Page 3 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

Two

Kristen

The ocean is loud tonight, waves crashing hard enough against the shore that the sound carries all the way up to the deck.

I lean against the glass door, sipping wine I didn’t buy, in a house I couldn’t afford in a hundred years.

White-washed wood floors. Floor-to-ceiling windows.

Art pieces that look like smears of color but probably cost more than my car before it died.

This place isn’t mine. Nothing here is mine.

Except him.

At least, I thought so.

Brian’s voice filters down the hall, low and distracted, talking to someone through his earbuds.

He’s always working late, always got someone calling, needing him.

That’s what he tells me, anyway. And I want to believe it, because believing is easier than pulling at threads.

If I tug too hard, I’m afraid the whole blanket will come apart.

I should be grateful. Twenty-four and living in an oceanfront house most people only see on magazine covers.

Traveling anywhere and everywhere in luxury.

He pays the bills, keeps the fridge stocked with food, has cleaners and cooks come for to care for the day to day, and leaves a credit card in my wallet like I’m a kid with an allowance.

All he asks is that I look good, be available when he wants me, and keep the house from feeling empty.

And I do. For the last four years, he is my life.

I wake up based on when he expects me to be somewhere.

If he’s out of town and doesn’t have me accompany him then I have scheduled spa days per his instructions.

I have fillers and Botox and every facial cream available to me.

Look pretty, that I can do. Love a man who is empty, that is becoming harder with every passing day.

Still, something’s wrong with him.

I see it in the way he looks through me instead of at me. The way his phone never leaves his pocket unless he’s holding it. The way he smiles at texts that aren’t mine.

I take another swallow of wine, let it warm me on the way down. I try to tell myself it’s nothing. That I’m overthinking. That Brian chose me. Out of everyone he could have, he picked me.

But the pit in my stomach says different.

The sliding door rattles as it opens, and he steps onto the deck. White button-down untucked, sleeves rolled to his forearms, tan skin golden under the outside lights. He looks like money. Like control. Like the kind of man who doesn’t lose sleep.

“There you are,” he says, slipping his phone into his pocket. Always the pocket. Always out of reach.

“Here I am,” I echo, forcing a smile.

He kisses my cheek instead of my mouth.

Quick.

Impersonal.

My skin cools where his lips touched. There is no passion left and I’m not sure when it left.

“You want another?” he nods at my glass.

“I’m good.”

He leans on the railing, staring out at the water like he owns it. Maybe he does, in some way. He pays for the view. He pays for everything.

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Busy day?”

“They’re all busy.” His voice is clipped, like he’s half here and half already gone.

I set my glass down. “We could?—”

“We could go inside,” he interrupts, turning toward me with that look. The one that says he wants me to stop talking and start undressing.

My heart trips. Because part of me wants to cling to any scrap of closeness he’s willing to give, even if it’s just sex. Maybe if I give him what he wants, I’ll get what I need.

I nod, step past him, and he follows me inside. The sliding door shuts with a whisper, shutting out the ocean, shutting out the noise, shutting out the truth I don’t want to face.

Inside, the house is too clean. The kind of clean that feels like a stage set. The kitchen island gleams. The couch looks like it has rules. Even the art leans just so, like it’s posing for a camera that’s always watching.

Brian’s hand finds the small of my back.

It’s a guide more than a touch—firm, directional.

He steers me toward the bedroom like he’s moving through a meeting agenda.

I hate that the part of me that’s aching for reassurance falls into step, eager, obedient, like the right choreography might bring back the look in his eyes I haven’t seen in weeks or maybe it’s been months.

I don’t know when exactly this distance creeped in, but I can’t deny the way it’s obvious between us now.

He closes the door with a soft click. The ocean’s muffled now, a low thrum through glass and drywall and insulation, like a heartbeat I can’t quite reach.

“Come here,” he says.

I do. He doesn’t kiss me right away. He loosens my dress at the zipper, slow enough to feel like foreplay but focused enough to feel like a task.

The fabric slides down my sides with a whisper and puddles at my feet.

He steps back to take me in, gaze traveling, cataloging.

