Page 35 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

Seventeen

Pretty Boy

We step into the night air and my shoulders drop a half inch. I throw her the helmet and she catches it smooth, all this time of practice closing the gap between thinking and doing. It’s all natural to her now.

We ride. The curves on highway fifty-eight pull us into a rhythm I trust. Her hands at my waist remind me what I brought into that room and what I’m leaving with.

When the water flashes to our right and the bridge starts to sing under us, I decide we’re not done talking.

Just not there. Not where the walls can collect the words and hold them for later

I turn for the long way home.

The bike eats miles the way fire eats dry brush.

I keep the throttle steady, the bars tight, letting the machine do what it was built to do.

Wind rips at us, slamming the noise of the world back far enough that there’s nothing left but road and heartbeat.

Kristen presses into me, arms cinched around my waist like she knows I need the anchor as much as she does.

Halfway across, I feel it hit—this sudden gut-deep awareness that I’ve never done this before.

Not the riding, not the clubhouse, not the fights.

That’s second nature. What I’ve never done is share it all.

Bring someone into both worlds and mean it.

I’ve always kept things separate. Women stayed at the bar, at the motel, at the edge of my bed until I was done.

The club stayed family, ironclad and untouched, never entangled with someone I fucked.

Kristen just rewrote the rules. And I let her.

I take a hard right after the bridge, into a stretch of road that winds through marsh and open fields. It’s quiet out here—no traffic, no houses, just us and the hum of the motor. When I finally slow, it’s because I need air that isn’t moving a hundred miles an hour.

We pull into a gravel turnout overlooking the sound.

I kill the engine, kick the stand. The sudden silence roars in my ears.

Kristen slips off the back, pulls her helmet free, hair spilling around her shoulders in the low light.

She’s flushed from the ride, eyes bright, lips parted like she’s been grinning behind the visor the whole time.

She steps closer, rests a hand on my chest. “You were wound so tight in there. I can feel it.”

I catch her wrist, hold it, because I need something solid. “He had no right questioning you.”

Her brow furrows. “Kellum, he’s your brother. Of course he did. That’s what family does. They look out for you.”

“I don’t need him doubting my judgment.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean. I run a hand over my jaw, try again. “I wouldn’t have brought you there if it wasn’t serious. He should know that.”

“He does,” she says gently. “He just needed to hear it from me too.”

The words dig under my ribs. I don’t know how to explain that it’s not about trust in her, it’s about me never having to defend a choice like this before.

I look out at the water, dark and endless. “I don’t know how to do this,” I admit, the words rough like they don’t want to leave my throat.

She waits. Doesn’t fill the silence. Just waits.

I drag in a breath. “I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never brought anyone in, never cared what the hell they thought about me after the night was done. But you—” I break off, shake my head. “Kristen, I love you. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

The air stills. My heart hammers hard enough I swear she can hear it. For a second, I think I’ve ruined it, said too much, tipped us into a place we can’t climb out of.

Then she smiles. Small at first, then wide, lighting her whole face. She slides both arms around my waist, presses her forehead to my chest.

“You don’t do anything with it,” she whispers. “You hold it. You hold me. And we treasure each other.” She tips her head back, eyes steady on mine. “Because I’m in love with you too.”

The ground tilts under me. Not in a bad way—in the way you know you’ve been walking crooked your whole damn life and suddenly someone sets you straight.

I cup her face, kiss her slow, deep, every ounce of what I can’t put into words poured into the press of my mouth against hers. She answers with that same certainty, like she’s been waiting for me to catch up.

When we break apart, I rest my forehead against hers, breathing her in. “Say it again,” I murmur, needing it like air.

“I love you,” she says without hesitation. “I love you, Kellum Perchton.”

The mixed emotions that have been riding me since the clubhouse breaks apart like smoke in wind. What’s left is fire, but a different kind—the kind that warms instead of burns.

I kiss her again, harder this time, lifting her off her feet, spinning her once in the gravel just to hear her laugh. She’s mine. And she chooses me in return. That truth is louder than anything else.

When I set her down, I jerk my chin at the bike. “Let’s go home.”

Her smile curves into something soft and dangerous. “Home sounds perfect.”

We don’t talk much on the way back. We don’t need to.

The road understands what was said at the water and keeps its mouth shut about it, just lays out the miles and lets us ride them.

By the time we turn onto our street, the sun’s gone low and long; the houses have that soft-edged look that makes everything feel closer than it is.

The camera blinks like a tiny heartbeat over the door. I kill the engine and the silence that follows isn’t awkward or heavy. It’s comfortable.

She slides off the back, helmet tucked to her hip, eyes on me like she can’t figure out how to stop smiling and doesn’t want to. I take her hand, because I don’t know what else to do with all this.

Inside, the house smells like what it always smells like—lemon cleaner, old coffee a little burned in the pot, something warm that’s just us.

