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)
The wind slaps my hair back as we hit the street, and I lean into Kellum’s back, into the steady thrum of the engine, into this new rhythm I’m learning: his hands guiding, but my choice to hold on.
I don’t look back again.
The first turn pulls the breath out of me not in a bad way. In the way a tight knot loosens when someone presses exactly the right spot. I lean because he leans, because the road curves just right because my body knows this dance better every time we do it.
We cut through town and out toward the long, flat slices of road where the pines crowd close and gossip with the wind. Traffic thins. Heat lifts off the blacktop in shimmers and the air on my knees is cooler than I expect this late in the day. I tuck in and hold, palms flat against Kellum’s stomach, feeling the steady flex of him with each throttle, and each downshift. The engine’s hum crawls up my spine and scrubs the edges off my past until it’s nothing but a noise I don’t have to keep.
I don’t think about the Porsche. I don’t think about the envelope. I don’t think about Brian’s handwriting, nasty with certainty.
Instead, I think about the way the road pulls all the thoughts into one line and lays them out behind us like thread. I think about how the time between then and now changed the way my body sits on a bike—fear to trust, flinch in surprise to read the road and lean.
He doesn’t talk. There’s no headset, no good way to be heard without yelling. It’s better like this. I get to choose my own words and keep the ones that don’t help.
We take the bridge. I squeeze around his waist, not because the height scares me—because the color of the water is so honest it makes me feel like lying would be rude. Holding onto Kellum grounds me.
On the far side he flicks on the signal, two blinks like winks, and we drop down to the little public dock with the lighting and the good view. Gravel chatters under the tires. He kills the engine. The sudden quiet pops in my ears, and the world rushes back—the insects’ buzz, the frog’s low croak, a rope smacking an aluminum mast with a hollow, patient sound.
I slide off and unclip the helmet. He does the same. My hair is a crime against brush manufacturers, but I don’t care. I push it back anyway and breathe. Everything smells like marsh and heat and a little diesel. My heart is still up near my throat, but it’s not panic; it’s leftover frustration.
“Better?” Kellum asks, voice low and unhurried.
I nod. “Yeah.” I huff a laugh that’s half disbelief, half relief. “It’s stupid that I can hear a word like that and start shaking. Like he gets to take up that much space in my body and mind without paying rent.”
“That’s not stupid.” He props a shoulder on the post nearest me, hands tucked in his back pockets like a man who knows exactly where his edges are. “That’s what happens when someone reads you wrong long enough. Your system tries to look for the tag every time you get close to a mirror. You’re outta that now, darlin’. Don’t give it more power.”
“I did for a moment.” Saying it out loud feels like stepping up onto a new step that wasn’t there last week. “Then I glanced at that car one last time. I let it all go. And I didn’t look back. I’m not looking back.”
“Not a lot worth seeing back there.”
I look out at the water. A shrimp boat limps along the channel, deck light jaundiced in the bright. “He wrote ‘I’ll forgive you,’ like he’s a priest and I’m a sinner.”
“Men like that think they’re God until the first real storm, then they remember how to pray.” His mouth quirks, humorless. “He tried a lifeline. You cut it.”
“You did it for me.”
“You told me to.” He tilts his head, eyes steady on me. “Who is the captain of the ship, Kristen?”
“My boat,” I echo, softer. The words fit better today. “I want to keep acting like it is. At least until it’s real.”
“Okay,” he says simply. “Next thing?”
I breathe, slow, because the old me would fill this moment with panic-plans and the new me knows one good plan is enough. “We send the keys back. Certified. Paper trail. Pami can send the paperwork for the tow and fees. I’ll let the owners know he showed today and leave a note about him so if he sends flowers or pizza or some dramatic nonsense, staff knows to refuse it.”
He nods. “I’ll text Red to have Karma swing by with the spare camera and put it up in the back lot at the shop for a few weeks. That’s me, not you. Your task is the mail and the talking to your boss and co-workers.”