by Eden Butler
Kona had flown most of his family in from Hawaii. Leann and her husband, of course, had made the trip from Florida, my staff from the studio had attended, Lettie and a few of the other tenants around the complex where I lived came as well, most of Ransom’s old CPU buddies and a number of Dolphins teammates, and Tristian even managed his groomsman duties and still paid attention to the cute redhead he’d somehow sweet talked into being his date. Wonders never cease.
We stopped at Latrobe’s on Royal Street finding the beautiful yellow building with the white trim and wrought iron railings crowded with cars and the sparsest littering of photographers there to steal celebrity shots of Ransom and Kona and Keira. I didn’t care. Let the world see.
“Fuck ‘em,” Ransom said, following my gaze to the small cluster of folks, paparazzi included, that had cornered behind a barricade that blocked off part of the street. Money well spent, getting the Second Line permit and the police escort to keep the media at bay. My husband gave his umbrella to the wedding planner’s assistant and took mine from me, pulling my attention away from the gawking crowd to escort me through the lavish black wooden doors, the glass panes lined with fine gold draperies. We were brought out of the main stretch of rooms, asked to hold back and wait for the entrance we should make.
“It’ll only take a minute or two to get everyone seated.” I barely noticed the fussy assistant fixing my dress, making sure the train was attached securely to the hook at the waist. I only cared about the smile on Ransom’s face, how he kept his gaze open, focused on me as he leaned against a chair, eyes unmoving over the rim of the glass of bourbon he drank from. “Let me go see if they’re ready,” the assistant said. And just like that, we were all alone.
He looked unreal. Like some sort of Polynesian warrior had been fitted into a tuxedo, clamoring for the freedom of nudity away from the noose of a tie around his neck. It wasn’t a traditional tux—no cummerbund, no bow tie. It was like Ransom—smooth, classy with a bit of an edge—gray vest, gray tie with a diamond fleur-de-lis pin, black pants and jacket and a white Plumeria with pink tips boutonniere wrapped in lei leaves and baby’s breath. As I looked at him, the notion that he was really mine nearly staggered me.
“Those eyes, ko`u aloha, they say a damn lot.” He put the glass down, nearly toppling it over in his eagerness to get to me. “My wife. God help me.” He kissed me carefully, fingers gentle against my face, mouth hesitant. “Fuck, do I want you out of that dress.” He stepped back, looking down my body, head shaking like he didn’t believe I was real. “When I saw you walking down that aisle, all on your own, looking like a fucking goddess, I swear, nani, I didn’t breathe for a good two minutes.” Ransom held out my arms to get a better look at me. That expression, the wild, hungry heat I noticed in his eyes made me think I was a goddess. And I wanted to be the fearsome thing he saw in me. “It should not be right, this dress. Brides are supposed to look like princesses, not vixens.”
“Is that what you think I am? A vixen?” My laugh was soft and it transformed into a moan when Ransom kissed my neck. “Because…” a little sigh left my mouth as he continued to kiss me, “because that’s what I feel like. A vixen. Your vixen, anmourèz mwen.”
“It’s a suitable description for how you look, baby.” I let him go on kissing me, pulling him close when he used his tongue to kiss a path just under my neck.
The dress had been on purpose. I’d never understood women who spoke about their wedding day as though they wanted some Disney fairytale poupou. I’d never once felt like a princess and I had no desire to start on my wedding day. I wanted to look like how Ransom made me feel: alive, wanted, desired and yeah, sexy as hell. So Lettie and Keira had gone with me to look for a dress, knowing that subtle wouldn’t do. Knowing that fluff and billowing skirts wouldn’t hold my interest.
We’d found a tiny shop called Kisten’s in Uptown, just a few blocks away from my new studio. I’d left Camp Street out of respect for Ethan’s feelings and Ransom’s notion that Ethan seeing me every day, knowing I hadn’t chosen him, was just mean. We had invited Ethan to the wedding, but he politely declined, sending in his stead a very old, very expensive bottle of scotch, and a lovely worded note, hand written, wishing us all the happiness that our lives could hold.
