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)
Unknown number. I swipe green because I’m still in the part of my life where phones mean logistics, not landmines. Plus no one has this number but work and Kellum and his family.
“Hello?”
Static, then a man’s laugh. “Whore.”
I freeze. “Excuse me?”
“Biker’s toy,” a different voice cuts in, too close to the mic, breathy like he’s been running his mouth all day. “You think wearing his mark on your neck makes you somebody? You’re trash.”
The word hits like it used to. For half a second, I’m back in a parking lot with no one, my phone dead and my car gone. That half second burns away fast. I hit end call with a force that makes my finger ache.
The phone rings again. A number but I don’t recognize it. My stomach tightens, but I answer because I’ve learned that sometimes the fastest way out is through.
“Stop calling me.”
Laughter. Not one voice this time, but a chorus of men practicing power where it costs nothing. “Gonna get yours,” one says. “Hellions don’t keep their playthings. We’ll make sure you remember. Can’t wait to mark your body myself.”
I hang up. Block. The phone rings again with no caller ID. I don’t pick up. It rings three more times while I stand in the kitchen and try to will my heartbeat down out of my mouth.
I move on instinct. I put my phone on speaker, open a new note, and start writing the numbers down. I don’t know if it will matter. It feels like something I can do besides shake. By the seventh call, I’m answering and saying, “This call is being recorded,” like that will scare someone who does this kind of stuff. By the eighth, my hands aren’t shaking anymore, no I’m full on rage mode. By the ninth, the voicemail catches and I hear a threat drop into a recorded box like garbage into a can.
In the quiet between rings, my brain jumps to the only man who’d be petty enough to pay people to spit words down a line at me.
Brian.
The tenth call comes. I let it go to voicemail. It’s the same kind of spit, a man saying I deserve what I get for taking myself down in class which is so Brian-coded I see red. I don’t wait. I pull up my keypad, tap the number from memory, and listen to it ring.
He answers on the second. “Kristen,” he answers, like he’s been inconvenienced. My blood runs cold because he does indeed know my number.
“What did you do?” I demand.
He sighs, exaggerated and bored. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. The calls. Your little friends. Your frat of cowards who think harassing a woman makes them men. Call them off.”
A small sound that wants to be a laugh curls at the edge of his voice. “You always were dramatic.”
“You always were spineless and small,” I shoot back. “And you’re about to be reported. I saved the voicemails. I wrote down every number. I will walk this into the sheriff’s office myself.”
“If you can’t handle a little community feedback about who you choose to—”
“Shut up,” I say, clear, no shake to my voice. “I don’t owe you a damn sentence. Call. Them. Off.”
He tsk-tsks. “This is what happens when you play outside your class, Kristen. You attract unwanted attention. Maybe you should reconsider your choices.”
I’m pacing now, the phone clamped to my ear, fury burning a clean path through whatever fear thought it might plant. “You don’t get to paint abuse as attention. You don’t get to call harassment a lesson. If any of this is you—and it is just like you—I will make the next month of your life inconvenient in a hundred legal ways you can’t buy your way out of.”
Silence on his end—one beat, two—like he’s deciding how amused to be. “Be careful, Kristen,” he warns finally, soft and dangerous. “Men like that don’t find their end in life comes well easy. And women like you—”
The front door opens.
Kellum steps in, keys in his hand, eyes already on me. He hears my voice before he sees my face. He hears Brian’s voice bleeding through the speaker. The temperature in the room drops and spikes at the same time.
“And women like you,” Brian continues, savoring it, “get what they—”
The line goes dead.
Because Kellum is there, and my thumb has already hit end without me knowing it. I’m breathing like I ran. He’s not. He’s very, very still.
“What did he say?” he asks, voice flat.
“He—” The words don’t fight to get out; they march. “The calls started practically the minute you left. He’s got people watching. Unknown numbers. Men calling me a whore. Saying I’ll ‘get mine’ for being with a biker. I told him to stop. He acted like it was a public service announcement.” I lift my chin. “I have the numbers. Voicemails. I’m going to the sheriff tomorrow.”