Page 32 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

Trina clears her throat. “Sir, we are a professional place of business. Please refrain from—” She waves at my face and neck. “—your obvious deeds.”

Kellum can’t hold back the full smile that erupts like he’s proud of his work. I am, unhelpfully, delighted because I’m proud to be marked and claimed.

I clock out, grab my tote, and we step into evening like the day arranged the lighting just for us. On the sidewalk, he takes my bag without asking, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

It’s the best day. I didn’t know that the best day could be this ordinary, this full of small things. I didn’t know a woman could walk through town with a bouquet and a mark on her neck and feel not shame but joy.

I tuck that away in the place where I keep proof. I might need it later, when the past tries to call me by my old names.

The glow lasts all the way home—until it doesn’t.

We take the long way because I asked for wind, and he gives me that without negotiation.

I lean, I breathe, I press my cheek to his back and memorize the steady of him.

When we get home, he pulls me in by the hip, steals a kiss that tastes like everything, and says he’s got to run up to the shop to check on a parts order that came in before they close, “twenty minutes,” and I tell him I’ll start a salad because I’m trying to be an adult who eats somewhat healthy on weekdays.

He’s gone three minutes when the first call comes in.

Unknown number. I swipe green because I’m still in the part of my life where phones mean logistics, not landmines. Plus no one has this number but work and Kellum and his family.

“Hello?”

Static, then a man’s laugh. “Whore.”

I freeze. “Excuse me?”

“Biker’s toy,” a different voice cuts in, too close to the mic, breathy like he’s been running his mouth all day. “You think wearing his mark on your neck makes you somebody? You’re trash.”

The word hits like it used to. For half a second, I’m back in a parking lot with no one, my phone dead and my car gone. That half second burns away fast. I hit end call with a force that makes my finger ache.

The phone rings again. A number but I don’t recognize it. My stomach tightens, but I answer because I’ve learned that sometimes the fastest way out is through.

“Stop calling me.”

Laughter. Not one voice this time, but a chorus of men practicing power where it costs nothing. “Gonna get yours,” one says. “Hellions don’t keep their playthings. We’ll make sure you remember. Can’t wait to mark your body myself.”

I hang up. Block. The phone rings again with no caller ID. I don’t pick up. It rings three more times while I stand in the kitchen and try to will my heartbeat down out of my mouth.

I move on instinct. I put my phone on speaker, open a new note, and start writing the numbers down.

I don’t know if it will matter. It feels like something I can do besides shake.

By the seventh call, I’m answering and saying, “This call is being recorded,” like that will scare someone who does this kind of stuff.

By the eighth, my hands aren’t shaking anymore, no I’m full on rage mode.

By the ninth, the voicemail catches and I hear a threat drop into a recorded box like garbage into a can.

In the quiet between rings, my brain jumps to the only man who’d be petty enough to pay people to spit words down a line at me.

Brian.

The tenth call comes. I let it go to voicemail. It’s the same kind of spit, a man saying I deserve what I get for taking myself down in class which is so Brian-coded I see red. I don’t wait. I pull up my keypad, tap the number from memory, and listen to it ring.

He answers on the second. “Kristen,” he answers, like he’s been inconvenienced. My blood runs cold because he does indeed know my number.

“What did you do?” I demand.

He sighs, exaggerated and bored. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The calls. Your little friends. Your frat of cowards who think harassing a woman makes them men. Call them off.”

A small sound that wants to be a laugh curls at the edge of his voice. “You always were dramatic.”

“You always were spineless and small,” I shoot back. “And you’re about to be reported. I saved the voicemails. I wrote down every number. I will walk this into the sheriff’s office myself.”

“If you can’t handle a little community feedback about who you choose to?—”

“Shut up,” I say, clear, no shake to my voice. “I don’t owe you a damn sentence. Call. Them. Off.”

He tsk-tsks. “This is what happens when you play outside your class, Kristen. You attract unwanted attention. Maybe you should reconsider your choices.”

I’m pacing now, the phone clamped to my ear, fury burning a clean path through whatever fear thought it might plant.

“You don’t get to paint abuse as attention.

You don’t get to call harassment a lesson.

If any of this is you—and it is just like you—I will make the next month of your life inconvenient in a hundred legal ways you can’t buy your way out of. ”

Silence on his end—one beat, two—like he’s deciding how amused to be. “Be careful, Kristen,” he warns finally, soft and dangerous. “Men like that don’t find their end in life comes well easy. And women like you?—”

The front door opens.

Kellum steps in, keys in his hand, eyes already on me. He hears my voice before he sees my face. He hears Brian’s voice bleeding through the speaker. The temperature in the room drops and spikes at the same time.

“And women like you,” Brian continues, savoring it, “get what they?—”

The line goes dead.

Because Kellum is there, and my thumb has already hit end without me knowing it. I’m breathing like I ran. He’s not. He’s very, very still.

“What did he say?” he asks, voice flat.

“He—” The words don’t fight to get out; they march.

“The calls started practically the minute you left. He’s got people watching.

Unknown numbers. Men calling me a whore.

Saying I’ll ‘get mine’ for being with a biker.

I told him to stop. He acted like it was a public service announcement.

” I lift my chin. “I have the numbers. Voicemails. I’m going to the sheriff tomorrow. ”

Kellum blinks once, slow, like he’s trying to hold something in his eyes that wants out. “This doesn’t wait for cops and it doesn’t wait for tomorrow. I handle this right now,” he states, careful, “He brought this on you. I’m going to him.”

My stomach drops. “Kellum?—”

“Keys,” he says, but he’s already moving, not for the hook where we keep the SUV keys, but for the door. For the night. For the bike. Fury is not hot on him. It’s cold. Calculated.

“Kellum.” I follow him into the hall. “Don’t. Please. Don’t give him what he wants.”

He stops long enough to look at me. Whatever he sees on my face bends something inside him, but doesn’t break it. “I told him,” he reminds, quiet, calculated. “I told him once. He had his chance to cut the shit. He had a choice. We all do. He chose wrong.”

“Kellum—”

But he’s gone. The door slams. The engine screams a second later, raw and immediate, and then the sound tears down the street.

For three heartbeats, I stand there, phone in my hand typing away to Crunch knowing my man needs his brothers, and then I move.

I grab the SUV keys off the hook, shove my feet into shoes, and hit the porch.

The camera light over the door blinks like it has advice.

I don’t take it. I get in the SUV and follow the noise I know. His bike.

His taillight is a red pulse I chase across town.

I know where he’s going. Every turn is a page in a book I’ve already read.

Left at the four-way, right where the road widens and forgets it’s in a neighborhood, straight through the stupid brick gate Brian paid too much for—my heart in my throat at that part.

Because I don’t know if the code is changed.

When the gate opens for Kellum and me, I can’t help but feel twisted up as if it remaining closed would stop what’s about to happen.

How can one day be such a rollercoaster of crazy?