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)
We leave Brian to his porch and the lesson he’s about to get from the Hellions. They will give him the story to his injuries. The road out of that neighborhood is too smooth, too manicured. When we hit the real street, the bumps feel like life.
Reality is rough, pretend is smooth. I’ll take the real any day over the presentation of something good.
I don’t talk. He doesn’t either. We ride without music, without the helmet tap I usually give at the bridge, without anything but the knowledge that we are outrunning the worst version of ourselves, not the law. The air scrapes the anger off my skin like sandpaper—rough, necessary. My cheek finds his the divot between his shoulder blades.. He reaches back once, halfway through a light, and touches my knee, brief, proof I’m still with him.
At home, the camera blinks red. I wonder if it saw me run out of the house. I wonder if later I’ll watch the play back and recognize the moment it became clear as day. He rides out for me, I’m riding for him. We’re in this together.
The kitchen still smells like lemon and the house still holds the shape of us. We stand in the doorway like two people who are trying to find solid footing together again.
“I’m sorry,” he begins first, voice scraping. “I’m I know better. I just—”
“You warned him,” I interrupt, because it’s true and because truth is what we are.
“I did.” He looks down at his hands again like they betrayed him. “I saw your face and that’s not okay warning or not.”
“I’m not scared of you,” I reassure, and I mean it enough that it surprises me. “What you saw isn’t my fear of you. There is nothing in you that will ever hurt me Kellum. I know that. I’m scared of losing you. To prison. To a judge who doesn’t care why. To a version of you that thinks we beat back a problem with fists without consideration for the consequences.”
He nods. “Consequences aren’t really something I think about unless I’m dishing them out.”
“I know.” I move close, because distance helps no one right now. I take his hands because someone should. They’re warm, rough, trembling in the way rage leaves a body—late, sheepish. “Tomorrow morning, I’m gonna go for the protective order. If Brian doesn’t get the message from you and the Hellions, then he gets it the legal way. His contact with me is done. His connection to me is gone. We cover all our bases.”
“Early,” he instructs.
I glance at the sink because a dish towel exists and towels are for wiping. He catches the look and huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I’m fine,” he explains. “It’s not bad. Looks worse than it is.”
“That’s the opposite caption for Brian’s whole life, looks good and it’s ugly underneath,” I mutter, and he almost smiles until he doesn’t, because the night isn’t funny and we both know it.
“Kristen,” he says after a long minute where the fridge hums and a car goes by and we pretend to be people who could climb back into easy, “you can tell me you hated that. You can tell me you hated me. You can tell me anything.”
I think of the porch. My name in his mouth. The way his eyes changed temperature. The way he dropped Brian the second he realized I was present.
“I hated some of it,” I share honestly. “And the part I didn’t hate scares me more.”
He nods, acceptance and misery in one motion. “I know my world isn’t what you’re used to.”
“I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” it sounds like a prayer he didn’t think he knew how to say.
We eat cereal because we don’t have the energy for more We sit on the floor because chairs feel political. We don’t turn on music because noise feels like a lie. After two bowls, the adrenaline finishes wringing itself out of our bodies and leaves us heavy. He leans his head back against the cabinet and closes his eyes. I lean mine on his shoulder and leave it there.
When we finally crawl to bed, he doesn’t reach for me like a fix. He reaches like a man asking permission to rest with the person he almost lost to his worst habit. I give it because I want to be close to him. I want him to feel me, know that I’m not going anywhere.
In the dark, I listen to the AC breathe and his chest rise and fall. The phone on the nightstand glows with two new voicemails I don’t open. Tomorrow we’ll take them to a building with fluorescent lights and a clerk who’s seen everything. We’ll be people who fill out forms. We’ll make our story a line in a system that works as often as it fails and we’ll call it protection anyway because it’s the tool we have that falls in line with the law.