that he might have let Ricks know what he’d seen between Gia and Kai.
This might be the hurdle Gia couldn’t clear, but it wasn’t the only one that worried her.
You were the…college girlfriend of my…cousin and I just remind you of him. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Kai had never been cruel to Gia. From the first second she met him, Gia believed there wasn’t any meanness in him. But those words from him were laced in bitterness, dipped in anger and she felt their sting just as surely as if he’d slapped her.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Hadn’t she wanted this? Hadn’t she asked for it? Months and months she’d spent driving him away, wishing he’d stop pursing her, hoping she could make him for get her. She’d wanted to remind him there could never be anything between them. He was too young for her. He was her player.
He was Luka’s cousin.
Now he seemed to agree. Now he seemed ready to walk away. Of course Mills’ threats were nothing to him because now Gia wasn’t either.
She wouldn’t let herself cry. Not here. Not in her office where the owners met upstairs, likely discussing her, possibly deciding her future. She wouldn’t ruin Cat’s perpetual good mood now that her assistant and Wilson were fast becoming an item. So, Gia kept her back to her door and her attention on the window, holding tight to the last sweet reminder Luka had left for her.
The size of your wings doesn’t matter as long as you’re using them to fly, he’d written to her. She wanted to fly now. She wanted to soar. She wanted to be free.
Three quick knocks tapped against her door in rapid succession and Gia swiveled around, her eyes rounded when she spotted Kona standing in the doorway.
“Is this a bad time?” he asked. His large body filled the entry as he stood there waiting for her to welcome him inside. “If you’re not busy…I hoped I could have a few minutes.”
Kona was polite, his tone soft and Gia was struck by how different he seemed to her now. This wasn’t the advice-wielding jock she’d known in college warning her away from his twin. This wasn’t the irritated ballplayer barely over his tiff with that same twin mildly amused that his brother’s girl was screaming at him. This was a grown Kona. The same Kona Hale who shared with Gia the loss of something they both missed so desperately. They were the only people left in the world who loved Luka fiercely. They were the only ones remaining to mourn.
“You’re not bothering, Kona. Please,” she said, meeting him in front of her desk. Gia took the kiss he offered to her cheek when he gave it, smiling at his awkward tenderness, then hurried to shut her door before she waved him to sit, taking the seat next to him. “What’s up?”
His gaze moved down to the pig she still clutched, his expression frozen as he stared at it and Gia offered it to Kona, figuring he might need the comfort it provided.
Kona held it between his large fingers, rubbing his thumb over the wings and across the belly like she often did. He wore an expression of mild amusement, mingled with a little astonishment, likely a little amazed that his twin had held this figurine, had spent some time fretting over if this was the right one to give to Gia.
“He was…always thinking about other people,” Kona said, motioning with the pig in his hand. “My guess is it took him weeks to find the right one.”
“How do you know?”
Kona sat back, moving the figurine on his knee as he spoke, his attention on the spinning motion he made of it with the spread wings held between his index and middle fingers. “It was his way. Once, when we were ten, our kuku got sick. The flu, I think it was and he’d been talking out of his head about Saimin, something one of his wives made for him when he wasn’t feeling his best and how he hadn’t had it in years.” Kona shook his head, rubbing his eyes as he seemed to think about the memory. “Luka went to four different Korean vendors in the Market, two Bahamian farmers and I’m pretty sure one old hoodoo priestess looking for kamaboko, something none but the priestess had heard of to make the damn soup for kuku.
“There he was, ten years old, clueless about cooking a thing, but he followed the recipe he