Page 5 of Brash for It (Hellions Ride On #11)

Three

Pretty Boy

The smell of oil clings to me before the sun even burns off the morning mist. Garage doors roll up slow, rattling on their tracks like old bones.

Light spills in, sharp and gold, catching dust notes in the air.

It’s another day at the shop—Hellions insignia on the sign, Hellions hands on the work, brothers working together, and the hum of engines the only music I need.

I tug my cut tighter around me, leather already hot even this early, but it feels wrong not to wear it. The patch isn’t something to wear like a watch. It’s who I am. Who I’ll always be.

“Morning, grumpy.” Tripp’s voice comes from under a hood, grease already streaked down his forearm. He grins like he woke up to a joke he hasn’t finished telling.

“Don’t call me that.”

He laughs anyway. Bastard knows I hate it. “Customer drop-off’s on bay two. Said she heard a whining sound in second gear.”

“Or she doesn’t know how to drive,” I mutter, but I walk off that way.

I prefer to work with my brothers on their real estate investment properties, but they are all off doing other stuff.

Tommy Boy went out of town to handle something for Jamison, she’s Jennissey’s sister who is married to our older brother Crunch.

He’s got three closings this week on sales so he doesn’t want to deal with construction this week.

Red went out of town with Kylie, his woman, to some meeting in Raleigh about farming shit since she runs her old family farm now.

I don’t do idle time well, so I told Pami to put me on the garage schedule. Kick and Knuckle Buster cover most shifts here, Pami is their mom and Boomer’s ol’ lady.

Work is steady. Always is. People bring us their bikes, cars, and sometimes even big rig trucks if they trust us enough, and we fix them.

There isn’t anything we can’t work on. Simple equation.

Bolts, belts, gears—they don’t lie. They don’t smile at you while they’re screwing someone else behind your back. They either work or they don’t.

I get under the car, tools spread neat on the tray. My hands move automatically, and sure, confident. I don’t rush. Patience in this kind of thing pays off. You treat a machine rough, it’ll spit in your face. You listen, you look close, you tighten just so—it’ll run for you faithful.

Brothers filter in as the day wakes. Karma’s got donuts, sugar sticking to his beard before he’s swallowed the first one. Boomer’s already half-cursing about paperwork we’re behind on. The shop hums, men shouting, laughing, music crackling out of an old speaker. It’s loud, but it’s family.

Every now and then, I catch the talk drifting. About wives. About kids. About dates planned and dinners missed. BW’s ol’ lady, Karsci, is pregnant. The man, he can’t shut up about it.

Toon, he has it the worst. He got himself tangled up with Dia. That is BW’s baby sister, but more than that she belongs to us all. As Tripp and Doll’s only daughter, she is the Hellions princess if there ever was such a thing.

As much as I love Toon as my brother. He fucks up with her, I’ll fucking kill him. He is busting his ass building shit for her dog rescue. It’s cute to watch him bend over backwards for her. They’re in love just like all the others and I’m happy for them.

I’m genuinely happy to see them all content and finding their place in life with a partner. I am.

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting a little bit.

“Need a hand?” Tripp calls over.

“Got it.”

I tighten one last bolt, wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

The whining sound was just a belt loose.

Easy fix. Customer will think I saved her life.

Maybe I did, in a way. The key to driving safely is not panicking.

If something had broken and she was on the highway, if she overreacts it could mean a wreck.

At least now this is fixed and she won’t mess up.

By noon, humidity rolls in heavy, thick enough to choke. I shrug out of my cut long enough to eat the sandwich one of the prospects grabbed from the corner store. Bread’s stale, meat’s thin, but it fills me. I wash it down with water warm from sitting in the sun.

Work carries me until late afternoon. More bikes in, more grease on my hands, more hours burned away in the rhythm I know best. Fix. Wipe. Test. Fix again. It’s a language my body speaks without thinking.

When the last customer rolls out, the shop quiets. Brothers peel off toward their women, their homes, their full tables. Laughter trails them, fading with the sound of engines pulling away.

I stand in the empty bay, rag in my hand, staring at the streaks of oil on the concrete floor. My reflection stares back from the chrome of a bike waiting on parts. Hard eyes. Hard mouth. Man-shaped wall.

I hang the rag.