Kisten’s shop was no more than a thousand square feet and every inch of it was cluttered with wedding dresses, prom dresses, and outfits I was sure only a Drag Queen could pull off. All of them designed and made by a young team trying to get a little notice in a very dense market.
“I want something sexy. I want my husband to be panting over me all night.”
The owner’s big brown eyes had widened and the twitch of his mouth had told me he already had idea bouncing around in his head. “I got you, boo. Don’t worry.”
And I didn’t. Not once Kisten got out his measuring tape and sketch pad. Then we got to work, the result of weeks and weeks of fittings, consultations and just a few arguments was a dress that did have my husband panting. Like he was just then. Hands slipping over my waist, down to cup my ass.
“Nani, let’s do it right here. I’ll lock the door.”
“No, bata,” I laughed, slapping his fingers off my dress when he tried lifting it. I pushed away from him to stand in front of an ornate, aged scalloped mirror hanging from the cracked plastered walls. He came behind me, not touching, but those eyes moved quick, gaze fanning over my body. The look on his face made me smile bigger. Kisten was a genius, had worked real magic.
The dress was backless with a simple sweetheart bodice. At the back it dipped below my waist, was held up with thin spaghetti straps. The material was very fine silk, so thin that when I stood in direct sunlight, the clear silhouette of my body was visible. That’s what I’d wanted, refusing Kisten when he suggested a slip. The bodice was laid with an intricate pattern of loops and swirls weaving around my waist, the design circling down my hips and onto the back of the dress so that my ass was accented. That too, was intentional. Ransom loved my ass and often told me it was one of my best features. But my favorite part of the dress was the train, which continued the swirling design as it cascaded straight down and trailed behind on the ground.
The dress was for him. And I wore it with pride, but like Ransom, with him looking at me so hungry, so anxious, all I could think about was getting that dress off. “Alright, cheri,” I told him catching his gaze in the mirror, trying not to laugh when he smiled.
“Yeah?” He didn’t wait for me to answer or turn completely around before he had me against his chest, kissing me, fingers close to pulling the pins and the pretty gardenia and white Plumeria arrangement from the bun at the back of my head.
“Cheri…” I managed, moving my fingers to the front of Ransom’s pants just as the door behind us flew open and that damn assistant returned.
“Oh. Um, well, the guests are seated.” Two splotches of pink colored her cheeks as she looked down at her phone, not daring to watch us as we adjusted each other’s hair and clothing. “You’d be surprised, how often…” then the girl cleared her throat, as though she thought acknowledging what we were about to do wasn’t the most professional thing to say. Another low cough and the doors opened wider, the assistant handed me my bouquet and the loud announcement of “Mr. and Mrs. Riley-Hale” sounded from a microphone in the main rooms.
Then, everything happened so quickly—the pictures, the clutter of noise and activity, smiles and laughter, dances with my new brother-in-law, with Tristian, with every damn body, it seemed and the night continued on.
“Aly Cat,” I heard behind me, two hours into our reception and I gave Kona a grateful smile when he handed me a glass of champagne. I took two sips before he stopped laughing. We stood at the corner of the room, watching Ransom and Keira dance and for a second, I was reminded of the last time I’d seen them dance. The night of Keira’s birthday party. At my side, Kona nudged me, hesitating only a second before he smiled at me. “I’m not drunk this time,” he told, throwing me a wink. “
You know,” he said, clearing his throat as though he was eager not to remind me of that conversation, “Keira and I tried to do all this.” He waved a hand around the room, nodding toward the band on the other side of the building, to the crowds of tables fixed with thick gold and white linen table cloths, the surfaces covered in a mix of beautiful China and several small lanterns with fat, white lit candles inside and the waiters weaving through the bodies of drinking, laughing bodies. “Well, I tried, I should say. It was a fucking disaster.”
“But you managed to get married.”
