Saints and Sinners: The Complete Series

by Eden Butler

  “Not always,” she teased, pushing him against the mattress. Gia smiled when her nails against his chest elicited a low, guttural moan. She loved that sound best of the sweet noises he made. “Not when I’m in class.” She leaned forward, taking his nipple between her teeth, loving how he held her head against his chest. “Not when I’m an old lady and my memory is all gone.”

  Luka laughed, stretching back when Gia came up on her knees again. His smile was slow, but sure, like he was warming to the idea of her looking at a picture of him, his body on display just for her anytime she wanted it.

  “Alright then,” he told her, resting his head on his bent arm. “How do you want me?” Gia smiled, her heart pounding when he lowered the blanket, giving her an uninhibited view of his naked body. “You can have me anyway you want me, ko`u aloha.”

  That night, alone in her Decatur Street apartment, Gia didn’t bother with the Vanderah hardcover or the subversive, healing poetry of Mary Lambert. She drank no bourbon and took no wine. She slept in her bed, with a single Polaroid clutched in her hand and the fading wish that for one more night she could be that girl Luka loved so much, taking everything he offered for the gift it was.

  13.

  GIA

  IT DIDN’T QUITE SEEM the same to Gia. December was supposed to be about ice skating at Rockefeller and watching the tree being lit while her mother complained about the crowds and her father pretended to hate following after them as they shopped. Mostly, her parents would spend their annual Christmas shopping trips with Gia telling her all about how the people she’d gone to high school with, or her younger— much younger— cousins had all gone off an gotten married or had babies. They never asked her when she’d get around to it, not directly. But her mother made sighing and acting morose about Gia being childless an art form.

  She couldn’t do it this year. The decision came to her when her mother informed her that Aunt Angelica from Sicily would be coming in to stay with them through the new year.

  “I know she’s not your favorite,” her mother had tried, stopping her excuses when Gia laughed.

  “Mama, the woman started telling me I’d die an old maid when I was eighteen. Eighteen! It’s only gotten worse in the past twenty years.”

  “She’s an old woman, set in her ways. Besides, you’ve accomplished so many things, dolcezza.” Gia’s mother could complain about her being without a family of her own, but she’d always promised to be proud of how hard her daughter had worked. Coming from a family of football fanatics helped sometimes.

  “My career will mean nothing to Angelica and you know it, Mama. You have your visit. Enjoy her company. I’ll come to see you after she leaves.”

  It had been a decision she didn’t regret. Not even when she heard familiar voices—her players’ voices, and Kai’s, all moving up and down her hallway, ambling into his apartment as he hosted a Christmas party to celebrate his daughter being in the city for a visit. Gia had only discovered that much info from Cat when she called her friend and hard-working assistant to invite her to Destin for the weekend.

  “You should go to the party,” Cat had encouraged Gia. “Just say hi or bring over a bottle of wine to wish them all a happy holiday.”

  “I wasn’t invited.” That had hurt more than Gia thought it would, but she didn’t think Kai would ever want her back in his place again. Not after their fight. Not after he’d discovered the Polaroids. They’d been cool to each other for weeks, and as the season progressed and everyone buckled down to play hard and work harder, Gia tried putting Kai out of her thoughts. She tried to tell herself she didn’t miss talking to him or doing more than nod at him in team meetings and in the lobby when they walked past each other.

  But sometimes, she hated to admit it, she missed his obnoxious flirting. She missed calling him junior just to get a rise out of him. She didn’t miss him calling her granny to earn a glare. Kai worked hard on the field. He worked harder off of it and Gia assumed he’d moved on from whatever small infatuation he might have had for her. It seemed that way. He hadn’t bothered with a party invite or even a “Merry Christmas” at the team party the weekend before.

  “It’s a five-minute wave through his place,” Cat had encouraged her. “Say hello to his kid. Greet Reese and Glenn. We’re heading into Wild Card. We’re probably going into the playoffs. Tell your team how proud you are of them and then you can disappear.”

