shaking, fingers barely able to grab her keys, her purse as she left Kona’s house.

“Ransom could have killed him and the damage to the lobby…”

“Where is my son?”

“In the security office.”

Keira drove down the road, wiping her tears from her face, gaze flicking through her phone on her lap as she tried to find Leann’s number.

They’d handcuffed her fourteen-year-old son. To them, he was a monster, the bully whose rage had spilled out of him when he found his friend crying against the lockers, when that small girl told Ransom how Mikee had touched her.

“He tried to hurt her, Mom. She was so scared. I…I was so mad.”

“I know, baby. I know you were.”

They called him a psychopath. They told her Ransom was unbalanced, but all she saw that day was a scared boy who didn’t mean to get so angry. She only saw his body shaking from fear, from humiliation.

And now, it came back. Two years later. He’d gotten so much better, had learned to control his anger. And Kona. Why the hell would he say that about Ransom? Why the hell would he allow his people to release that statement? Kona didn’t know anything about what had happened. He really didn’t know much about Ransom at all.

Keira weaved through mid-city traffic, fingers tapping against the steering wheel as she clicked on the speaker. One ring, two and Leann finally picks up.

“Keira?”

“Where is he?”

“Sweetie, I think he went back to Mandeville. He and Tristian were helping me clean the studio, but someone tagged him in a post and, my God, he just lost it. He wouldn’t stay. Keira, he was so mad. I’ve never seen him so mad.” In the background, Leann’s school noise rang out; music, young girls laughing, tap shoes against wooden floors and then finally, a click of a door and the noise quiets. “Tristan tried stopping him, and Ransom hit him.”

“Oh, Leann…”

“I know. He took my Volvo and left. Tristan thinks he went back to the lake house. He said something about packing and getting home.” Her cousin’s voice was high, worried.

Keira cleared her throat, tried to pull the emotion from her voice. “I’m sorry, Leann. This shouldn’t have happened. I don’t why Kona would…I don’t know how…”

“Sweetie, just drive safe. Don’t speed and get to him in one piece. We’ll deal with Kona Hale later.”

“Yeah. We definitely will.”