Page 27 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

He hands me the helmet. I take it without hesitation this time, slipping it on and tightening the strap. My legs still tremble when I climb on behind him, but not from fear. From adrenaline. From the sheer weight of telling the past it can’t own me anymore.

As the bike roars to life and we pull away, I glance over my shoulder just once. The Porsche is already half up the ramp, chained and powerless. A perfect metaphor, I think, for Brian’s grip on me now—going, gone, it’s behind me.

The wind slaps my hair back as we hit the street, and I lean into Kellum’s back, into the steady thrum of the engine, into this new rhythm I’m learning: his hands guiding, but my choice to hold on.

I don’t look back again.

The first turn pulls the breath out of me not in a bad way. In the way a tight knot loosens when someone presses exactly the right spot. I lean because he leans, because the road curves just right because my body knows this dance better every time we do it.

We cut through town and out toward the long, flat slices of road where the pines crowd close and gossip with the wind.

Traffic thins. Heat lifts off the blacktop in shimmers and the air on my knees is cooler than I expect this late in the day.

I tuck in and hold, palms flat against Kellum’s stomach, feeling the steady flex of him with each throttle, and each downshift.

The engine’s hum crawls up my spine and scrubs the edges off my past until it’s nothing but a noise I don’t have to keep.

I don’t think about the Porsche. I don’t think about the envelope. I don’t think about Brian’s handwriting, nasty with certainty.

Instead, I think about the way the road pulls all the thoughts into one line and lays them out behind us like thread. I think about how the time between then and now changed the way my body sits on a bike—fear to trust, flinch in surprise to read the road and lean.

He doesn’t talk. There’s no headset, no good way to be heard without yelling. It’s better like this. I get to choose my own words and keep the ones that don’t help.

We take the bridge. I squeeze around his waist, not because the height scares me—because the color of the water is so honest it makes me feel like lying would be rude. Holding onto Kellum grounds me.

On the far side he flicks on the signal, two blinks like winks, and we drop down to the little public dock with the lighting and the good view.

Gravel chatters under the tires. He kills the engine.

The sudden quiet pops in my ears, and the world rushes back—the insects’ buzz, the frog’s low croak, a rope smacking an aluminum mast with a hollow, patient sound.

I slide off and unclip the helmet. He does the same. My hair is a crime against brush manufacturers, but I don’t care. I push it back anyway and breathe. Everything smells like marsh and heat and a little diesel. My heart is still up near my throat, but it’s not panic; it’s leftover frustration.

“Better?” Kellum asks, voice low and unhurried.

I nod. “Yeah.” I huff a laugh that’s half disbelief, half relief. “It’s stupid that I can hear a word like that and start shaking. Like he gets to take up that much space in my body and mind without paying rent.”

“That’s not stupid.” He props a shoulder on the post nearest me, hands tucked in his back pockets like a man who knows exactly where his edges are.

“That’s what happens when someone reads you wrong long enough.

Your system tries to look for the tag every time you get close to a mirror.

You’re outta that now, darlin’. Don’t give it more power. ”

“I did for a moment.” Saying it out loud feels like stepping up onto a new step that wasn’t there last week. “Then I glanced at that car one last time. I let it all go. And I didn’t look back. I’m not looking back.”

“Not a lot worth seeing back there.”

I look out at the water. A shrimp boat limps along the channel, deck light jaundiced in the bright. “He wrote ‘I’ll forgive you,’ like he’s a priest and I’m a sinner.”

“Men like that think they’re God until the first real storm, then they remember how to pray.” His mouth quirks, humorless. “He tried a lifeline. You cut it.”

“You did it for me.”

“You told me to.” He tilts his head, eyes steady on me. “Who is the captain of the ship, Kristen?”

“My boat,” I echo, softer. The words fit better today. “I want to keep acting like it is. At least until it’s real.”

“Okay,” he says simply. “Next thing?”

I breathe, slow, because the old me would fill this moment with panic-plans and the new me knows one good plan is enough.

“We send the keys back. Certified. Paper trail. Pami can send the paperwork for the tow and fees. I’ll let the owners know he showed today and leave a note about him so if he sends flowers or pizza or some dramatic nonsense, staff knows to refuse it. ”

He nods. “I’ll text Red to have Karma swing by with the spare camera and put it up in the back lot at the shop for a few weeks. That’s me, not you. Your task is the mail and the talking to your boss and co-workers.”

“I can talk.” I toe at a bolt sunk into the dock boards, paint flaking off like old memories. “Sometimes I’ll still want to scream, I think.”

“Scream on the bike,” he states like this is all normal. “Wind doesn’t judge.”

We stand in silence that doesn’t press. Just listening to the water rolling in against the dock.

“I don’t want to be scared of him,” I express, like a wish I can turn into a job. “I don’t want him to be the thing someone thinks of when they see me.”

“They won’t,” Kellum states. “They’ll think of you on a porch telling a man to leave.

They’ll think of you behind a desk making a day easier for ten different people who will forget your name and still say a prayer for you because the coffee was hot and their appointment ran on time.

They’ll think of you on the back of a bike, leaning in. ”

I shoot him a look. “When did you get so good at speeches?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I listen.”

We stay until the knot in my chest becomes a knot in my stomach and my stomach reminds me I only had a granola bar for breakfast. We put our helmets back on, and the engine shudders awake like it missed us. The bike accepts us exactly as we are and I find comfort in the simplicity of it.

