Page 2 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

Her mouth opens, then shuts. She pushes her hair behind her ear and wobbles, panties now tangled at her ankles.

I’ve already turned to grab my cut. Leather feels right in my hands, familiar weight pulling me back into myself.

I slide it on, shrug my shoulders, and the man I am clicks back into place.

She clears her throat. “Do you—uh—do you have a second?”

“Used it,” I remark.

Color floods her cheeks. She bends and yanks her panties up, scoops her skirt, shimmies it into place, all the fiddling buying her time.

She’s not the first to stall. They think if they hang around long enough, I’ll soften.

They mistake sweat for intimacy, noise for promises, orgasms for companionship.

She straightens, gathers herself. She’s pretty when she’s put together. Still pretty all ruined up, too. “It’s just… what’s your name, really?”

I meet her eyes. Hold. Let the silence stretch until it thins. “Kellum.”

She blinks like she expected a fake. “Okay. Kellum.” The way she says it is careful, testing out how it fits. “I’m—” I throw up a hand silencing her.

“Don’t need it.” I pass her moving to the bathroom.

I dispose of the condom, wipe off my dick with a black towel, tuck it away, zipping my jeans, and going back to the bedroom.

From there, she doesn’t speak so I move to the exit, twist the lock, open the door.

I can hear the party still going not far away. “Bathroom’s what you got left.”

She doesn’t move. “Right. I just…” She bites her lip, breathes out. “Do you ever think about, I don’t know, something else?”

I look at her over my shoulder. “Something else what?”

“Something else like… not this.” She gestures to the room, the noise, me. “Like settling down. Having something that lasts.”

The word hits like a gnat. Annoying. Buzzing. Something I swat and kill. “No.”

She shifts. “You didn’t even think about it.”

“I don’t have to.” I lean my shoulder against the door frame, motion toward the door with my chin. “You lost? I gave you directions.”

Her mouth firms. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”

“Sure I do,” I reply bored with the entire situation. “It saves time.”

I can hear my family just outside the front door.

My brothers are out there. My life is out there.

I turn my back on the open bedroom door.

Reaching in my back pocket, I grab what I need.

Cigarettes. Zippo lighter. Moving to the front door of the duplex I open it, I light up, drag deep, fill my lungs, then blow it toward the cracked ceiling. The smoke hangs, then thins.

She’s still there. Most would have run by now. She plants her hands on her hips, chin high like she thinks she’s about to teach me something new. “You act like I’m asking for a ring. I’m not. I just, I don’t know, a phone number? Coffee tomorrow?”

“No.”

Her lips part, shock giving way to irritation. “Why not?”

“Because we’re done.” I state firmly. Final. I tap ash onto the floor knowing I’m an ass because someone else has to clean this up. “You got what you came for. So did I.”

“That’s really how you see it?” Her voice tightens. “Just bodies and cum?”

“It was never going to be brains.”

She flinches. I don’t apologize. I don’t dress it up. Truth is a blade; you put it dull-side up and you’ve wasted everybody’s time. She peers past me toward the outside like she might stay anyway, or go back to the party try for another brother. Maybe she thinks it will make me jealous. Won’t work.

“You’re cold,” she states.

“Accurate.”

Her eyes search my face. “What happened to you?”

I drag again. Smoke scratches my throat, settles my pulse. “Not your concern.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Wasn’t trying to give you one.”

She takes a step toward me, stubborn. “You think you’re safer like this, don’t you? You think if you don’t care, you can’t be hurt.”

I huff a laugh. “You giving me therapy, sweetheart?”

“I’m giving you honesty,” she fires back. There’s a tremor there, though, the kind people get when they’re in over their heads but refuse to back down. “Some of us don’t want to be just a story you tell your friends.”

“Brothers,” I correct. “And don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t tell them anything.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything.” I glance at the clock nailed above the door. The minute hand stutters and jumps forward, always a split-second behind the world. “You’re burning daylight.”

“It’s ten at night.”

“You’re still burning time.”

She folds her arms. “You ever think about what your mother would say?”

I go still. The Zippo’s weight is a stone in my palm, cool and hard with the teeth marks I put in it during a long night once. She doesn’t know where the landmines are. She just stepped on one.

“She’d say,” I answer slowly, “that if a woman can’t take a hint, she should learn to take the door.” I flip the Zippo shut. The click is crisp. “Take the door. And don’t look back.”

Her throat bobs. She looks at the open frame, then back at me like she wants to drag it out, pick at it, build a house from splinters. She just can’t let it go. Not happening. We’re not building something together. In fact, I’ve got a talent for demolition.

She tries one more angle. “You wear that patch. Means brotherhood. Means loyalty. Don’t you want that with someone else? A person who’s not,” she gestures to the room again, “this? A quick fuck and gone.”

“You don’t know what the patch means,” I remark sternly. “You know what it looks like. That’s different.”

“Explain it.”

I smirk, bitch is just not getting it. “No.”

Her bravado cracks. The mask slides and underneath is a girl who wanted to be seen and wasn’t. I don’t like the way that feels pressing against my ribs so I crush it fast.

“Look,” I explain, voice honed to a clean edge, “you had your fun. You want sweet words, go find a man who buys candles and calls you baby and pretends he means it. I don’t pretend.

I don’t say anything I don’t mean. I don’t want your number.

I don’t want your coffee. I don’t want your name.

