Page 37 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

When I step onto the porch, the morning has made itself bright.

The bike waits like a promise. Kellum hands me my helmet, his fingers lingering against my jaw when he slides it on.

His eyes search my face through the visor until he finds whatever he always looks for—steadiness, yes; something mischievous, always. He taps the shell twice. My cue.

“Three points of contact,” he says, because of course he does.

“Centerline is a friend, not a fence,” I recite, because I have been trained by a menace and a resource that thought alone makes me smile.

He groans. “Someone’s been gossiping.”

“Someone has family now,” I shoot back, and his expression does that stunned-soft thing that makes my ribs get tight because my heart is overly full with his love.

He swings his leg over and settles; I do the same, the movement so practiced my body does it before my brain catches up. My palms find his waist. He reaches back and squeezes my knee. A loop closes on the map.

Kellum starts the bike. It’s loud and alive and everything that once scared me and now sets me free. We roll onto the street, and I look back just long enough to see them still standing there, guardian spirits in denim and mercy. The camera blinks, recording us into our own story.

“Ready?” he calls over his shoulder when we hit the main road.

“Ready,” I answer, and I mean it in every way a woman can mean it.

The hum of the bike settles into my bones the way a heartbeat does when you’re leaning against someone you love—you don’t notice it until it’s the only thing you can hear.

We’re an hour out from the mountains when the horizon starts to change.

Trees stretch taller, greener. The air shifts cooler even though the sun is still working hard overhead.

Kellum leans forward a little, the way he does when his body starts anticipating the road before the asphalt even bends.

I hold tighter, not because I’m afraid, but because it feels good.

When we reach the first sign that warns we are approaching.

TAIL OF THE DRAGON – 318 CURVES IN 11 MILES .

I swear I feel my pulse sync with the engine. The letters are bold, daring, like a challenge only a certain kind of person would answer. Eight, nine months ago, I would’ve been trembling, second-guessing what the hell I was doing on the back of a bike. Now? I grin under my helmet.

Kellum slows to a roll, points with two fingers like a general calling his shot. I nod, squeeze his ribs with my knees, and he laughs—the sound vibrating through my palms pressed to his waist.

Then we’re in it as he takes his place in the middle of the group.

The road coils like a live thing, sharp turns that snap back the second you think you’ve got them figured out.

Up, down, left, tighter left, sudden right.

Guardrails flash, painted with the scuffs and scars of riders who weren’t ready.

But we are. Kellum moves like the bike is part of him, his body tilting, guiding, trusting.

And me? I lean with him.

The first mile, I focus. Balance. Where my weight goes when he shifts. But the fear never comes. Instead, exhilaration floods me—this sharp, wild rush that makes me laugh out loud inside my helmet. Kellum hears it. He pats my leg once, like that’s it.

By the third mile, I stop thinking about mechanics. My body knows. I flow when he flows, press when he presses, grip when he accelerates. The air tears past, sharp with pine and damp rock. My braid whips my back, my lungs open wider than they have before taking in the mountain air.

I think about the first ride I ever took with him.

How my knuckles went white on his cut, how my brain screamed about accidents and headlines, how I was too stuck in fear to feel the freedom.

I think about the night he took me riding when he was restless and I asked how we could make him feel free.

I didn’t know then that riding wasn’t just his freedom. It could be mine too.

Now it is.

At one of the short straights, Kellum glances in his mirror, checking me. I give him a quick thumbs-up, then spread my arms wide for a second, letting the wind carry them like wings. His shoulders shake with laughter, and he guns the throttle just to hear me whoop.

Curves tighten again, stacking fast, but we move as one. It feels like dancing—fast, fierce, a rhythm that belongs to only us. Sweat collects at the back of my neck, my thighs burn a little from gripping, but I’ve never felt stronger.

Halfway through, the mountains open up on one side, a sudden view of endless green spilling down into valleys.

My stomach flips, but not from fear—from awe.

The sheer size of it all, the reminder that the world is bigger than heartbreaks and small-town whispers, bigger than the girl who thought her life ended when she lost her parents and her boyfriend’s lies unraveled her.

