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)
And if a Hellion stops being counted on, he stops living up to the patch.
The lot’s half empty now. Afternoon heat bakes the asphalt, makes it shimmer. I kill the engine, swing a leg, and lean the bike steady. Heads turn through the glass, like they always do when leather and chrome show up where they don’t belong.
Then she’s there. The five feet tall, dark hair, brown eyed damsel that is a stunner. She comes out slow this time, not running barefoot like before. Her hands are clenched around the strap of her bag, knuckles white, face careful. She looks different than earlier—her nails gleam, her skin’s glowing from whatever the hell they do back there. But under it, she looks hollow.
I jerk my chin. “Ready?”
She swallows, nods. “Yeah.”
I hold out a spare helmet. She hesitates like it’s a snake, then takes it.
“Not gonna break you,” I state. “Name is Kellum, gonna take you home. I’m just a ride, darlin’ not a snake waiting to strike.”
She tries for a laugh. It dies halfway. “That’s what I’m afraid of being broken.” She catches her breath like she shouldn’t have said that. “I’m Kristen, nice to meet you.”
I smirk, but I don’t push. I swing onto the bike, wait until she climbs on behind me. Her hands flutter like she doesn’t know where to put them. Finally, with some guidance from me she settles against my cut, fingers gripping the leather just enough to hold on while she mutters her address in Indian Beach.
“Good girl,” I mutter, more to the bike than her, and kick us into gear.
The ride’s short. I follow her directions, weaving through town, out toward the beach houses with gates taller than fences and lawns trimmed by people who don’t live in the house they’re trimming. It smells like money out here, like chlorine from pools that don’t get used because the beach is right there and flowers that only bloom in catalogs.
“Here,” she says, tapping my shoulder, pointing at a gated drive.
I pull up, cut the engine. She slides off, fumbles with the call box. Punches in a code. Red light. Wrong. She tries again, slower this time. Same result.
Her breath hitches. She presses the call button. The line clicks, rings once, then silence. No voice. No answer. She tries again. Nothing.
Her hands shake when she drops it. She looks at me, eyes wide. “The code it worked this morning. It’s changed. I—” Her voice cracks and I watch her fight back tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
I watch her crumble, piece by piece. She’s trying to stand straight, trying not to let the panic own her, but it’s winning.
I push off the bike, cross the few feet to her. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not—”
“It is,” I cut in, firm. “You’re not sleeping on the damn sidewalk.”
Her lip trembles. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“With me,” I explain like this is an every day occurance.
She blinks. “What?”
“You can stay with me.” I nod back at the bike. “Ain’t fancy, but it’s a roof and a bed.”
She stares like I’ve just offered her a ticket to hell. “Stay with you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I state, dryly. “I ain’t making a move. You need a place, I got one. Hell, I don’t even stay there all the time. Just crash for tonight and tomorrow you can figure your shit out.”
Her gaze flicks to the gate again, to the house she can’t touch, then back to me. She looks like someone dangling between two cliffs with no rope.
Finally, she whispers, “Okay.”
I fought the urge to ask her what other option did she have because from where I was standing she was up shit’s creek. I take the helmet from her limp hands, strap it back on her head myself because she can’t seem to manage it.
“Hold on,” I tell her. “Tighter this time.”
When I swing us back onto the road, her arms wrap around me more firmly than before, pressed close like she’s bracing against a storm. She doesn’t know the storm’s already here.
The ride back is quieter than a church before the final prayer of service She clamps her arms around my ribs like a lifeline and rests her cheek against my back. I can feel her breath through leather—shaky at first, then evening out when the road starts doing its work. I keep it steady. No showing off. No hard pulls on the throttle. She’s had enough of the ground shifting under her feet for one day.
My place isn’t much to look at compared to where she was living. We pull up, I click the kickstand down. Cinderblock shoebox house with a patch of crabgrass that dies and resurrects on a schedule only it understands. Vinyl blinds. A porch light that hums because the bulb’s old.
She slides off the seat slow, helmet still on, dazed. I pop the strap free and lift it off. Her hair is smashed in a way that would make a different woman squeal. She doesn’t. She just blinks like she’s trying to file the details of this new world.