  But she hadn’t done any of those things. She didn’t want her players reminded of the hard work they still had to do to get to the playoffs. If she was honest, she didn’t want to give Kai the chance to kick her out of his home.

  True, Reese would be there and she and Gia had managed to patch things up after their argument provoked by the bomb drop of the placekicker’s relationship with Ryder.

  It had taken weeks for her temper to die down. It had taken even longer for Gia to not feel betrayed about being lied to. But, eventually, she had Reese’s back. They became friendly again, but Gia watched how closely her placekicker and her QB interacted. The past was the past and she hoped they’d kept themselves there.

  So even if Reese had been at Kai’s party, Gia wouldn’t go. They were friendly again, not quite friends yet. So, Gia told Cat to enjoy her granny’s oyster dressing that her assistant swore she couldn’t miss, no matter if the invitation to Destin was Gia’s treat, and she sat in front of her T.V. in her massive king size bed with a bottle of bourbon on Christmas Eve night getting shitty.

  She told herself she was fine. She was happy with the solitude and the endless repeat of “A Christmas Story.” She was good with Lo Mein leftovers for dinner when she got hungry and cookies from the deli down the street that she’d heated up and ate for breakfast that morning when her parents and brothers called from New York, with her on speaker, teasing her about how much food she was missing. Aunt Angelica only got in a small quip about her being an old maid before Gia changed the subject.

  “You know, Angelica, Alfonso goes to that Episcopalian Church with his wife? He says the real priests are too long winded and the Episcopalians respect the importance of kickoff on Sundays. Can you believe that?” That one kept the old lady off her back for the rest of the conversation and her loud-mouth, Patriots-loving brother quiet while their aunt cursed at him while insisting Alfonso take her to Christmas mass.

  But sometime around five on Christmas afternoon, Gia heard the sweet music of a choir echoing through the Quarter as she sat on her balcony with a glass of red wine and despite how cool the temperatures had dropped and the slight drizzle that fell around the city, Gia still threw on a scarf, one of her lighter winter jackets and walked to the Square to follow the music.

  The crowd was thick, but friendly and Gia spotted a couple familiar faces as she moved through it—Mr. Blanchard, the old man from the Market out even on Christmas selling fresh hot apple cider. He placed a Styrofoam cup in Gia’s hand, sending her a wink without a word before he moved on. She also spotted a few of the street performers, most of them no more than fifteen or sixteen, standing among the singers in the choir. The small kid, Donovan she remembered from the tumbling troupe smiled at her, likely hoping she’d slip him a twenty, like always.

  Gia moved back, stepping away from the crowd and up onto one of the inclined steps that looked down on the sidewalk, balancing herself on the heel of her boots and the cider in her hand. The choir was just beginning a mildly pitchy rendition of “Deck the Halls” when Gia scooted to the middle of the incline, her cider between her hands as she swayed a little to the music, happy that no one knew her, trying her best to let the music chip away the swell of loneliness that had begun to take hold of her before she left her building. The place had been too quiet, and she was a woman who craved the silence. This was better. It was nice; just the holiday infusion she needed, and it didn’t require a big party or being surrounded by people who were angry with her or who had ideas about her life they thought she should know about.

  The choir started singing “Oh,
Come All Ye Faithful” and Gia stopped her small shimmy of a dance, finishing her cider as she watched the performance and then, the crowd. There were families all around her. Men and women, women and women, men and men, friends and lovers, classmates and co-workers, families of all sorts with their kids or adopted kids or furry kids watching the choir perform as the sky grew darker. The white Christmas lights hung from every wrought iron railing balcony and along the street lights and lamp poles around the Quarter while green garland was strung with red bows and large wreaths were fixed to shop doors with fleur de lis and Mardi Gras masks decked out in gold and bright, twinkling lights. She’d never seen the city look so beautiful. She’d never felt so alone or so gratified in it.

