“Should we give them a moment?” Aly whispered and I closed my eyes at the sweet hint of her breath against my ear.
“No,” Kona said, looking over his shoulder to watch us. “No, I want this said first.” He moved his attention back to Mom, sitting next to her with his knees touching her thigh. “It didn’t take long for Simone to admit the truth.”
“Which was?”
“That conniving pretty boy Cass told her you and I were divorcing.” Dad nodded at Mom’s dropped mouth. “She was desperate, bought it, thought that if she said I’d fathered her son that I’d throw money at her to keep it quiet, just to avoid the gossip, the rumor that maybe I was some loser who had been unfaithful. Things got a little out of hand, she said, when I didn’t immediately cave but by then Cass had convinced her to get the press involved. Guess he thought by that time you would have figured something was up with me.” Dad rested his hand against Mom’s shoulder, twisting the ends of her hair around his finger. “As soon as I got to her, she caved. She’s not…” Dad licked his lips as though his words had dried his mouth. “She’s sick and desperate and she’s got a fourteen-year-old kid that’s gonna be left with nothing if she doesn’t get better. She saw it as a way to take care of him, when...well, to make sure he’d have something when she died.”
“But wasn’t she planning a DNA test?” Aly said, looking between me when I laughed and my father’s scowl.
“Yeah, well, if you know what you’re doing and you have a little cash, you can pretty much buy the results you want,” Dad said, shaking his head at me. Mom too didn’t seem amused by the memory of Kona’s mother once buying test results that claimed Luka, my late uncle, had fathered me and not Dad. Thankfully my mother had her own backup plan and my grandmother's interference eventually came to nothing. Still, the mention of DNA testing was a bit of a sore subject with my parents.
“Well,” Mom said, pulling our attention back to her when she stood. “I sent Cass packing. Didn't think I’d ever see his face again. But I’m sure I can get him back here within an hour. All I’d have to do is make something up, tell him I want to apologize for kicking him out. With an ego like his, he’ll buy it, no questions asked.”
“Why’d you kick him out?” Dad ask and I winced, willing my mother not to tell him what had happened. I’d spent much of the morning telling Dad about Sara’s phone call, but hadn’t told him a thing about Cass hitting on Mom. He was just too much of a jealous hot head when it came to her. She seemed to remember that too because Mom tried ignoring my father’s question, grabbing the dirty mugs off the table, but Dad stopped her, taking the dishes from her. When he spoke, he at least sounded calm. “Keira. Why did you kick him out?”
“Good lord, Kona,” she said through an exhale, “because he tried to kiss me.”
I couldn’t tell if the breaking mug had come from Mom trying to get it out of Dad’s hands or from my father’s snap of temper. The softness that had relaxed his features when he first approached my mother vanished in the reveal of another man trying to hone in on his wife. I’d seen my father become possessive if some guy stared a little too long at Mom. Those were random strangers. I worried about what he’d do to Cass for trying to kiss her.
“You get him here, Wildcat.”
“I will,” she told him, folding her arms across her chest. “But you need to leave.”
“What?” There was a mixture of shock and a little devastation paling my father’s dark complexion as his anger left him with Mom’s demand. “Why?”
Just then, with her head lowered as she worked her fingertips against her forehead, Mom looked so tired, worn by the day, the revelations and the ridiculous drama that had put a pause in our lives the past few months. Dad touched her arm and my mother slipped her gaze to his face, letting a small, barely-there grin twitch over her lips. “This is my mess to handle. I’m the one who let him in, the one who didn’t see beyond the smile and the voice and the slick cowboy facade. Cass is my fault. This whole mess is my fault.”
Kona’s shock transformed then, working into insult that he didn’t bother hiding. “The hell it is.” He walked behind her when she tried leaving the room, managing to stop her before she went into the kitchen. “Baby, this happened, all of this, because I tried to handle this shit all on my own. You said it yourself, we’re supposed to be a team. Equal partners. We’re supposed to share our burden. If I’d only talked to you right away, none of this would have happened.”
“Kona…”
“Wildcat, this is our mess.” He stepped close, holding her shoulders until she looked up at him. “Let’s sort it out together.”
God help that dumb cowboy. He was in for a world of shit.