I don’t want you sitting on my bed like we’re about to talk about our favorite colors. ”

She swallows. “Mine’s green.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Her cheeks heat. “You’re an asshole.”

“Getting repetitive,” I remind mildly. “Door’s still open.”

Silence stretches. I move outside the door to help her get a clue. The air is crisp tonight, not chilly but not too hot. Out beyond the walls, eastern North Carolina hums steady—pines whisper in the dark. The life I know. The only kind I trust.

“I thought maybe…” She breaks, shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“It doesn’t.”

She lifts her chin one last time like she’s going to claw back into control with pride alone. “You’re gonna die alone.”

“Everyone does,” I state, bored again. “Ain’t no one else fitting in the casket beside ya. Some of us just tell the truth about it sooner.”

She flinches like I slapped her, then reaches me, she’s now standing in the door frame. Pauses. Looks back to the bedroom door we just left. “You won’t even remember me tomorrow, will you?”

I blow smoke toward the sky. “Tomorrow’s a long way off.”

Her eyes shine, quick, and then harden. She steps into night air. She rolls her shoulders back, head held high and makes her walk of shame back through the compound to her car. I watch long enough to make sure she actually leaves. She does. Good. She’s not safe here. This place isn’t for the weak.

I step back into the duplex and shut the door.

The room snaps quiet again, just the muffled beat and my own breath.

I stub the cigarette in the bottle cap I pulled from my pocket, grind it to nothing, then palm the little metal circle and toss it into the trash.

There’s a mirror nailed crooked above the dresser.

I catch a look at myself and almost don’t recognize the version the world thinks is me—the one with a mouth that doesn’t know how to curve without baring teeth.

The one who stares hard enough to make most people look away.

I pocket the Zippo and head back outside and then into the chaos. The club breathes life around me. Tripp’s by the pool table, cue in one hand, a shot in the other. Boomer’s arguing with the bartender about the price of bourbon like it’s a personal insult. Everyone is in their element.

Crunch clocks me and smirks. “That was quick.”

“It was enough.”

He looks around for her. “She cryin’?”

“Not my business,” I retort. I’m lying. It was my business, in the sense that I made it happen. But I don’t borrow trouble. If she’s crying I can’t fix it.

“Man’s a glacier,” Red calls, grin sharp. “Cold and slow.”

“Slow?” I arch a brow at my oldest brother.

Red barks a laugh. “Okay, not slow. Just quick to bust his load.”

I take his shot, toss it back, set the glass down. Burn slides warm. “You finish that rack, you’re gonna cry, too. I’m about to clean you out.”

“Big talk,” Red singsongs.

“Big facts.” I chalk a cue, roll my neck, feel a nice pop. The noise here is better than quiet. I step into the game and let the geometry take over—angles, force, the physics of collision. White smacks color, pockets answer with thuds as they take their claim on the balls.

“Eight in the corner,” I murmur. It drops. Red groans. Tripp whoops from the other side, “baby brother takin’ you to school, son.”

That was Tripp, the Hellions President and my dad’s best friend. My parents Tank and Sass have four boys and we have given them so much Hell sometimes Tripp had to step in and beat us at our own games. His son, BW is my older brother Red’s best friend. They have been inseparable since birth.

I lean on the pool stick, breathing easy for the first time all night. The woman’s question floats back, uninvited. Do you ever think about something else? Like settling down .

I picture a porch somewhere near the White Oak River, soft wind running fingers through marsh grass, a dog at my feet, a woman in a dress that smells like clean laundry and sunshine.

I picture the stillness. The way quiet could pull at me like undertow on the beach.

The way I’d spend the whole time waiting for something to break.

My hand tightens on the pool stick. The picture splinters.

Good.

Red’s watching me. He knows when I go too quiet. “You good?”

“I’m fine.”

He studies me a beat, then nods and slaps my shoulder like a punctuation mark. “We’re pulling a run down toward Salemburg in the morning. Stud needs some parts. You in?”

“Yeah.” Riding solves things talking can’t. I push away from the table. “I’m getting some air.”

I take the back door out into the night.

The air wraps around me, lip of cool threaded with summer’s last heat.

The security light hums. The moths keep beating themselves stupid against it.

I cross the lot, thumb the fob, and the bike’s lights blink slow, sleepy.

I swing a leg, settle on the seat. The leather’s warm from the heat of the day it holds on to.

I breathe in grease and oil, old sweat and the ghosts of miles.

I could ride.

Right now.

No destination, just lines on the highway and shadows of the dark bleeding down to black water where the sound and river mouth kiss. I could leave the noise behind and run parallel to something that pretends to be peace.

Instead I sit and listen to the night talk. Pine tips hiss overhead. A frog chirps from somewhere dumb and wet. Out there, houses had whole lives—kids asleep on couches, TVs blue and stupid, men and women who know exactly who will be next to them when they wake.

Good for them.

I’m not built for it. Not because I can’t. Because I won’t.

I think about the broad tonight. If she’s somewhere out there hoping I’ll wake up different, she’s wasting her time and mine. People don’t wake up different. They wake up who they are and spend the day deciding whether to lie about it.

I don’t lie.

I don’t settle.

I don’t soften when someone asks me to.

The only promise I make is the one I keep—tomorrow, I ride. And the day after. And the day after that. The road doesn’t ask questions. It just waits for me to answer with speed.

I answer every time.