Thick Love

by Eden Butler

  My baby sister looked beautiful and seeing her bow and that barely recognizable blush on her dark complexion was worth the trip from Miami or a thousand of those Keira Glares. All around us the crowd clapped and cheered, even my bratty kid brother managed a smile and a lifted chin as though he was as proud of Mack as we all were. It was a good night for our sister. A proud night for our family and I thought nothing could make me happier than watching Mack taking her bows or my parents’ proud, pleased smiles.

  And then, as that applause thinned and the congregation of dancers from all the routines crowded onto the stage, Aly King approached, took Mack’s had and kissed my little sister as she led the woman to the microphone center stage.

  God, but she was beautiful. Still.

  Her hair was shorter, still thick and wavy and swung down her back from the clip at the base of her scalp. She wore a red, fitted dress that accentuated her tiny waist and made her ass look like a plump, tempting apple. Even better was that beautiful smile, those thick, supple lips as she spoke into the microphone.

  I didn’t listen to that low, quiet voice, not really. It barely registered when she thanked the parents, when she explained how hard her dancers had worked preparing for the recital.

  “I thought for sure Aly wouldn’t make it,” Mom tried and I rolled my eyes, sending her a frown I knew she’d take as disapproval. “Leann said she was in New York this week and that her instructors would have to run the recital.” The lie was stupid and I guessed my mother knew it. She at least tried to hide her grin.

  “Mom, in five years Aly has never missed a recital,” I said, leaning toward my mother as I fixed my eyes onto the stage.

  “And you came anyway?”

  There was a little too much confidence in my mother’s voice and I shook my head when Kona laughed as though getting me to New Orleans had been some devious plot my parents were proud had been successful.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I told them, crossing my arms as Aly bowed and accepted several bouquets of flowers from her dancers.

  “It’s been a long time,” Mom said, sliding Koa out of the way to stand next to me. That hard, intruding glance at me felt like fire. Keira was always meddling. “She looks beautiful, right?”

  “Mom…”

  “Ransom, you’re going to miss your chance if you keep away from her.”

  I thought I had. Well, I thought it wasn’t time. Not yet and I didn’t appreciate my mother’s intrusion or how she’d spent the past four years nagging me about Aly. I knew she meant well. I knew my mother was just concerned that Aly and I had dragged our feet about our relationship. Well, our lack of a relationship with each other.

  “I’m not missing anything,” I told her, almost believing that I could convince my mother I didn’t ache from missing Aly.

  Four years was a long time to be without the person you knew in your gut you wanted more than anything. Four years was too long, but then, hadn’t we always said we knew we were end game?

  “No matter where I go, Ransom, my heart will stay with you,” Aly had told me the night she left our condo. Miami was too hot for her. I was too busy and she missed New Orleans. She missed the work she did with the kids at the Y and wanted to settle down. She wanted to plant roots.

  “Aly, I’ll never love anything like I love you.” I hadn’t lied. Not once and it wasn’t as though she’d left bitter. It wasn’t like separating was something either of us wanted to do. But it had taken us six years to finish college, to figure out how to work things out between her work choreographing recitals and routines in New Orleans and me settling with the Dolphins right out of the Draft.

  She hadn’t left with the intention of staying gone. I hadn’t let her leave without a plan to follow. But two weeks became a month. Then a month became six, and before either of us knew what was happening, phone calls and texts went unanswered and we were barely even responding to emails. Life just happened when we weren’t paying attention. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t missed her. It didn’t mean we hadn’t tried. We had. But each time we got back together again, those responsibilities we’d created for ourselves, the pressures both of us had, got in the way of us being together. We’d let it. We continued to let it.

  “You’re here for the weekend. Why don’t you at least spend some time with her?” That came from my father and when I glanced at him, jaw clenched, he didn’t bother looking shame-faced. He nagged me as much as my mother about Aly.

  “Why don’t you two mind your own business?” I forced a smile at them, hoping to conceal my irritation.

