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)
“It’s funny,” I mutter, head on his shoulder, eyes on the street that is exactly as interesting now as it was yesterday. “A few months ago, if you’d told me my car would show up like a ghost and a biker would come get me and I’d call the post office my saving grace, I would have laughed.”
He grunts. “If you’d told me I’d stand on my porch not breaking a man’s nose while he ran his mouth and that I would feel like I did the right thing letting him breathe for another day… I would’ve laughed, too.”
“We’re very funny,” I state.
“ Hilarious,” he says, tone utterly dry.
I tip my face up. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Do you ever want to hit back in other ways?” I grimace. “Like, petty ways? I want to mail him a box of live crickets. I want to sign him up for a magazine called ‘Being a Better Person.’ I want to do dumb shit, ugh. Childish. But sometimes I can’t help but live in Pettyville.”
He huffs. “Nothing wrong with ideas. We just pick the ones that help more than they hurt. You already hurt him the right way.” At my look, he adds, “You didn’t go with him. That was his goal.”
I sit with that. It scratches at something that feels like shame and then finds the place under it that feels like pride. “I didn’t,” I speak more to myself than him.
When the bugs start their full-throated chorus of night songs, we go inside. In bed, I curl how my body wants to, not how habit insists. Kellum’s arm is there like a rope tossed up from a boat to a dock. I pull it around me myself because I can.
“Thank you,” I whisper into the dark, and I’m not sure if I mean for today, for the months, or for the way he lets me be in charge of me. Maybe it’s everything.
“Anytime,” he mutters. “Captain.”
I laugh into his skin. “Okay, First Mate. Next thing tomorrow: DMV.”
He groans like a man being told to eat his vegetables. “We’re very brave.”
“We are. But the time passes quicker when we’re together.”
He gives me a squeeze, “you are not wrong, darlin’.”
Sleep comes faster than I deserve.
Two days later, I’ll forget where I put the certified receipt where I mailed the keys back for twenty minutes and almost cry because I think I’m a mess again, until I find it in the pocket where I keep ChapStick and spare cash and swallow a laugh that shakes me. I’ll write receipts folder on the list. I’ll buy a folder that’s ugly but strong. I’ll label it with my name.
For now, I don’t need a folder. I need this bed, this arm, this quiet. I need the memory of watching my past get winched onto a flatbed and hauled away while I climbed onto something that moves forward because I tell it to.
Boat, bike—whatever it is, I am finally the one holding on because I want to, not because I’m afraid to fall.
And nothing I’m building on here will be towed away from me again.
Thirteen
Pretty Boy
The first thing that hits me when I walk through the door is silence.
Not the kind of silence that’s natural. This is different. This house hasn’t been quiet since the day Kristen stepped into it. She fills space without even trying. Her shoes by the door. Her humming in the kitchen. The sound of her blow dryer in the morning. The way she leaves the bathroom light on low, swearing it helps her sleep.
Now? None of it.
Three days on the road with my brothers, a run that was all grease and adrenaline and too many hours hunched over handlebars — it’s the kind of ride that sticks in your bones. Usually I come home ready to crash, let the bed take me, let the walls remind me I’ve got a place that’s mine.
But tonight, the bed’s too still. The air too empty.
Kristen isn’t here.
I drop my bag by the door, keys in the dish. The house smells like lemon cleaner and faint coffee, like she tried to leave it nice for me. There’s a folded blanket on the couch, a mug in the sink. Signs of her everywhere. Just not her.
A part of me bristles at that. The part that doesn’t like needing anyone. The part that doesn’t want to admit I counted on her being here, counted on the sound of her voice when I walked in.
I grunt, shaking it off. Can’t stand here like a stray left on the porch. I need to wash the road off me. Three days of sweat, smoke, exhaust. The kind of grime you can’t just wipe away with a rag.
In the bathroom, I strip down, toss my clothes in the hamper. The mirror shows a man with tired eyes, road dust in the lines of his face, hair matted from a helmet. Not my best look. I flip on the shower, steam billowing fast in the small space. Hot water, pounding. That’s what I need.