Page 24 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

“You really think you can give her what she had with me?” he asks, needle under velvet. “You can’t buy what I buy. You can’t open doors where I open them. You can’t even take her to a restaurant that gets written about.”

“She doesn’t want to be in places that get written about,” I tell him frankly. “She wants to be fed life.”

Kristen’s laugh spills out as she mutters. “He makes a great grilled cheese.”

Brian ignores it. “You think the patch on your back and that growl in your voice make you a man? You’re a boy with toys. Clubs and noise. She will get tired of it. And when she does?—”

“When she does,” I interrupt, slow, patient, like explaining weather to someone who thinks the sky cares about his schedule, “she’ll tell me. And I’ll listen. I won’t lock her out of her life and change the code on the gate like a coward. And I won’t fucking tow her damn car.”

Something mean unfurls behind his eyes. “You’re talking big for a guy whose retirement plan is a jar of change.”

“Careful,” I warn low, because the only place this goes next is ugly and I’d rather not decorate the porch with him. “You shouldn’t talk about things you really don’t know about to people you don’t know.”

Kristen moves closer; her shoulder brushes mine. She steps forward one half-step, claiming space in front of me. “You don’t get to talk to him like that.”

His eyebrows rise. “You’re defending him now?”

“I’m defending me,” she declares. “Because every time you open your mouth, it’s the same insult dressed differently. You keep telling me what I’m allowed to want. You keep trying to sell me who I am. Brian, I’d rather count change with someone who sees me than drown in your money and lies.”

He scoffs. “You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being real.” She tips her head. “I have a box with a number on it at the post office and a job that deposits my money into my account and a future that is whatever I decide to make it. Those are tiny things until you’ve had just to take away.

Now they’re everything that is my own.” She turns and walks back a few steps behind me.

He looks lost for the first time. That’s the thing about men like him—take away their angles and all you get is air.

“Go home,” I order. “You’re done here.”

He steps in like he might try to slide past me and up the steps. I shift. He meets a wall that happens to be ribs and a man who decided tonight is not the night he lets a snake into his house. His mouth twitches, and for a second the polish cracks and the real snarl underneath unleashes.

“You threatening me?”

“No,” I taunt. “I’m explaining cause and effect.”

He snorts, glances at Kristen again, tries for soft. “Baby, this isn’t you.”

She smiles with only her mouth. “You don’t know me at all.”

“I made you.”

“You dressed me up. You decorated me,” she corrects. “You taught me the song and dance you wanted me to perform. Then you tried to take me apart when I wouldn’t stand where you put me.” She breathes out, slow, and the night breathes with her. “We’re done.”

Silence. The kind that’s choice, not accident.

Brian flicks his keys into his palm. He glances at me, and what he says next is meant to be the knife he turns as he leaves. “You can keep the trash,” he says, eyes on me. “It suits you.”

I don’t move. I don’t bite. The best way to beat a man like this is to let him hear how small he sounds when the world doesn’t echo him back.

Kristen doesn’t let it go. “One more thing,” she says, and he pauses because arrogance can’t resist an audience.

“Stop showing up here. If you do, I call the cops, and I will press charges for harassment. Also, don’t call the spa.

If you try to cause trouble with my job, I will ruin your day with a hundred small, legal things that add up to pain you can’t buy your way out of.

Because Brian I do know your secrets, sweetheart. ” There is venom in her tone.

He flares again. “You don’t scare me.”

“You don’t have to be scared,” she challenges. “You just have to be gone.”

He hesitates—two beats, three—like he’s listening for permission he’s not going to get.

Then he turns on his clean heel and stalks back to the car.

He doesn’t slam the door because men like him think slamming is for the poor.

The engine starts, purrs, backs up slow, headlights sweeping the porch and catching Kristen’s face as she watches him leave without flinching.

He points the hood toward the street. Gravel crunches.

The tail lights go red, then shrink, then disappear around the hedge.

Silence swells, then thins. The moths keep their idiot beat. The grill pops a warning. I glance back and flip the steaks before they cross from seared to ruined. They aren’t medium rare tonight, but they will still be good. My hands are steady. My pulse is not.

Kristen’s breath comes out on a shudder. I turn to her slow, because even a good fight leaves tremors, and I don’t want to spook her now that the adrenaline’s giving up.