  Gia took it all in, closing her eyes at the music and the chill in the air and the first feeling of contentment she’d truly held inside her since this lonely holiday began. And then, quicker than the snap of a football, it felt as though something cold and wet had been poured on top of her head and the chill and solitude clung to her like a second skin. In the middle of the crowd Kai stood watching the choir, a large grin spread across his face as his little girl stood in front of him, singing along to the song, her father’s large hand on her shoulder and his other one wrapped around a beautiful woman who could have been his child’s clone.

  Gia knew who this woman was. Kai had told her all about Keeana, his high school sweetheart. She was the mother of his only child. She was his best friend in the world. He’d admitted that freely. Gia had admired their respect for each other and the family they’d made when they were just kids themselves. But watching them together, seeing how well they seemed to fit did something to her that didn’t make a lot of sense.

  For the first time in her life, Gia was jealous of another woman. Jealous because she was well loved by the man she wanted.

  How the hell did that happen? she asked herself, her stare unfocusing as the song reached the last chorus.

  There was no reason, no explanation at all. Kai was nothing to her but a player. He was a man on her team who she’d accidentally kissed…more than once and who she’d let…well. At least they hadn’t had sex. Any relationship with him would get her fired. It could unravel every hurdle she’d crossed in the past twenty years. Kai was sweet. He was beautiful, but he was not hers. He never would be.

  She spared another glance at the woman next to Kai, understanding instantly what had made him attracted to her. She was tall, like Kai with long limbs and a small waist. She had a large bottom and larger breasts and a face—beautiful broad features that somehow were still delicate and feminine, her mouth full, her eyes dark and wide. She wore her hair in a long braid down the center of her back, touching past her thin waist and when Kai whispered something in her ear and she laughed? Gia knew what had kept him mesmerized. She had a perfect smile and cheekbones that were defined. Of course he’d loved her. Who wouldn’t? They were a perfect fit—all three of them and on this day, in particular, Gia understood why he hadn’t wanted her around him. This was a time for the people you care about most in the world. This was about ohana. That didn’t include Gia.

  The song ended, met with a thunder of clapping, whistling approval and Gia looked away from Kai and his family to join the applause. Donovan and one of his fellow troupe members pulled caps from their back pockets and started fanning through the crowd, in case anyone was feeling the Christmas spirit and wanted to donate and Gia bent down when the boy’s cap lifted toward her.

  “Merry Christmas, Miss Lady,” Donovan said, grinning at Gia with one of his molars missing.

  “You ever gonna remember my name?” she asked him, pulling a twenty from her wallet before she dropped it into the cap.

  “I’m just so…stunned by your beauty that it goes right out of my head every time you tell me what it is.” Donovan laughed when Gia did, shrugging like he couldn’t help himself.

  “That’s a good line,” she told him, straightening when a few more patrons made their way to him. “You keep that up and by the time you’re legal you won’t have to perform in the Quarter.”

  “For real? Why? You gonna be my sugar mama?”

  Gia laughed, head shaking and had a sarcastic comment ready for the kid, but straightened at the loud throat clearing to her right and the frown she spotted on Kai’s face as he and his two girls approached.

  “That was great,” Keola told Donovan, waving a five-dollar bill at him. The girl’s eyes were identical to her mother’s but her smile was Kai’s, wide and sweet with a matching dimple in her right cheek.

  “Thanks, boo,” Donovan said, winking at the girl when her bill landed in his cap. “You have a good Christmas?”

  Gia felt awkward, something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel since she was in college. If she ever let anyone have an idea that she was uncomfortable or out of her element, they tended to take advantage. That didn’t bode well when you are a woman navigating a man’s industry. But Kai, standing right next to her, likely still mad at her with his gorgeous ex and his equally beautiful daughter just feet from them, had her feeling stupid and silly and second guessing the good sense of leaving her apartment at all.

  “I…” she started when Kai only looked at her, when Keeana did the same, likely expecting an introduction that the man clearly wasn’t going to give. He slipped his gaze to her and she couldn’t get a read on his mood by the neutral expression on his face. By then, Gia was over feeling out of place and stupid when there was no cause.