The map watches from the wall, planting a seed in my mind.

One day soon, we’ll begin filling the map with the trips we take together.

I want to show her the world my way. I toss my keys in the dish.

Cut on the chair and home feels more right than every before.

She steps close, palms flat on my chest, fingers curling into cotton like she’s trying to hold the words steady where I said them. “You okay?” she asks, quiet, a little breathless.

“Better than.” My voice scrapes on the way out. I let it. “Say it again.”

Her mouth curves. “I love you.”

I lean in and kiss her before my brain can throw any more stops onto the track.

It’s not the kind of kiss that asks for proof or makes a point.

It’s the kind that says we are here and means home is with you.

She answers with the same relief, the same kind of hunger that has nothing to do with starving and everything to do with coming in from the cold.

I lift her, and she laughs into my mouth—soft and surprised like joy snuck up on her.

Her legs hook around my hips without a pause.

I carry her down the hall, bump my shoulder on the doorframe because I’m not looking where I’m going.

She’s looking back at me, and I swear I feel something in my chest settle into a fullness like never before.

The bedroom is dim. The blinds are half-closed, a sliver of moonlight laying an silver line across the floor.

I set her down on the edge of the bed and step back just enough to see her.

She reaches for me anyway, a little half-grab at my shirt like maybe I’ll forget how to be here if she gives me too much space.

“I’m right here,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.” She swallows. “Me either.”

I strip my tee over my head and it’s the first time taking off a shirt has ever felt like laying a weapon down.

Her hands are on me right away, mapping, confirming—shoulder, chest, the old scar near my ribs that Tommy Boy gave me when I was fourteen.

She touches it and I catch her hand and kiss her wrist because I’m not defined by my scars, not the one there or the one on my face.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” I say, the promise as much a habit now as locking the door.

“I’ll tell you if I want you to stop,” she echoes, mouth tipping, brave. Then, she winks, “But, I won’t want you to stoop.”

We take our time. We unbutton and untie and unhook like people who don’t mind that the best parts of a ritual are the slow ones.

There’s heat, but there’s also quiet threaded through it, a knowing that makes my hands gentler than they’ve ever been and somehow more certain.

I can’t stop kissing the corner of her mouth.

She laughs once when I do it again, and I memorize the exact sound because I want to hear it for the rest of my life.

When I lay her back and the light decides to climb up her throat and rest there, I have to close my eyes for a second because there’s only so much a man can look at and keep the primal need to claim at bay.

She touches my face, thumb roughing along my cheekbone where Brian’s open palm left a red imprint last week that’s gone now.

Her eyes say she remembers and she’s here anyway. My chest hurts in the best way.

Full.

We fit. That’s the simplest way to say it.

Not because of bodies—bodies can do all kinds of trickery and call it fit.

We fit because my breath finds hers without thinking, because her hands know where to go like they’ve been keeping a map I didn’t see, because every time I start to push, she meets me there with a yes that isn’t hurried, just sure.

I ask her things without words—this, here, like that—and she answers with her mouth, with her hips, with her whole damn self.

It turns the world into a small bright place that doesn’t ask for anything except the truth of this minute.

When it’s too much to keep quiet, when the heat climbs and the room narrows and my name in her mouth does that thing to my spine that I’m never going to pretend I can fight, I hold her hand.

She squeezes back like she’s anchoring me on purpose, like she knew the tide would pull hard right there. It does. We go with it.

Later, when the noise eases and the air cools, I’m on my back with her sprawled half across me, hair everywhere, one leg tangled with mine like she’s improved upon the concept. My heart is still knocking at my ribs, but it’s not trying to get out. It’s trying to settle in.

We don’t rush to fill the quiet. The fan ticks; the house breathes. I reach for the sheet and pull it over her shoulders because I know she runs cold when the sweat’s gone. She hums, lazy, pleased, and burrows closer like she wants to live just like this forever.

“You’re looking at me,” she mutters into my skin.

“Damn right I am.” It comes out the way it always does with her—the edge filed down, the truth bare.

She tilts her head up, studies my face like she’s checking for cracks I didn’t mention. “You’re… softer,” she remarks finally, amused and not. “Not a lot. Like a man who figured out a better pillow.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” I deadpan, and she smiles against me.

“You meant it,” she adds, more serious now. “At the water.”

“Yeah.” I don’t even try to duck it. “You?” I ask even though I know it to my soul she loves me.

“More than anything.” Her fingers skate over my chest, writing words I can’t see, spelling something I don’t need to read to understand. “I didn’t know it could feel like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like relief.” She breathes out. “Like I set down something heavy I thought I had to carry forever and didn’t notice until it was gone.”

I swallow, thumb rubbing absently along her shoulder. “You’re not carrying anything alone.”

“I know.” She says it like a vow. “You either.”

“I love you,” she says, softer now, like a good-night.

“I love you,” I answer, because it feels like a thing that needs echoes to root.