I need air.

The road waits outside like an old friend. My bike’s where I left it, black and mean, chrome catching the last of the day’s sun. I swing a leg over, settle into the seat, and for the first time all damn day, something in me eases.

Key turns. Engine roars. The sound isn’t noise—it’s life, it’s my heartbeat.

I roll out, gravel crunching under tires until I hit pavement.

Wind rushes past, cool against sweat. The farther I get from the garage, the lighter my chest feels.

Houses fall away. Pine trees rise tall and dark, their scent sharp in the air.

The sky bleeds orange to pink to purple, the kind of sunset tourists stop to take pictures of. I don’t stop. I live here.

Throttle down. Speed answers. I let the bike run.

Nothing else matters out here. Not the brothers finding their happiness. Not the empty house waiting for me. Not the itch under my skin that says maybe, just maybe, I want more than chrome and leather and nights that blur.

I push harder, chasing the horizon, chasing silence, chasing the piece of myself I only ever find at sixty miles an hour with nothing but asphalt stretching ahead.

The first few miles peel off like dead skin. Sweat cools. My shoulders drop. Speed evens my head. I don’t push hard enough to be stupid, but I let the bike breathe. She likes it. I do, too.

Passing through Stella, fields open wide on both sides, flat as open possibilities.

Soybeans in tight green rows, corn fading from summer bravado to early fall tired.

I pass a church with a sign that says GOD’S NOT MAD—HE WANTS TO TALK.

Cute. The only thing I talk to out here is the machine under me.

I don’t put music in my ears. Noise like that makes men miss the world right in front of them. Out here, the soundtrack’s wind, the steady drum of the engine mixed with a random lawnmower with someone drinking a beer while taking in the evening sun cutting grass.

I pull off. There’s a two-pump station near the split on highway fifty-eight that always smells like hot rubber and cheap coffee. The bell over the door slaps when I push through. The old man at the counter looks me over and nods like we’re soldiers trading salutes.

“Hot,” he says.

“It’s Carolina.”

He flicks his eyes toward the cooler. “Cold’s in there.”

I grab a water, slap cash down, don’t take the receipt.

Outside, I lean on the bike and drink half the bottle in six swallows.

A kid in a minivan points at my patch through a smeared window.

His mom pulls his hand down and mouths sorry at me.

I raise the bottle in a lazy toast. She smiles like she got away with something.

Back on the road, the trees thicken, Croatan forest and swamped out ditches in some spots crowding the shoulders. The air shifts—fresher, wetter, speckled with salt if you breathe deep enough.

I do.

I hit highway twenty-four heading into Cedar Point and the whole world opens before I take the left into Cape Carteret.

Bogue Sound spreads out in front of me next.

Tourists litter the road with their rental SUVs and bad choices.

I weave through them clean, head on a swivel, eyes cutting angles and finding exits.

You ride like the other guy’s an idiot and you live longer.

I could go all over the bridges to the beach.

Instead, I drop off by a public boat ramp most people ignore once the day’s done.

The gravel crunches loud in the quiet. A couple of trucks sit with empty trailers, straps flapping lazy in the breeze.

Someone left a bait box cracked, the smell of shrimp hits in whiffs.

I kill the engine and the sudden silence presses.

The ocean’s not loud here on the sound side.

The sound talks low, a long exhale under the rasp of marsh insects.

I swing off the bike and walk to the end of the dock.

The boards flex under my boots. A crab pot bobs, its rope ticking against a cleat like an impatient finger.

I breathe. In through my nose, out slow. My heart steps down a rung.

When I’m riding, my thoughts line up. When I stop, they get ideas. They tiptoe in and start rearranging furniture.

My brothers all settling down. I’m happy for them. It’s not a lie. Seeing a brother find a soft place to land doesn’t take a damn thing from me. It doesn’t. It just makes me asks questions I don’t want to answer.

Do I want that?

The word itself feels like a splinter. I touch it and pull back.

I can picture pieces. Not all at once—never all at once—but flashes.

A woman’s laugh coming down the hall while I kick off my boots.

A second coffee mug left in the sink, lipstick print like a red thumbprint.

A light on in a back room because someone fell asleep reading.

A voice asking, You coming to bed? And mine saying, Yeah. In a minute . And meaning it.