Read Online My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella by Eden Butler - Free Book Online Page B

steadily.
    The spa was mostly quiet, very relaxing and after her facial was completed and the deep tissue massage had her feeling like her bones had gone rubbery, Keira rested in the large massage room, thin curtains separating her from the rest of the bridesmaids as they enjoyed their own bit of pampering.
    She felt relaxed, languid, had even gone so far as to turn off her cell and thought the quiet would continue until she heard the lower murmurs on the other side of the curtain, catching Kona’s name. She lay perfectly still, focusing on the private conversation Auntie Malia and another woman whose voice Keira couldn’t place whispered low to each other.
    “Cancer, in her bones.”
    “Terminal?”
    “That’s what she told Malaine. My daughter the only one who still talk story with her.” Malia sighed, the exhale worrying Keira. She could hear the sadness in the woman’s voice, the defeated tone that told Keira whoever was sick had Malia fearful and worried. “She no a good woman. Never was even when I feed her boys, God rest Luka.”
    Keira twisted her head, slipping off the table to hear Malia better. Kona’s mother was sick? Dying?
    “She was hard, her whole life, yeah? No sweet in her.”
    “Except for Kona, yeah.”
    “Maybe but she even hurt Kona bad. I hate her for being no good to that boy.”
    “Why she so mean?”
    Malia sighed, adjusted her body and Keira could hear her body squeak against the chair. “That Samoan, Liam Kaino, he made her that way.”
    “He Kona’s father?”
    Malia clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth as though the thought of Kona’s father disgusted her. “He made those boys. He no their father.” She released another disgusted sound, something guttural and annoyed, but adjusted again her seat, squeaking against the leather.
    “Kaino said he love my sister, said he want to marry her. He come from money, from New Zealand and Lalei was so happy. Love him too much, I think. Then he goes back to New Zealand, tells Lalei he’ll send for her, but he never did.”
    “She never talk to him?”
    “Nah. He stay there, stay far from Lalei, but then my sister, she says she having his baby, she need tell him he gonna be a papa.” Malia exhaled again, made a distinct sound, sad and disappointed, then finished speaking. “She get there and Liam say he sorry but he marry this haole from the mainland.”
    The sharp gasp of Malia’s friend moved around the room and Keira pulled her towel over her shoulders, frowning for the betrayal Lalei had faced. She could sympathize, though Kona had never known Keira was pregnant when he pushed her away.
    “She no tell him about the babies.”
    “Why?”
    “She say he no have the right to them boys. She say he never know and he didn’t. His haole wife couldn’t get pregnant and my sister want Kaino to die thinking he had no babies. That made her hard, made her hate haoles , made her hate anyone who she think could take Kona from her. Even Luka. He look too much like Kaino. Kona look like our people. She marry that skinny Tonga, Alana and keep his name after he die. Our name, she no want. Lalei a sad, mean woman. So sad.”
    “And now she sick?”
    “She alone too for what she did to Kona and his boy and pretty haole Keira. Kona no speak with her.”
    Keira couldn’t listen anymore. She slipped on her robe and left the room, walking out to the private patio overlooking the ocean. She wasn’t sure how to feel. She hated Kona’s mother, had harbored such a fierce dislike for the woman for all she’d done to Keira, what she’d tried to do to Ransom. A year ago, Keira wouldn’t have batted an eye about Lalei being sick. She doubted she could have even mustered the sympathy to feel bad for Kona at losing his mother. The woman had always been so selfish and vile to everyone but Kona and even then, she’d manipulated him for decades, trying to place him on whatever path she wanted him.
    But Keira’s own mother had died six months ago.