Thick & Thin (Thin Love Book 3)

by Eden Butler

  When she held on to me, sobbing, losing it completely after hearing Dad tell her he’d been accused of fathering two illegitimate children, I realized not even Bobby’s death had rattled her so hard. Kona’s potential betrayal, and his unwillingness to share it with her, cut her deeper than anything had before. At least, anything she’d let me see.

  She kept herself together, after Dad left. He had gone slowly, first settling his worried children. Promising them that this fight would not keep, that sometimes parents got angry with one another. He waited until they were asleep. Only then did he leave.

  There was a glint in Mom’s eyes now and I thought that maybe she was going to cry again. There were no shakes or quivers that moved the features of her face. No twitching eyelids or chin wobbles. Still, those big blue eyes watered as she stared out onto the lake, thinking private thoughts that she didn't feel obliged to share with me. Mom was great at many things—staying mad was just not one of them.

  I didn’t break her from her self-imposed trance. She needed her thoughts to get her past any lingering anger. Instead, I let her stare, keeping to herself; I leaned back in my seat, not thinking about a damn thing other than the room around us and how different it was since Mom had tossed out the guest bed and furniture.

  The walk-in closet had been rehabbed into a small recording booth—the door fitted with a small window and the walls padded with egg crates covered with red fabric. The soundboard extended eight feet across the front of the booth next to a 42-inch computer monitor and keyboard and tall stacks of black speakers and monitors situated around the board like an arch. There were a dozen or so acoustic and electric guitars hanging from hooks fastened into the brick walls, lush carpets covering the hardwood floors and two leather sofas along the back of the room. But nothing concealed the large bay window. It was something Mom promised she needed to clear her mind as she worked—the lake, the waves and the silent activity she witnessed from her large office chair behind that board. My mother certainly wasn’t a typical homemaker. She was many things, great at all of them, but it was in this studio, in front of that board or holding a guitar that she held the tightest, surest grip on her self-erected throne.

  By the slip in her features, how the edge of sadness crested along her face, I guessed the grip she held on everything was loosening. I shot for distraction, picking up one of the acoustic guitars from the wall behind me. Mom watched me, turning her chair as I started strumming the keys.

  Music had been such a part of my life it felt like breath—instinctual, natural. I’d been away from it way too long during my time in Miami, my time with the NFL, but it came back to me in a heartbeat. Mom rested her head back, smiling at the tune I played. “Is that yours?” That grin widened when I nodded and then, forgetting her mood and what had put her in it, she cupped the neck of the guitar, stopping my play. “Come write songs and produce music with me. I’ll make you VP. I’ll split everything down the middle and we’ll enjoy making music together.”

  “And I will be off the field?” There was a bite my tone that I hadn’t meant to put there.

  Mom removed her hand, head shaking as she closed her eyes. “Your father has contacts, can give you other opportunities. If you want to stay involved in the league I’m sure he could make some calls. He’s…he’s good at that shit.”

  She sounded bitter and I hated hearing that from my mother who had never told me once that I had limitations. She believed every person alive was boundless and given enough encouragement, anyone could make their dreams come true. This cynical Keira was something I hated. Especially since she’d already seemed to have judged my father without any real proof.

  “Mom, listen. Dad... well, he would never…”

  The whip of her head turning toward me, those glistening eyes shut me up quick. Her voice was hard and cold: “Don’t you dare.”

  “Mom…he loves you.”

  She couldn’t deny that. Her features softened then. She didn’t smile exactly, but the tightness around her mouth lessened. I let the moment ride, then returned to the guitar, strumming out a soft tune. “And I never said I wouldn’t work with you.”

  “No?” she asked, forgetting her irritation for a moment.

  “I like the idea of working with you and doing something that won’t get me knocked out so hard I can’t ever get up.”

  “Good,” she said, though I suspected the wrinkling of her nose was proof she hadn’t liked my little analogy.

