Page 38 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)
I turn to him, lean my hip to his thigh, consider my words like I don’t have to hurry.
“Eight months ago,” I say, “I thought my life was over because the world I built was made out of someone else’s money and lies.
I thought all I had left were failures—at love, at family, at being the kind of woman who doesn’t need rescuing.
” I draw a breath that goes all the way down.
“Turns out I had a map I hadn’t learned to read. It led me here.”
He watches me the way he watches an engine he respects—attentive, hands-off until asked. “You read it good,” he remarks.
“I had a good guide,” I reply, glancing meaningfully at the man who is my anchor.
He snorts and doesn’t deny it. His fingers toy with the edge of my knit; his eyes move over the horizon and back.
“I used to think the road was the only thing that made me quiet inside,” he says after a beat.
“The bike, the speed, the concentration. You shut everything else out and it’s just you and the next curve.
” He swallows, Adam’s apple sliding. “It’s not anymore. ”
“What is it now?” I ask, even though I know because he’s the calm inside me too.
“You,” he states simply. “You’re the quiet. The good kind.”
A woman with a camera offers to take our picture from the Salemburg crew. We say yes, hand over a phone, and stand the way we always end up standing—me in front, Kellum behind, his arms around my waist, my hands on his forearms, relaxed. She takes the picture again with my phone.
“Send that to mama,” Kellum orders , already reaching for my phone to do it himself.
“Already did,” I say, because I did it as soon as the woman handed my phone back. “She’ll print it and put it on the fridge and pretend she doesn’t.”
“She will,” he agrees softly.
After the ride, we stop at the Deal’s Gap gift shop. He picks me up a chain with a dragon charm.
“You’re enabling my souvenir problem,” I accuse, already putting it on. The charm catches the sun and throws it back, a small piece of shining light at my throat.
We are tiny and massive at the same time in this place.
Kellum grows quiet in a different way. The kind of quiet that means his head is on a track. He slides off the wall and stands. For a second I think he’s going to stretch or toss the trash. Instead he faces me full-on. The wind picks that moment to tuck a cool breeze under my collar. I shiver.
“Kellum?” I ask, half laugh, half question because he’s with me but he’s not the same. The sun outlines him in gold; the mountains make a line behind his shoulders. He looks like every good decision I ever almost didn’t make.
He swallows. His jaw flexes. His eyes find mine and stay there like they’ve always lived in that color. “There’s one more curve we need to take,” he says, and my heart starts doing the big drum. I studied the map. We took the ride.
“Out here?” I joke, because that’s what I do when my bones know a thing and my brain wants to be sure.
“Out here,” he says, and his voice is not teasing at all.
Kellum steps close enough that his boots touch my toes. He cups my face, thumbs at my jaw, and I feel a tremor run through him that isn’t fear so much as awe, the shake of a man about to lift something heavy he wants.
“Kristen,” he says, and my name in his mouth turns everything soft.
“ Months ago you walked into a mess and made it a home. You put quiet in my head where there was chaos. You let me learn how to say always and find comfort in it. You chose me. Over and over. I don’t take that for granted. I never will.”
My throat is gone. I nod anyway.
He drops his hands, steps back, and for one staggering heartbeat my body thinks he’s leaving. He isn’t. He’s bending.
The ground tilts because he does—big man, big love, dropping to one knee on a turnout at the end of the road that is a test of a man and his machine. His hand goes to his back pocket. He pulls out a small black box that has no business looking right in this place, and yet somehow it does.
“Oh,” I say as words have failed me. The sun warms the top of my helmet; the knit warms my neck; his love warms everything else.
He flips the lid. The ring inside is not loud. It’s not timid either. A band of white gold, a center stone clear and round, flanked by two tiny triangles that look like arrowheads or biker wings depending on the light. It’s not fancy. It’s perfect. It’s us.
“Marry me, darlin’,” he says. No speech. No tricks. Just that. “Be my wife. Be my always.”
I laugh and cry in the same breath, the sound ridiculous and yet fitting to us. “Yes,” I say, because of course it’s yes
His relief is a visible thing—shoulders loosening, mouth breaking wide.
He slides the ring onto my finger with careful hands, then stands and I launch at him like he was a magnet I couldn’t resist. He catches me, laughs into my mouth, spins me once the way he did the night we said it the first time.
Somewhere, someone whoops. Somewhere, a camera clicks.
Somewhere, the mountain doesn’t move but it feels like it does.
When he sets me down, he holds my face like he did when he started. “You sure?” he asks, gentle formality, last exit offered like a man who knows love because he knows choice.
“Yes,” I say again, steadier, firmer, the ring cool against his stubble when I cradle his jaw.
“I want your mornings and your nights. Your shop and your porch. Your maps and your help with lists. Your brothers and your mother and your Hellion family. I want your quiet. Your loud. I want your last name if you’ll share it and your life if you’ll keep choosing me to stand in it. ”
He closes his eyes like I just gave him the world. “Done,” he manages, rough.
And then we make our way back. Another ride together and a lifetime more to go.
The End
Until the next ride …