  “Ransom, you should know,” Mom started, ignoring my grin. “Aly’s been…”

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen…” Whatever Mom was going to tell me abruptly ended when a tall guy in an Armani suit I’d never seen took the mic from Aly on the stage. Around them, the crowd of dancers whispered behind their hands, nodded toward the man as though they were looking at a rock star, not some prick who held his hand at the small of Aly’s back. Except Mack who only glared at the guy like he was an idiot.

  That’s my girl, I thought.

  “Who is that?” I asked Mom with my gaze glued to the stage.

  “That’s Ethan. He…”

  “I wanted everyone’s attention and Aly’s before the craziness of the after party begins.”

  “Ethan?” I asked, not able to keep my attention off that asshole’s hand or the smile on Aly’s face. But I knew her. She’d been mine for six years. There wasn’t a flinch or break in her composure that I didn’t catch. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other in a while. It didn’t even matter that it had been four damn lonely years since I’d touched her. Looking at her wide, worried eyes and that forced, fake smile, I knew Aly was nervous, maybe a little wary.

  “He’s a lawyer. His offices are in the same building as her studio.” Mom stepped a little closer and I stopped leaning down toward her to hear over the crowd. “He and Aly…”

  “He and Aly what?” I asked, whipping my gaze at my mother.

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  I blinked, trying not to think about how heavy my chest felt. “She sent me a text about three months ago.” When my mother frowned and I could feel that glare simmering in her eyes, I hurried to explain myself. “Mom, we’ve had mostly away games all season and she’s trying to get the cash together to open a studio in Baton Rouge. We’ve both been busy.” The crowd’s low, amazed sound moved from a whisper to high pitched squeals that brought me back to the stage. To Aly looking down at Ethan as he knelt in front of her. “Shit.”

  “Keiki kane, it looks like she’s been busier than you,” I heard Kona say, sounding more annoyed than I’d heard from him in a long while.

  “Aly, I adore you,” Ethan said and I felt my stomach knot. “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  “Shit,” Mom said, grabbing my hand.

  At the same time I heard Dad’s loud, “Son of a bitch” then, finally, Koa’s amazed, “What the hell?”

  “Um…” Aly started, eyes blinking, head turning toward the audience as they cheered her on. There, right then, I saw the panic. Aly’s blinking stopped and she lifted her chin, held her shoulders straight. She didn’t like being put on display. She didn’t really like attention. That had been another reason she wanted to leave Florida. She hated being Ransom Riley-Hale’s girlfriend when the cameras and fans were around.

  Looking at her now, trying like hell to fight back the inclination to jump up on that stage and pull her away from this Ethan jackass, I caught the worry, that strained panic bunching up the corners of her eyes.

  “Um…” she said again and her mouth got tighter, the smile so wide and worried that I almost wanted to laugh. Almost. “Yeah…yeah sure,” she finally managed and I stepped back, dropping to the seat behind me when my knees hit the cushion.

  Mom’s fingers on my shoulder were tight. The crowd was stupid with cheers and noise. All around me there was sensation, sound
, the thrill of activity and the hope of what would happen for Aly in the coming months. It all made me want to vomit.

  “Ransom…sweetie,” Mom started, kneeling in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  No. I wasn’t. I’d had the most beautiful, the sweetest woman in my arms for six damn years and I’d let her walk out of my door. I didn’t chase after her.

  “Keiki kane…”

  “I’m…it’s fine,” I said, fighting to keep the shake out of my hands.

  “She’s only known him for a few months,” Mom offered and the idea that she’d say yes to this jackass after three months and no to me every time I’d asked her for six damn years had me more than a little confused.

  “Months?” I asked, shaking my head when my mother nodded.

  “It’s not…serious.”

  “No?” I stood, stretching my neck when my mother touched my arm. “Saying yes to a proposal sounds pretty damn serious to me.”

  I started to walk away, head for the Exit, but Mom grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at her. “She doesn’t love him, Ransom.” I moved my head back as though I couldn’t stand hearing that from my mother, but Mom pulled on my arms and I knew the glare on her face wasn’t made because she was angry. That was the Determined Keira Glare. “She loves you.”