  Then my own nose wrinkled a little when I caught the scent of cigarette smoke and diesel fuel. Cass needed to stop smoking and get a new truck.

  A moment later, our little reverie was interrupted. “Hey darling,” Cass said, tapping twice on the open door before he walked into the studio. He barely acknowledged me. “I know you said no recording today…” he knelt next to her, keeping his hand on her arm, “but I thought I ought to check up on you.”

  “I’m fine,” Mom told him, folding her arms tight. “Just going over a few things.”

  Cass nodded, but I got the impression he didn’t believe her and when he stood, adjusting that ugly white straw hat so that it came off his forehead, I understood what was happening. “Listen, darling, I know this is a shitty situation.” Mom opened her mouth as he stood, stepping behind her with his hands on her shoulder. “And believe you me, I did not like being the bearer of bad news…”

  “Cass…” But Mom was rebuffed, rendered a little helpless when Cass started massaging her shoulders. “That’s…” She looked exhausted then, leaning into that asshole’s touch and the steady grip he had on her, massaging away the tension.

  Mom was an easy target, always had been. She’d kept herself from relationships for so long that she didn’t know when someone was hitting on her. She had no clue how to flirt or seduce anyone, unless it was a slow blink or a cock of her eyebrow and then that only seem to affect my father, but then most everything she did affected him.

  For years my friends’ uncles, single dads and older brothers thought Mom would be susceptible to their charms. They’d walk all around their points, shoveling the shit heavy—complimenting her shape, her beauty, her cooking, the way she smelled, her talent, her ambition, none of them ever understanding that she didn’t get it. She’d hooked up with her college sweetheart at eighteen then had gone so damn long without a man, she couldn’t tell when an eager one had his sights focused on her.

  And now, that asshole Cass was making a play less than a day after my parents’ first real fight in thirteen years. If I hadn’t witnessed it, I’d have never believed seeing this shit. That bastard walked right in front of me, touched my mother like it was his right. Like he gave zero shits that she was married.

  “Why don’t you just let me handle things for you, darling? I can call the musicians in, get them to record some more tracks. Hell, I even know a gal that can get the PR rolling…” He stopped talking when she leaned forward, smiling wide when Mom released a small groan of pleasure, looking way too proud of the affect those hands had on her. “Like that, gorgeous?”

  Mom leaned forward further, resting her elbows on her knees as Cass moved his hands over her shoulders, down to her back. That’s when I stood and that jackass finally noticed my stare, how I held my hands in fists, leveling one harsh look at him with a clear intent: Back the fuck off.

  “Cass,” I said, cocking my eyebrow when he kept rubbing her shoulders. It was only then that my mother seemed to remember where she was and what she’d allowed. She brushed his hands away and straightened in her chair.

  “Ransom.” He nodded, a small challenge that dumbass thought I wouldn’t take.

  “Now isn’t the time for you to be here.”

  “I think your mama…”

  “My mother doesn’t need your company.” I came to her side, ignoring the expression on her face when I rested my hand on the back of her chair. “Pretty sure she told you she wouldn’t need you today.”

  “Keira…” Cass said, not looking away from me, but if t
hat wannabe cowboy thought my mother would give in just because he gave a good massage, he’d be dead wrong.

  “Cass, I’m busy at the moment and there’s nothing here for you to do.” She rolled forward in her chair, fiddling with the sound board, not bothering with even a glance at his face as she dismissed him.

  “Alright then.” He moved that grungy hat again, lowering the brim over his eyebrows, gaze hard and settled straight at me as he spoke to my mother. “But you need anything, darling, anything whatsoever, you give me a call, hear?”

  If she heard him, she didn’t say. Mom didn’t do anything more than power up her computer and load a track. A slip of her headphones over her ears and she was distracted by the music as it played. Cass glanced at her, sullen, before he left the room and I followed behind him, watching him walk slowly down the hallway before he disappeared toward the front door. I didn’t move from my spot until I heard the slam of the door and then walked across the house, moving aside the front window curtains until that asshole cranked up his rusted white Ford and left down the road.