“We did,” Kona said, hiding a huge grin behind his glass. “Thing about marriage I’ve learned over the years?” I nodded, welcoming his advice. “Just make your partner happy. That’s all you can do. If you both manage to do that, then you’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d seen him and Keira stick to that unspoken rule for years. Kona had messed that up just a few months back, but they were better now than I’d ever seen them before. Still, despite my father-in-law’s apology and Ransom’s promise he didn’t care about anything but being with me, in the back of my mind was the guilt I felt about not being able to help the Riley-Hale clan expand.
I moved the champagne around in my glass, not bothering to look at Kona when I spoke. “You sure that the whole no babies thing won’t keep Ransom from staying happy?” I looked at him, regretting the frown he wore. “Or you?”
Kona took a moment to just watch me, nodding twice before he swung his arm around my shoulder. “Remember a few years back when we hired you to chase around that loud little pēpē, then his even louder sister?”
I laughed, shooting my gaze across the room to Koa and Mack as they ate food that was probably too rich for them and laughed with a table full of Hawaiian cousins I didn’t have a hope of knowing by name. “Vaguely.”
“As far as I know, they’ve got plenty of my DNA and, a long, long, long time from now when I’m very old, possibly when I’m on my deathbed, then my other children can have kids. When they’re forty or fifty or so.”
I leaned away from Kona, mouth hanging open. “But you said…”
“Aly Cat, I was drunk and feeling a little sentimental that night.” He squeezed my shoulder, nodding to two of his friends as they passed by. “When will you learn? Ohana isn’t about blood. It’s about family. You know there’s a difference. Adopt. Don’t adopt. Have fur babies or fish. Kaikamahine, it doesn’t matter. Just do whatever you need to keep yourself and my keiki kane happy. Don’t worry about me. Keira takes care of what keeps this constant smile on my face.” I wrinkled my nose when he said that, his eyebrows waggling and pushed him away from me when Ransom and Keira returned from their dance.
Keira kissed me, held me tight and I smiled, catching the hint of wine on her breath. No one had been happier than Keira when Ransom announced we’d officially gotten engaged. She’d always been in my corner. Keira had been my friend and a lot of times, a real mother to me. But that didn’t ease her into the realization that her oldest son was grown enough for a wife. Keira squeezed my fingers, eyes a little watery as Ransom pulled me to his chest, inching me toward the dance floor.
“Slow down,” she told him and a few of those tears leaked out of the corner of her eyes. “Slow down, baby,” she whispered and I didn’t think she meant how quickly Ransom tugged me toward the dance floor.
But he won out, getting me to dance, something I’d never get enough of with him. The song was slow, one of my favorites, Crazy Love by Van Morrison, and I hummed against Ransom’s chest as he moved us, loving the smell of his cologne, and how tiny I felt with those large arms around me.
“You like this one, don’t you, makamae?” He moved his chin toward the band. When I smiled, gave him a quick nod, Ransom kissed my ear, whispering low. “Show me what the music does to you.”
That smile grew bigger when I looked up at him, shaking my head when he repeated the same thing he’d told me decades before. I’d worn a mask then and danced for him for some quick cash.
“If I did that, cheri, your mother would have Koa and Mack out of here in ten seconds and Kona would likely lecture me for corrupting his sweet keiki kane.”
“Ha, no, baby,” he said, pulling me closer. “My father knows I was corrupted way before you came along. Hell, I’m his kid, right? That shit is genetic.”
“You get a lot from him,” I said, moving against my husband with the press of my body tight to his. “Stubbornness.” I yelped a little when Ransom grabbed my ass. “Thick headed…hey now!” That little thrust against my hips had me yelping for a different reason.
“Something else,” he said, still smiling as he looked down at me.
“Yeah? What’s that, cheri?”
Ransom kissed me softly, just a brush of his lips over mine. “The unyielding genetic mutation of being totally and completely under a woman’s spell.” Another kiss and Ransom drifted his fingers down my back. “The pathetic, weak-kneed way our women make us completely useless without them.”
“That’s genetic, you think?”