I tuck closer into Kellum’s back and whisper—not loud enough for him to hear through the roar, but loud enough for me to know I said it—“Thank you for finding me, love me, challenging me, and holding me close.”

The curves keep coming. So do we. Ten miles, eleven. Then the road spills us out onto a wide overlook where other bikes are already lined up, chrome glinting in the sun. Kellum slows, eases the bike into a spot near the edge, and cuts the engine. The sudden silence roars almost as loud as the ride.

My legs wobble when I climb off. Not from fear. From adrenaline. From joy. Kellum steadies me with a hand at my waist, helmet still on, eyes laughing.

“Well?” he asks as I unclip my strap and shake out my braid.

I grin so hard my cheeks hurt. “Again.”

He throws his head back and laughs, big and free, the sound bouncing off the mountain and coming back twice as loud.

He pulls me into his chest, crushing, then presses his helmet to mine before tugging it off.

His hair’s a mess, his grin wild. “You’re mine, Kristen,” he growls, but it’s joy, not warning. “Every damn curve, you’re mine.”

I tilt up, kiss him hard, not caring about the other riders grinning at us like they know exactly what just happened on that road. I don’t care. Because they probably do. Because they’ve been here too.

I break the kiss, still smiling. “Always.”

He cups my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone, expression turning softer than the leather he wears. “Come on, darlin’. Gotta show you the view.”

He takes my hand and leads me toward the overlook, the mountains waiting like a secret he’s about to let me in on.

The overlook hangs like a balcony over a thousand shades of green.

The mountains fold and refold on themselves until they’re more suggestion than shape, blue at the edges where the air forgets to hold color.

A line of bikes glints in the sun—chrome and matte, clean and road-dirty, stickers and stories layered on helmets and tanks.

Helmets sit on seats like loyal dogs. Riders stretch, trade water bottles, show off scuffed leathers like proud scars.

Kellum threads our fingers and leads me to the stone wall.

A boy no older than seventeen gawks at our bike and gets an elbow from the woman with him—his mom, probably.

An older couple in matching half-helmets split a granola bar and the woman catches my eye, gives me a conspirator’s nod that says first time, I nod back.

But it won’t be my last. I want us to be them one day, old, gray, but riding this out together.

Kellum drops our hands only long enough to tug my knit neck warmer from his back pocket and hold it up with a grin.

“You smuggled my cozy?” I ask, delighted.

“Mama handed it to me on the porch, she made two” he says. “Said you’d get cocky and forget mountain air bites.”

“She knows me well.”

“She prayed for you for me,” he says, and it folds me right open in a way that doesn’t hurt. I let him pull the knit over my head letting it scrunch around my neck.

“Hold still,” he murmurs. “You got bug confetti on your cheek.”

I snort. “That’s my new bronzer.”

He laughs, rubs it away with his knuckle, then leans against the stone and drags me between his knees so I’m standing in the frame of him. From here the drop looks dramatic and safe at the same time—like the world wants to impress without actually threatening.

For a minute neither of us speaks. We just let the view try its tricks to wow us. The man in front of me wows me more than anything. The mountains breathe. My body answers.

“Was it what you thought?” he asks, voice low enough to be ours alone.

“More,” I respond, immediately. “It’s like the road is brutally honest. No pretending. It shows you everything—your fear, your balance, your trust. If you lie, it’ll put you in the guardrail. If you tell the truth, it will carry you.”

He hums, pleased. “You rode on truth, then.”

“I did,” I say, proud enough to glow. “With you. Because this is us.”

He presses a kiss to the side of my temple.

A group pulls in—a few Hellions from another chapter, Salemburg I think the cuts said.

They swing off with that loose-limbed relief that says, two wheels or two feet, I can handle both.

One of them flicks a chin at Kellum, respectful, curious.

Kellum nods back. I notice the way their eyes slide to me and away, not dismissive, not territorial.

Acknowledging. Equal. He doesn’t introduce me as an accessory; he doesn’t need to introduce me at all. I’m where he is. It reads.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Kellum says, and I realize I’ve drifted far and deep.

“Pennies don’t cut it. I’m buying the expensive ones now,” I smirk. “Inflation.”

He smiles back. “Name your price.”