  Make me immortal

  With stardust skies

  Showers of a thousand lives

  Shining in the bright green depth.

  Make me immortal

  With one timeless touch

  Birthed in your heart

  Beating in time with mine.

  Make me immortal

  With whispers of heaven

  Wrapped in your breath

  Warming my immortality

  Fifteen

  Along the backside of our rental space is the quietest studio. It’s the smallest of the three studios we’ve set up for different classes and there is a constant whine from the exposed duct work anytime the AC or heater kicks on. There is seclusion in that place with only a small hallway faintly lit separating the door and the small open area with hardwood floors and a mirrored wall reflecting the exposed brick on the opposite side of the studio.

  I didn’t hear that AC unit cranking to life. I didn’t notice the loosening cracks of mortar along the brick. Not that night. Not over the moan of strings and chords and the lullaby that silenced my mind and sent me away from the building, away from myself. Arabesque and I moved into the strum of violins, the soft melody that kept me moving, kept me pretending that my world wasn’t a cluster of fighting thoughts. The images were too scattered and I used the music, and the cambré, the jeté to keep me focused. To keep me from thinking, from feeling too much.

  Keira’s heart was broken. I remembered the feeling, how sometimes you feel the splinter inside your chest. How the recall of a smile, the sound of a familiar chorus reminds you that you are not whole. It’s the constant recall that you are split in sections. You may have pasted the parts together, lying to yourself that you don’t miss his touch or the way his laughter shot straight to your belly. But it’s just that—a lie. The half-truths we smear over our thoughts, a gauze to kid ourselves into believing we aren’t irrevocably broken.

  “He lied, Aly.” Her face had been turned away from me, her eyes on Makana and the other girls as they danced and twirled and kicked through the steps of their competition routine at the studio just hours before. But Keira’s soft voice had still carried in my ears. I’d glanced at her, expression drawn, bags under her eyes, then back to the girls, and again she said, “He lied.”

  For once, thoughts of Ransom didn’t distract me. He wasn’t there, off at therapy making Keira leave the lake house after three days secluded alone in her studio ignoring her life. But Mack needed her. Koa did and Ransom’s therapy was the distraction that pulled Keira back into the world.

  I ignored the other parents as they looked away from the studio window, trying to catch a glimpse of Keira, likely wondering why she hadn’t bothered with make up or even cared enough to change out of her yoga pants before she brought Mack in for practice. I’d reached out to her, squeezing Keira’s hand, but left it at that, realizing that the small show of support I gave had helped at least a little. The threatening tears had stopped when I glanced back at her face. Then I listened when the words finally came to her, letting her curse Kona because it made her feel better. She didn’t ask for my advice and I didn’t offer it. Maybe I should have, but hell, what did I know about love? Who on God’s green earth would listen to me about how to maintain a healthy relationship?

  The memory of Ethan's voice came to me: “You can’t be with me and still love Ransom. Not the way you do.”

  It was then, right there with Keira sitting next to me, with Mack in my studio committing each step to memory that I finally accepted that Ethan was right. I couldn’t be with him and love another man. If I decided that taking Ethan’s solid, comfortable life, where all my needs would be met, not merely the physical ones—if that life would be better than a life of spontaneous combustion and chaotic, intense intimacy, then I’d have to willingly place Ransom in my past once and for all. But that acceptance also clarified something I didn’t want to face: I also couldn’t accept the love that Ethan gave me, and still love Ransom and his family the way I did.

  If I wanted a life with Ethan—one that held no demands or kept no expectations yet promised equal footing, rather than one that had me always playing second fiddle—then I’d have to leave them all behind. I couldn’t be so close to Ransom and hold myself apart from him. We didn’t work that way.

  Could I do that?

  Probably not.

  Did I want to?

  God, no.

