My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella by Eden Butler Page B

and the awkward tension in the room drained away.
    “Whatever,” he said, playfully flipping the bird over his shoulder as he went back to the door to watch Keira. She hadn’t moved and Kona hoped that she was okay, that she wasn’t cold, that she wasn’t working herself into hysterics. He hated when that happened.
    He couldn’t just stand there, waiting for permission from Mark to fix the mess he’d made, but when he gripped the handle and began to slide the door open, Mark cleared his throat, standing in front of him before he could walk out the door.
    “Ransom,” Mark said, eyes steady on Kona. “There’s a cottage on the next lot. I think it’s a good idea if you stay there tonight.”
    “No, I want to talk to my mom.”
    Mark’s sigh was long and breathy, and Kona stepped away from him, folding his arms before he leaned against the glass, looking out of it.
    “She’s not going to be fit to talk to you tonight. Even if Kona can get her inside, she was pretty upset and wouldn’t stop crying.” Mark walked in front of Ransom, touching his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Please, son. Just go and you can come back in the morning. I’ll be over there in just a minute.” He looked back at Kona who ignored him in favor of watching Keira on that rock. “I have something I want to say to your father.”
    Again, Kona lifted his eyebrows, moving his gaze to Mark, then to Ransom as though waiting for his dad to make the final call. A quick twist of his chin and Ransom sighed, walking out the front door.
    “You wanna say something else?” Kona said, arms still tight across his chest and his eyes squinting toward the beach.
    “I do.” Mark pushed back the curtain and stood at the second glass door, hands in his pockets and his breath fogging against the glass. “When I finally made it to Nashville, Keira was about seven and half months pregnant.”
    Kona took his eyes from Keira, forehead wrinkling as he stared at Mark. “You were there when she had him?”
    A small nod and then the left side of Mark’s mouth quirked up. “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” Kona wasn’t jealous that he’d said that. It was fact. Gay, straight or otherwise, no man could ever deny how beautiful his Wildcat was. “Then, she had Ransom and I swear to God, I thought ‘that’s just not possible.’”
    “What wasn’t possible?”
    “That something else could be more beautiful than Keira.”
    Some of the tension eased in Kona’s shoulders and he relaxed his stance, leaning against the glass. “You stood up for them. He’s like a son to you, I know that.”
    “That’s true. He is, but Kona, he’s not mine.” Mark turned away from the window, hands in his pockets as he looked up at Kona. “No matter how much I wish for it, Ransom is yours; face, body, damn stubborn streak. He’s a Hale through and through. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. It doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I do. Johnny and me,” Mark started to look away, a hint of a blush on his face and then he cleared his throat, lifted his chin and stared right into Kona’s eyes. “Johnny and me helped Keira as much as we could. Hell, we were first year residents working the graveyard shift, we barely had anything ourselves. But we changed diapers, we fed him, we made sure they both had food—when she’d take it—and that they weren’t living in too sketchy of a neighborhood. And… it was nice. It was a struggle but we all survived.”
    Kona looked down at his shoes, his heart jumping to his throat at the thought of the four of them making a life out the disaster he’d left for Keira. “I appreciate everything…”
    “I’m not done.” Kona nodded but kept his eyes down so Mark wouldn’t catch on to his irritation. “We did what we could, but don’t get things backward, Keira worked the hardest, she made us look like amateurs in the child raising department and believe me, she gave us something we didn’t have