  I could have argued. I could have told my mother that she was meddling, that I didn’t need her telling me how to run my life. But of anyone in the world, Mom knew what it was to want someone you couldn’t have. She knew what it was to walk away and know you can never go back again. I wasn’t an idiot. I was stubborn and distracted and maybe a little selfish, but as my mother’s glare got harder and I looked up on the stage to find Aly nervously showing off the ring on her finger, I knew time had long passed for me to get back what had slipped through my fingers.

  “The question is,” Mom started, “What are you going to do about this?” She nodded to the stage, ignoring the people around us leaving the auditorium. We were four rows back, right in the center and as Aly nodded to her dancers, at their parents up on that stage with that poor bastard’s hand draped possessively around her shoulders, she searched the audience, finally stopping on my face.

  “Ransom?” Mom asked.

  I kept my gaze at the stage, focused on the beautiful features of Aly’s face and the way she fought the relief I knew she felt. Someone spoke to her, got no response and divided Ethan’s attention so that Aly could return my stare uninterrupted. I didn’t know if she meant to hide her hand, but it curled into a fist and then moved behind her back as though Aly had moved it unintentionally.

  “Keki kane, you got a plan?” Dad asked.

  Finally, when she didn’t seem able to stand my gaze on her, or the way I moved it over her face, down that lush, beautiful body, Aly shook her bangs out of her eyes and plastered another grin onto her face, pretending like she actually cared what her new fiancé was saying.

  “Oh, I have a plan,” I told my parents, grinning at my mother when she laughed.

  And I did, one that I’d put into action that night and I didn’t care if Aly wasn’t ready for me, if she thought being with some asshole she didn’t know was easier than staying with me. I didn’t care if she thought she’d gotten over me, if she expected me to have gotten over her. I hadn’t. Neither had she, I saw that plainly just seconds ago.

  You don’t walk away from your own heart and expect to keep living. And you don’t look at someone you’re not supposed to love like their smile, their eyes are the only thing in life that feeds you. That’s how Aly had looked at me. That’s how I know I’d looked at her for years.

  That’s how I knew I was still her everything.

  “I’m not an easy person to love,” I told my parents, walking away from our seats. I spared one more look at that stage, smiling when I noticed Aly still watching me. “But that woman does it anyway. She just needs reminding.”

  To be continued…2016

  Acknowledgments

  I have no idea what it’s like to be JK Rowling. I’m nowhere near to her success, might never be, but I got a miniscule peek into what it’s like to write a book that many folks are anticipating. Bottom line: that experience sucks. As a writer you cannot hold out for or expect universal approval. Someone, somewhere is going to hate your work. Hell, one reviewer absolutely hated THIN LOVE because I didn’t reference the New Orleans Saints (who, let’s be honest, have sue-happy owners) and because I had the audacity to invent a make believe university capable of beating LSU. (Come on, lady, we exist in a make-believe world). The point is, no matter how eloquent your prose, how detailed your setting or how spicy your smoochy scenes, someone is going to hate your book. That was a huge worry for me after I’d completed the first draft of THICK LOVE. It is very different from THIN LOVE. But, I think it was supposed to be.

  Ransom and Aly are still very, very young. They’ve yet to truly branch out into the real world and have both been protected in one form or another by the adults who love and worry about them. So, as I mentioned in my Author’s Notes, it was never going to be the same book. Still, I hope you found this book just as passionate, just as satisfying as its predecessor.

  Immense gratitude goes out to my (sweet) street team Butler’s Bebes. They each held my hand a little. They each supported and cheered me on as I fretted over the quality of this book and the fear I had that you guys wouldn’t enjoy it. So thank you: Jazmine Ayala, LK Westhaver, Heather Weston-Confer, Trish Finley Leger, Judy Lovely, Allison Coburn, Kayla Jagneaux, Jennifer Jagneaux, Joy Chambers, Naarah Scheffler, Chanpreet Singh, Betsy Gehring, Melanie Brunsch, Allyson Lavigne Wilson, Carla Castro, Emily Lamphear, Heather McCorkle, Jessica D. Hollyfield, Laura Agra, Lorain Testaburger, Michelle Horstman Thompson, Sammy Jo Lle and Joanna Holland. LK Westhaver and Heather Weston-Confer especially helped me make some final decisions so thank you so much!