She’s staring at the spot where his taillights were, jaw set, cheeks high with color. Her hands shake once at her sides, then stop. She’s getting herself under control.

I swallow. There’s a particular kind of heat that comes from watching someone you care about light up and refuse to burn. It’s not lust, but it’s a turn on. It’s respect wired into wanting.

“You good?” I ask, because it’s the only question that matters.

She drags her gaze to me. The eyes that meet mine are clear. “Yeah,” she says, voice rough like she had been yelling. She didn’t. The emotion was being released. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Come here,” I offers, not as a command.

She steps in. I catch her by the hip with one hand, hook the other behind her neck, and kiss her forehead once because I can’t not. She exhales into my shirt and then laughs—this small, disbelieving sound that turns into something like joy.

“What?”

“I told him off,” she states, eyes wide like she surprised herself. “I told him off and you didn’t have to do it for me.” She waves at my fists.

“I would’ve,” I tell her the truth. “But I prefer this version. Watching you draw the line.”

Her grin turns sly. “You looked like you wanted to hit him.”

“I always want to hit him.” I flip the steaks again because the grill doesn’t care about our conversations. “Not worth the cleanup.”

She looks at the grill, then at me, then back at the driveway where ghosts aren’t allowed to park anymore. Something sets in her shoulders. She straightens. “I’m hungry.”

“Emotions burn calories,” I share nonchalantly.

“So do other things,” she winks then she snorts, pushes my shoulder once, light.

“Help me carry,” I add, and she does—first carrying her wine and my beer then inside she gets the plates set up. We work the way we’ve learned: efficient, easy. The door stays open because the night can behave itself now that it’s been told who owns this porch.

We eat with ease and windows open. The room is still humming from the argument, but it’s a good hum, like electricity running where it’s supposed to. She bites into a bite of the steak and closes her eyes on a moan of satisfaction.

“Still boxed wine,” I remind, nodding at her glass. “You good with that?”

“It tastes like victory.” She lifts it and clinks mine glass beer bottle. “To grilled cheese and telling the truth.”

“Steaks,” I correct. “We upgrade when the occasion demands.”

She laughs, shakes her head, then sobers. “Thank you.”

“For what.”

“For not… stepping in when I didn’t need you to.” She worries the edge of the napkin with her thumb. “For wanting to, but not taking it from me.”

“I wanted to rearrange his jaw,” I admit.

“I know.” She smiles into her plate. “I could sense it.”

“I also wanted to see you choose your own weapon.”

“And I did.”

“You did.” I take a pull of beer. “Proud of you.”

Her eyes flash wet for a second. She blinks it away and eats. When we’re done, we stack plates. I wash. She dries. Small rituals. Their own winning ceremony.

When the kitchen’s quiet again, she leans against the counter, crosses her ankles, and studies me like I’m something she just found in a tide pool and wants to keep.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re turned on,” she acknowledges, not a question, and I feel it like she pressed a hand to my cock and read my pulse out loud.

“Yeah,” I admit, because I’m not the man to lie. “Watching you stand up? That’s a thing.”

Her mouth goes sly again, soft curves sharpening. “Good.”

I tilt my head. “You turned on?”

“A little.” She lifts a shoulder then gives me a sly smile. “A lot.”

We hold there, in the charged space where choice lives.

I feel the old grooves in me—the ones that say reach, take, make it into heat because that’s what you know.

I ignore them. I step in without closing the last inch.

Her breath brushes my throat. My hands find the counter on either side of her hips, not touching her yet, caging without trapping.

“You want me to kiss you?” I ask, because there’s a difference between momentum and consent, and I like the second one better.

“Yes,” she says, clear as a bell.

So I do. Slow at first, because I like a build.

Her hands skate under my shirt at the small of my back, fingers hot as the grill had been, tugging me in.

I pin her gently to the counter, keeping enough space for air because breathing is important.

Her mouth opens on a sigh that sounds like now and I give it to her.

The kiss turns. It always does. Slow to heat, from heat to pull, pull to a climb.

I work her mouth like I tune a motor, listening for what the engine is telling me, changing pressure when it begs for it, easing off when it spikes too fast. She answers, rhythm for rhythm, getting better at her own body, getting less shy about letting me know what works.