  It was struggling with that dilemma that had me seeking out the isolation of my studio hours later, alone with the heat crowding the air and looping tracks on the sound system pushing me into a solitary dance. It was the only way to work out what I needed instead of obsessing over what I wanted. Every time I thought I had accepted the obviously smart decision—a life of security and consistency, of personal fulfillment—something else would pull me back into questioning my head and my heart.

  There was a lull in the music. One track ended and the crackle of white noise left a chill over my skin. I’d landed in position on that last downbeat. The vibration from the music still faded around me as I lowered my arms, as the sweat on my back slid down my spine.

  And then, a different awareness slipped into my bones. My body was not cold. There were no tremors from the drop in temperature. There was only that warm, buzzing sensation that came to me anytime Ransom was near.

  Another dance was about to begin, one that hadn’t seemed to end. Not since he came back home. Not even since the night of the recital when I promised someone else I’d love them forever. Ransom had not let me go, had not stopped wanting to dance that dance with me.

  I didn’t need to look up, or glance across that mirrored wall to know he was there. My body knew him, my heart did. I didn’t retreat, though I knew I probably should have. This would end in heartache, all of it. I was pretty sure that my mind was made up. There couldn’t be a future. Not the one he wanted. Not one where what I needed was an afterthought.

  But maybe, just one more time, I could say goodbye.

  A final goodbye.

  A real one. Before it was too late and I would be beyond goodbyes.

  I did nothing but lift my gaze to his silhouette when the music started up again. The same song that we’d danced to a million times before. Old by now, but constant. I’d danced to Wicked Games for Ransom years ago, when he didn’t know it was me. When I wore a mask that kept me well hidden. Now there were no masks. There was nothing but his solid body coming right at me and the Weeknd’s sultry, filthy promises pouring from the speakers.

  Ransom stalked his prey, stripping off his hoodie, his beanie, letting them fall on the floor until he stood behind me. Until his arm came around my waist, pulling me against him, moving with the music, demanding that I do the same.

  Like before, I let the music pour into my cells. I let him lead—Ransom’s soft, gentle fingers on my bicep, in the bend of my elbow, directing my arm up. He always led me. Had he ever stoppe
d?

  “Move for me.” He wasn’t asking and because I was weak, because I was helpless when he had me—when I let him mold me like putty—I listened.

  The sway of hips, limbs, bodies only inches, a fraction of that, apart. This was more erotic, closer than any Kizomba we’d ever danced before. It felt natural. It felt right and when Ransom dipped me, holding my waist, making me arch, I exaggerated the movement, driving my shoulders back as he held me, swayed my body so that my arms almost touched the floor before he lifted me, still dancing, my legs around his waist, his hands dragging up my back.

  Now we danced differently. We forgot technique. We forgot everything but the heat collecting between us. We only knew the feel of fingers over damp skin, of mouths separated by hesitation.

  “Aly…” I knew what he was asking in the slow, soft release of my name. I knew what he wanted when he lowered us to floor, when he kept those large hands on my hips, when he leaned over me, blocking out the low light overhead. “Nani…makamae”

  Ethan’s face swam in my mind. How he urged me to examine what I felt. Is that what this was? Ransom over me, the smell of his body as the room heated, as we did—was I allowing this because I intended to say goodbye?

  Hands over my eyes, I patted my damp face dry, stilling completely when he lifted my left hand, looking down at the ring I hadn’t found the courage to take off.

  “Do you really want this?” He didn’t look at me when he spoke, like that diamond had him mesmerized.

  “I…I don’t know. In a way, yes, but... I’m…Ethan wants me to really think about what I want. I’ve been trying to figure that out—what I really want.”

  Ransom’s attention left my ring in a millisecond. His gaze jumped from that diamond to my face. He didn’t need to say a word for me to know what he thought. That beautiful face was expressive, open. There was no tension in his features, nothing to make his face look hard or pinched. No lift of his eyebrows as though my admission had surprised him.