  Thank you to my Ride-Or-Die, Chelle Bliss for the wonderful headers, for your friendships and support and Brian Morgan for working his magic. Thanks also to Alleskelle for the fabulous PhotoShop edits and to Steve Novack for the beautiful cover.

  Sharon Browning, thank you for the fierce, fabulous edits and to Karen Chapman for the eagle eye copy editing and for talking sense to me when I thought I’d have to trunk this novel. Massive, appreciation to Kele Moon, Chelle Bliss and Trish Finley Leger for the first reads and to Lila Felix for all the marketing and PR advice and for being such a superwoman. Many thanks and my biggest hugs to my day-job cheerleaders Marie, Sherry, Barbara B., Sarah and Kalpana. You ladies are amazing. To Penelope Douglas, Ing Cruz and Danielle Bonaventure LeFave for all their support and encouragement. As always, to my CHPP, aka, my bints, I love you all and miss you like crazy.

  Thank you to C.C. Wood, Brenda Rothert, Short and Sassy Book Blog, J.D. Hollyfield, S.J. McGran, Cheryl McIntyre, Mindy A. Carter, Katelyn Cantrell, J. Lea, Penelope Douglas, Amy Harmon, Chelle Bliss, Lori Leger, Trish Finely Leger, Karla Sorensen, KJ Coakley, Skye Turner and Confessions of a YA and NA Book Addict for the THICK LOVE release day support. Also thanks to Short and Sassy Book Blog, The Book Vigilante, Shh, Mom’s Reading and Totally Booked for the pre-release PR and to Michelle Monkou with USA Today for your continuous support!

  To my wonderful, wonderful readers, thank you so much for your excitement, encouragement and love during this crazy publishing journey and to my beautiful, patient family, especially my Himself and my girls, for continuing to love and support me despite all that time I spend chained to my keyboard. I love you all!

  Haitian Creole Words and Phrases

  Words

  Bata – Bastard

  Bien – Good

  Bonjou – Hello

  Cheri – Darling

  Dous – Sweet

  Fanmi – Family

  Grann – Grandmother

  Grosoulye – Rude

  Kontantman – Joy, contentment

  Kreyol – Creole

  Modi – Damn

  Non – No

  Oke – Ok
ay

  Orto - Ass

  Poupou – Shit

  Rete – Stop

  Sekonsa – That’s right.

  Silans – Hush

  Souple –

  Tifi – Girl

  Wi – Yes

  Phrases

  Ala de traka – What a nuisance!

  Anmourèz mwen – My love.

  Bèl madanm – Beautiful lady.

  Eskize mwen – Excuse me.

  Kòkòt mwen! – Oh my sweet.

  Lage’m – Let me go!

  Li ansent – She’s pregnant.

  M ap viv. Et ou? – I’m well. And you?

  Me zanmi – My God

  Ou ban m manti – You lied to me.

  Petit se pa manti non – Child, it’s no lie.

  Pinga ou fè sa! – Don’t you do that!

  Sak pase? – How are you?

  Se te on plezi – Nice to meet you.

  Pa manyen mwen! – Don’t touch me!

  Tu es un putain – You are a slut.

  Numbers

  Senk – Five

  Sis – Six

  Sèt – Seven

  Uit – Eight

  Hawaiian Words and Phrases

  ˋAe! – Yes

  Brah – Slang for “brother.”

  Kaholo – Type of Hula dance.

  Ka’o – Type of Hula dance.

  Keiki kane – Son

  Ko`u Aloha – My love.

  Leipo'o – Lei head piece.

  Luna – Style of Hula dance where the dance is standing.

  Makua kane – Father, dad, daddy.

  Makuahine – Mother

  Maku – (For the purposes of this novel only) Short for Makuakane.

  Nani – Beautiful

  Noho – Style of Hula dance where the dance is seated.

  Ohana – Family