Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“No,” I whisper.
He rolls his shoulders once and shrugs, the gesture infuriating in its simplicity. “You’re free to leave any time.”
The line lands flat and horrifying. He says it like he’s telling me the time, like he’s pointing out a takeout menu, like generosity. You’re free to leave.
“Brian,” I manage to get my voice back, but it comes out shredded. “That’s your answer?”
He lifts his chin. “You’re not a prisoner here. You don’t like how I handle my life, leave.”
He turns, picks up a pair of slacks from the top of his dresser. As he slides them on his eyes don’t meet mine. He grabs his wallet, slips it in his back pocket. Keys. His phone goes into that favorite pocket like it’s the conclusion of a ritual. He doesn’t look at me until he’s at the bedroom door.
“Don’t break anything,” he states mildly. “It’s expensive.”
The door opens on his back like I’m an audience to his exit. He walks down the hall, whistling the tail end of a tune I can’t place, like he didn’t just split the skin of my life with a few expert cuts. The front door clicks a second later. Then silence. Not ocean silence. House silence. The particular kind that’s all fan and refrigerator and a slow settling of wood. The kind that amplifies your breath and makes it sound like someone else’s.
I stand in the middle of the room, every muscle in my body locked, waiting for him to come back and say he didn’t mean it. Waiting for this to be the part of the story where the misunderstanding resolves and he apologizes and we try.
I’m waiting like a fool.
Hoping like an idiot.
Wishing like a naïve girl that I had it all wrong.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t come home.
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.