On the ride back, the wind doesn’t slap.

It’s a hand on my back, steadying. I find the line of his shoulders and fit myself to it.

We take a different route—little two-lanes that pretend they’re private, one tight curve that corkscrews my stomach and makes me laugh into my helmet like I’m a teenager who got away with something.

He feels it; I can tell by the way his weight shifts, the way he twists the throttle another breath and then settles it again like he’s saying a million things but without words.

He parks and kills the engine. I slide off and unclip the strap. My hands don’t shake.

“You good to go back in?” he asks with real concern.

I nod. “I’m going to mail the keys as soon as I get off. Certified. First, I’m going to schedule someone’s facial and refill the mints and write ‘porch camera’ in my notebook and not think about him if I can help it for the rest of the day.”

“Good plan.”

I glance down at his gloved hands. “Kellum?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for letting me decide. Not just doing it for me.”

He tips his chin. “First mate, remember.”

“And for the ride.”

“Anytime, darlin’.” He taps my helmet with a knuckle. “Text me a dot if you need me.”

I grin. “A dot.”

He waits until I’m inside and Trina is behind me at the desk making a face that says she’s got me. I stand for one extra breath, palm on the cool top of the counter, feeling steadier than I did an hour ago.

I’m not trash. I’m not a sinner. I’m not in need of someone’s forgiveness because I haven’t done wrong. I’m the one holding the wheel. And for once, the water looks calm enough to leave the harbor and still wild enough to be unexpected.

By five, I’m outside pretending to check a hangnail and actually scanning for him.

When the rumble threads into the day, I feel that now-familiar drop in my shoulders like a heavy bag put down.

He parks, kicks the stand, holds the helmet out.

Our hands brush. It feels less like a movie and more like clockwork. Beautiful, reliable, and safe.

“Yo captain,” he says, low. “Where to?”

“Home,” I reply, because I want a porch that smells like ash and safety and maybe cinnamon if he’s got that gum in his pocket. “But the long way.”

“Long way it is.”

We take two wrong turns that aren’t actually wrong to get there. I count mailbox flags—down, up, up, down—until I’m out of breath from a laugh I didn’t expect.

At the house, the porch is just a porch. No car. No man. Just two shadows on the rail where a pair of moths decided to die dramatic last night. I sweep them off without ceremony.

Inside, the air smells like coffee and dish soap and us.

I set my tote on the chair, pull out the notebook, and flip to the page where I wrote today’s plan.

I add certified mailed keys with a box and then check it like I’m getting extra credit.

I add call county about harassment file because I want the words paper trail to be a spell against future anxiety.

Kellum watches from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, quiet. “Good day,” he says finally as a statement not a question.

“Good day,” I echo, meaning it in my bones.

He cooks without comment. I slice tomatoes like I’m auditioning for a commercial where women are allowed to be competent in kitchens without being smarmy about it. We eat sitting across from each other at the table like it’s something we have done for years. It’s perfect.

“It’s funny,” I mutter, head on his shoulder, eyes on the street that is exactly as interesting now as it was yesterday. “A few months ago, if you’d told me my car would show up like a ghost and a biker would come get me and I’d call the post office my saving grace, I would have laughed.”

He grunts. “If you’d told me I’d stand on my porch not breaking a man’s nose while he ran his mouth and that I would feel like I did the right thing letting him breathe for another day… I would’ve laughed, too.”

“We’re very funny,” I state.

“ Hilarious,” he says, tone utterly dry.

I tip my face up. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you ever want to hit back in other ways?” I grimace. “Like, petty ways? I want to mail him a box of live crickets. I want to sign him up for a magazine called ‘Being a Better Person.’ I want to do dumb shit, ugh. Childish. But sometimes I can’t help but live in Pettyville.”

He huffs. “Nothing wrong with ideas. We just pick the ones that help more than they hurt. You already hurt him the right way.” At my look, he adds, “You didn’t go with him. That was his goal.”

I sit with that. It scratches at something that feels like shame and then finds the place under it that feels like pride. “I didn’t,” I speak more to myself than him.

When the bugs start their full-throated chorus of night songs, we go inside. In bed, I curl how my body wants to, not how habit insists. Kellum’s arm is there like a rope tossed up from a boat to a dock. I pull it around me myself because I can.

“Thank you,” I whisper into the dark, and I’m not sure if I mean for today, for the months, or for the way he lets me be in charge of me. Maybe it’s everything.

“Anytime,” he mutters. “Captain.”

I laugh into his skin. “Okay, First Mate. Next thing tomorrow: DMV.”

He groans like a man being told to eat his vegetables. “We’re very brave.”

“We are. But the time passes quicker when we’re together.”

He gives me a squeeze, “you are not wrong, darlin’.”

Sleep comes faster than I deserve.

Two days later, I’ll forget where I put the certified receipt where I mailed the keys back for twenty minutes and almost cry because I think I’m a mess again, until I find it in the pocket where I keep ChapStick and spare cash and swallow a laugh that shakes me.

I’ll write receipts folder on the list. I’ll buy a folder that’s ugly but strong. I’ll label it with my name.

For now, I don’t need a folder. I need this bed, this arm, this quiet. I need the memory of watching my past get winched onto a flatbed and hauled away while I climbed onto something that moves forward because I tell it to.

Boat, bike—whatever it is, I am finally the one holding on because I want to, not because I’m afraid to fall.

And nothing I’m building on here will be towed away from me again.