Approval glints, quick and faint. I reach for him, and he lets me, but he’s already somewhere else—eyes flicking to the nightstand where his phone lies face-down, then back to me, then over my shoulder to the bathroom.

“Brian,” I say, quiet, because I want to pull him into the moment and not let him skip to the next one. “Look at me.”

His jaw flexes. Then he does. And for a few minutes, I can pretend I’m the only thing he sees.

We kiss. It’s practiced, the way all things become after time. I know what he likes—where his shoulder is tight from lifting and where to press my thumb to make him breathe out a soft sound, how he hates teeth but loves the edge of tongue.

He knows me, too. Or he used to. Tonight feels like a song we learned together and somehow now we are playing apart, just slightly off tempo, like there are other lyrics running under the melody he’s not cuing me into.

Still, when his hands finally map me, when my body answers, heat blooming in all the right places, I let myself fall. Maybe this is how we bridge the gap. Maybe connection is a muscle and we can work it back from weakness.

His mouth finds my neck. Fingers trail my thigh. The bed is cool against my calves. For a breath, I close my eyes and try to quiet the part of me that’s tallying every glance at the nightstand, every message alert he’s silenced all evening, every mechanical shift in his grip.

“Brian,” I murmur again, softer, like prayer.

He answers with his body, and for a little while the edges blur. I let the waves of it rush up and over me, not thinking, not measuring, letting the need to be chosen, to be wanted, eclipse anything that’s jagged and sharp.

And then, at the moment the scene becomes its most private, I let it go—to black.

I let the details fade out like lights deliberately dimmed, the warmth and rhythm flattening to the shape of a memory I don’t have to replay.

What matters isn’t the mechanics; it’s the ache afterward.

It’s the way he is done and I lay over him, listening to his heartbeat wishing it beat for me only once again.

He rolls away first. He always does now.

“Shower,” he says, already on his feet, already scooping his phone off the nightstand without thinking and then putting it back down—oddly, carefully—like he remembered something and then decided against it.

He twists the bathroom knob and steam starts to echo as the water thunders on, a rush that swallows the room.

I lie there, the sheet cooling against my skin, the ceiling fan spinning in tranquil, indifferent circles. The ocean keeps talking beyond the glass, relentless as the tide moves in and loud like truth crashing to the shore.

It’s small things that add up to wrong.

Before he didn’t leave the bed without taking me by the hand to shower with him.

He used to pull me under the spray with him, laughing when I squealed about cold tile and hot water.

He used to kiss me after, water beading on his lashes, his hair stuck in little dark peaks.

He used to leave his phone anywhere—kitchen counter, the pocket of a jacket slung on a chair, the arm of the couch—like it was just an object, not an attachment.

Now it follows him like a shadow he babysits.

And when we were together, the phone was second to me, not the other way around.

Nerves prickle like static under my skin.

I turn my head toward the nightstand. The phone is a black rectangle of silence.

Face-down. No case, because he hates them.

Bare glass, bare secrets. Four minutes pass.

I count them on the clock across the room, the second hand stuttering and leaping like it does, always catching up a fraction late.

The water slides hotter, I hear the click of the fancy faucet dial he had to have. He increases the temperature when he’s thinking. I know this because I know him. The intrusive thought is stubborn. It doesn’t let me go.

I shouldn’t do it. That runs through my head alongside the reminder that I have to.

They chase each other in circles until my body moves without my permission.

I sit up. My heart is too loud. The room is too quiet.

The white noise from the shower fills every gap as I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand.

My feet hit the rug. The rug is an absurd thing—handwoven, Brian said, like that’s supposed to mean I should be afraid to step on it. I cross it anyway and stop at the nightstand, looking down at the phone like it might bite.

If I touch it, I’m the one crossing a line. That’s what he’ll say. He’ll make it about my hands, not his transgressions. But lines in the sand don’t appear without reason. They’re drawn until a truce is made.

I breathe in, slow. Out, slower. I press my fingers to the edge of the phone and slide it into my palm. It’s lighter than I expect. It’s also heavier. I flip it over.