He laughed, shifting his gaze around the room until he spotted Kona and Keira a few feet away dancing right along with the music. But unlike every other couple on the dance floor, their focus was on each other. Kona held tight to his wife, large hand spread on her lower back, his grin easy, soft as he watched her, but those eyes, duplicates of the ones I’d fallen for so long ago, held within those endless irises a need that I realized would never be met. These men could never be sated, never satisfied enough to look away even once from the women they loved.
“Yeah,” Ransom said, looking back at me as his parents kissed, a sensual, hot thing that made others around them either laugh or look away, mad with jealousy. “I think it’s genetic.”
“I’m glad it is,” I told him, letting the music wrapped around us like a blanket, warm, welcoming.
“Are you happy, nani?” Ransom asked with his chin on the top of my head and those fingers still running over my skin.
I looked around the room filled with the laughter of the people we loved most in the world—Mark and Johnny, their arms around each other, basking in the spectacle; Leann and Will, her husband, with their heads together laughing, sipping wine as they held hands on top of the table; Koa and Mack still engaged with their cousins, still laughing as though nothing could touch them; Lettie and Tristian’s date laughing at him as he and the barman laid bets, I guessed, that had something to do with the line of shot glasses laid out in front of him. And Keria and Kona, now sequestered away from the crowd, him leading her toward the courtyard in the back of the building, walking hand in hand. They stopped before they moved through the French doors, looking over at me and Ransom, two smiles of pride, of satisfaction shot our way before they disappeared into the crowd, likely trying to steal one of those precious, private moments that never seemed to come often enough for them.
Was I happy? Who wouldn’t be? This life? This man and the family we held together was a blessing I’d learned never to take for granted. Kona was right. Ohana had always been mine. It always would be so long as I had this man, our family to keep me safe, to remind me I was loved.
“Yeah, cheri.” I moved my cheek to his chest, loving the steady sound of his heartbeat and the secure feel of his hand along my back. “I’m happy.”
The End
Acknowledgements
And now it’s goodbye to Aly and Ransom. The Thin Love series started as one scene: a man seeing his first love across a crowded market, thinking of how fiercely he’d loved her, then how desperate his anger made him when he sees a boy, his boy, who looks just as he did at sixteen. I wanted to know how that couple had gotten to that day; what would force a woman to keep from her greatest love the child that he’d given her without even knowing it. I never expected Kona and Keira and then later, Aly and Ransom, to change my life. But they did, because they sent you to me. What a blessing they’ve been. What a cathartic experience this has been—exorcising the past.
&n
bsp; Thank you to each and every one of you who have taken this journey with me. Especially Sharon Browning, my editor, who is as much a part of breathing life to the Riley-Hale clan as I am. Thank you to my fantastic Sweet Team: Jessica D. Hollyfield, Amy Bernstein-Feldman, Kayla Jagneaux, Heather McCorkle, Joy Jagneaux, Trish Finely Leger, Jennifer Jagneaux, Tina Jaworski, Naarah Scheiffler, Laura Agra, Betsy Gehring, Allyson Lavigne Wilson, Allison Coburn, Chanpreet Singh, Emily Lamphear, Sammy Jo Lle, Lorain Testaburger, Michelle Horstman, Christopher Ledbetter, and especially to Melanie Brunsch, Lori Westhaver, Judy Lovely, Carla Castro, Jazmine Ayala, Heather Weston-Confer and Joanna Holland for the lightning fast beta. As always thank you to Chelle Bliss, Lila Felix and Penelope Douglas for your constant friendship and support. Thank you to Steven Novack for the beautiful cover and to the brilliant Jessica Shamburger for the poetry assistance. Your support is astounding.
Thank you to all the reviewers, blogs and readers who have supported me throughout this process and to you, haters, who want me to quit so damn bad. Just wait. I’m not remotely done annoying you. Thank you to Ing Cruz, to our LitStack family and to my Manuscript Mixens who cheer so, so loud for me and to the lovely ladies of the Relentless Reviewers for always cheering me on.
To my Corporate Hell sisters—Barbara Blakes, Marie Anderson-Simmons, Kalpana Singh, Sarah Cooper, Sherry Jackson and Karen Chapman, thank you for the lunch breaks, the laughs and your unfailing support. I love you all!
