I knew this about the family. Of course I knew about Kona, who didn’t? Keira’s history came to me in the afternoons she and I would sit out on the patio and chat, watching the slow waves brush against the lake shore. Still, that didn’t mean this whole situation with Ransom was ever going to go anywhere. No matter how much his parents liked me.
Kona didn’t relent, though, nodding here and there as Koa pretended to read his book, the whole while watching me, as though he wanted to make sure I understood what he was hoping for. “It’s good Ransom kissed you. I’m glad for it. Maybe that means he’s starting to let go of all of…that. He’s beaten himself up for so long about it.”
I looked out of the window, debating the wisdom of telling Kona anything about what I felt. He was Ransom’s father and they were close. Instead of giving in to how good it would feel to confess my feelings for Ransom, I tried to be logical.
“I’m happy to help him as much as I can, Kona, but please, don’t get your hopes up. It didn’t exactly end with us holding hands and skipping out to the parking lot.”
“Leann mentioned that too.” He didn’t look remotely ashamed that he sounded like a huge gossip.
“Oh,” I said, letting Koa sit in my lap when he crawled onto it. “I guess she did.”
“Look, I’m not expecting anything, but I can’t help hoping that my boy can get past the stuff that’s been weighing him down.” Kona stretched out his arm, brushing my shoulder so I’d look at him. “I know better than anyone about guilt. But if he doesn’t learn his lesson and move forward, I’m afraid he’ll be stuck. I don’t want that for him.”
“I don’t either.”
“Good.” He smiled again, this time longer, seeming satisfied as he watched my expression. “Then maybe you give him some wiggle room? Maybe be patient while he sorts out the stupid sh…stuff in his head. He’s my kid, very stubborn and a little hot-headed.”
“A little?”
“Fair enough.” Kona shook his head, as though it was hard to admit his own flaws, but that smile remained and he continued to watch me. I didn’t know what he wanted from me exactly, but I was certain in the end, one of us would be disappointed.
The smile lowered, as though Kona debated if he should say what came next. “I see the way he looks at you.” My eyebrows came up, curious, a little surprised but Kona didn’t change that expression, as though he knew more about what Ransom was thinking that Ransom did. “He might not know it yet, but he wants to be your friend.”
“Friend?” Koa asked and Kona laughed again, picking up his boy.
“Let’s go see Mama.” And they disappeared out of the room.
The patio door gave easily when I opened it and I stood under the awning, watching the waves on the lake, not really seeing anything but the distant reach of the sun across the water.
Kona was concerned about his son, I knew that. Keira was as well. I’d caught the way her gaze followed Ransom when he’d talk about school or the exhaustive football practices and games. They loved him very much, anyone could see that. And the touch of that ghost, the one that came to him out on this lake had kept Ransom from the promise of the person he could be, and instead had made him the boy who had withdrawn from the world.
Ransom had kissed me, then pulled away. I had a feeling I knew why, but if Kona and Keira’s concern were real and they needed me, I could put aside what I had kept hidden from Ransom, couldn’t I? Isn’t that what you do when you care about someone? You put their needs before your own?
I wasn’t sure what Kona thought about my very thin connection with his son, but if Ransom needed a friend, that’s what I’d be. As much as it may hurt me, as much as I wanted Ransom to kiss me like he had again, to be more to him than simply a friend, I could push aside what I felt and be what he needed—either as myself or as the dancer.
13
Trent wouldn’t shut his damn mouth.
“Anyway, like I was saying, you need to come back with us. There was this one chick I ran into backstage. Fuck, was she hot. I was drunk though, but still. What happened to you again?” He lifted the dumbbell over his head, grunting, breathing through his nose. “You…” he released a long grunt, “disappeared on us last time you were there.”
It wasn’t a question, but the guy still stared at me, watching as I kept the bar even above my head. I knew he expected a response, but I still continued to ignore him as I finished my rep.
“Where’d you go?” Marshall stood next to the bench, wiping his red face with a towel. He stunk something fierce and I hurried through my rep just to get away from the downwind reek of him.
That prick followed.
“One minute I saw you there, the next you disappeared.”
Sweat and general funk isn’t pleasant. It’s especially not pleasant when you’re in a weight room with fifteen other linesmen trying to hurry through their workout before game day.
“I got caught up in something, man.” That wasn’t a lie. I had been caught up by the private dancer but Marshall’s nosy ass didn’t need to know that. He also didn’t know I ran out of there as fast I could afterwards because it looked like I’d pissed myself.
Heading to the showers I relaxed when the guy nodded and I lost him near the lockers. “Jackass,” I muttered under my breath, desperate for a little quiet and a lot of solitude while I washed away the sweat and tiredness of the week.
I had it in spades.
The water was hot, moved over my sore joints and muscles, massaging against my back as I dipped my head under the spray. I had fucked up, yet again and wasn’t sure there were enough showers in the world to take that fuck up away.
Scrubbing my face, I could only see surprise on Aly’s face as I took her mouth over and over. At first, I told myself it had been the Kizomba—the music moving into my body, working some kind of seduction, her fine, fit body brushing against mine—it had all added up to me losing my head, to me wanting to touch, to take and giving into the want without thinking. She had some kind of effect on me that I didn’t understand. When I was near her, close to her, I forgot that she wasn’t my type. I forgot that I didn’t want her. I forgot that I didn’t deserve her.
Never mind that I’d been thinking about her for weeks before that kiss. Never mind that if my dad’s loud orgasmic outburst hadn’t cocked blocked me, I would have definitely kissed her the night of the booster fundraiser at our house. Still, that night at the studio, none of my earlier attempts to convince myself I didn’t want her seemed right to me. Telling myself that she wasn’t my type had seemed like the biggest lie I’ve told myself—and I’ve told many. I’d wanted to take what wasn’t mine.
And I had. Just for a moment.
She’d felt so small under my big hands. She’d smelled too good, that exotic jasmine scent again and I could not help myself. I’d been around her, watched her, saw what had been invisible to me before in our infrequent run-ins at the studio. I’d always been so absorbed in my own head, in my own misery that not much penetrated my attention. But being around her these past few weeks, hearing her sing, being so close to her when we danced—Aly had become so clear and so visible to me.
But just kissing her—the first real kiss I’d had in such a long damn time—had awakened that voice, and it berated me, ripped me in two just for tasting something I had no business touching.