  “Hi, Keeana,” she said to the woman, relaxing when Kai’s ex returned her smile. “I’m Gia Jilani. I’m the Steamers’ General Manager.”

  “Yes, I heard,” Keeana said, taking Gia’s offered hand to shake it. “And since this buggah is being rude, I’m glad you said hello.” She held up her hand when Kai opened his mouth and then nodded to her daughter. “Pēpē say hello to Ms. Jilani.”

  “Oh, I know you!” the girl said, smiling at Gia as she cut off her chat with the street performer. “Miss Reese told me about you…about how you invited her to come try out for my makuakāne’s team and how you’re the first woman doing your job too!”

  “Reese is my…friend,” Gia said, kneeling down to speak to the girl. “And she’s great at her job.”

  “Is my makuakāne good at his job?” she asked, grabbing Kai’s hand.

  Gia stood, chancing a gaze at Kai, not sure what expression he’d have for her now that Keeana had called him out. “Yes,” she told the girl. “He’s one of the best in the whole league. Coach Ricks says so all the time.”

  “Really?”

  “I promise.”

  “Just not as good as Reese Noble,” Kai interjected, rolling his eyes at his daughter until the girl laughed.

  “Well, you aren’t the first man doing your job, are you? There are all kinds of big men doing the same job but only one girl doing Miss Reese’s job.”

  “That’s true, keiki. She’s the first.” Kai tapped Keola’s nose, seeming to give up his teasing in favor of agreeing with the performance their placekicker had given that season.

  “And Miss Gia…she’s the first too, right? No one else like her?”

  Kai nodded, shifting his attention to Gia. He still held something back. Maybe, Gia thought, he was just trying to refrain from screaming at her. But then, the muscles around his jaw eased and Kai gave her a small grin, his gaze lingering on her mouth before he answered his daughter. “No…there’s no one like her.”

  “Well,” Gia said, not wanting to think too much on that look. She glanced at Keola and Keeana, hoping she didn’t sound as frazzled as she felt. “I don’t want to keep you from your family time. It was so good to meet you both…”

  “You aren’t keeping us,” Keeana said, her smile lowering as she glanced to Kai, then back at Gia. “Kai says you don’t have any family in the city?”

  “Well, no…my parents and brothers are all in New York…”

  “You didn’t see your family on Christmas?” Keola said, dropping her mouth ope
n like a solitary holiday was the saddest thing she’d ever heard of in her young life.

  “No, not this year, but it’s okay…”

  “Do you have a puppy or a kitten?” Keola tilted her head, the concern on her face making Gia nervous.

  “No…it’s just me in my place.”

  “And you don’t have a best friend…or a boyfriend or husband?”

  “Keiki, it’s not nice to get into people’s business,” Kai said, squeezing his daughter’s hand.

  “But, makuakāne, you said nobody should be alone on Christmas. You said that’s why you wanted to bring that security man those cookies me and makuahine made.”

  “Well, yeah, but Gia…she’s not like…” He went quiet when Gia cleared her throat.

  “Keola, you know, I kind of like being by myself.” Gia waved a hand, playing off the sad reality of her lonely Christmas. “I’ve done that for a long time and, no, I don’t have a puppy or kitten to keep me company…or some gross boy eating all the food in my fridge,” she winked and the girl’s frown transformed into a grin, “because I’m real busy most of the time, but don’t feel bad for me. I’ll get to see my family in a few weeks depending on how your dad and the rest of the team do in the playoffs.”

  Keola’s grin lowered, became no real expression at all and her features tightened— those big eyes narrowing as though there was something she tried to sort out in her own mind before she would respond to Gia. Then, those black eyes rounded and the girl’s mouth stretched into a smile so wide it warmed something inside of Gia’s chest.

  “I know…tonight, you can have dinner with us.”

  “Keiki…” Kai started then went silent when Keeana clapped her hands, stepping in front of him like he wasn’t there at all.