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)
For a minute neither of us speaks. We just let the view try its tricks to wow us. The man in front of me wows me more than anything. The mountains breathe. My body answers.
“Was it what you thought?” he asks, voice low enough to be ours alone.
“More,” I respond, immediately. “It’s like the road is brutally honest. No pretending. It shows you everything—your fear, your balance, your trust. If you lie, it’ll put you in the guardrail. If you tell the truth, it will carry you.”
He hums, pleased. “You rode on truth, then.”
“I did,” I say, proud enough to glow. “With you. Because this is us.”
He presses a kiss to the side of my temple.
A group pulls in—a few Hellions from another chapter, Salemburg I think the cuts said. They swing off with that loose-limbed relief that says, two wheels or two feet, I can handle both. One of them flicks a chin at Kellum, respectful, curious. Kellum nods back. I notice the way their eyes slide to me and away, not dismissive, not territorial.
Acknowledging. Equal. He doesn’t introduce me as an accessory; he doesn’t need to introduce me at all. I’m where he is. It reads.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Kellum says, and I realize I’ve drifted far and deep.
“Pennies don’t cut it. I’m buying the expensive ones now,” I smirk. “Inflation.”
He smiles back. “Name your price.”
I turn to him, lean my hip to his thigh, consider my words like I don’t have to hurry. “Eight months ago,” I say, “I thought my life was over because the world I built was made out of someone else’s money and lies. I thought all I had left were failures—at love, at family, at being the kind of woman who doesn’t need rescuing.” I draw a breath that goes all the way down. “Turns out I had a map I hadn’t learned to read. It led me here.”
He watches me the way he watches an engine he respects—attentive, hands-off until asked. “You read it good,” he remarks.
“I had a good guide,” I reply, glancing meaningfully at the man who is my anchor.
He snorts and doesn’t deny it. His fingers toy with the edge of my knit; his eyes move over the horizon and back. “I used to think the road was the only thing that made me quiet inside,” he says after a beat. “The bike, the speed, the concentration. You shut everything else out and it’s just you and the next curve.” He swallows, Adam’s apple sliding. “It’s not anymore.”
“What is it now?” I ask, even though I know because he’s the calm inside me too.
“You,” he states simply. “You’re the quiet. The good kind.”
A woman with a camera offers to take our picture from the Salemburg crew. We say yes, hand over a phone, and stand the way we always end up standing—me in front, Kellum behind, his arms around my waist, my hands on his forearms, relaxed. She takes the picture again with my phone.
“Send that to mama,” Kellum orders , already reaching for my phone to do it himself.
“Already did,” I say, because I did it as soon as the woman handed my phone back. “She’ll print it and put it on the fridge and pretend she doesn’t.”
“She will,” he agrees softly.
After the ride, we stop at the Deal’s Gap gift shop. He picks me up a chain with a dragon charm.
“You’re enabling my souvenir problem,” I accuse, already putting it on. The charm catches the sun and throws it back, a small piece of shining light at my throat.
We are tiny and massive at the same time in this place.
Kellum grows quiet in a different way. The kind of quiet that means his head is on a track. He slides off the wall and stands. For a second I think he’s going to stretch or toss the trash. Instead he faces me full-on. The wind picks that moment to tuck a cool breeze under my collar. I shiver.
“Kellum?” I ask, half laugh, half question because he’s with me but he’s not the same. The sun outlines him in gold; the mountains make a line behind his shoulders. He looks like every good decision I ever almost didn’t make.
He swallows. His jaw flexes. His eyes find mine and stay there like they’ve always lived in that color. “There’s one more curve we need to take,” he says, and my heart starts doing the big drum. I studied the map. We took the ride.
“Out here?” I joke, because that’s what I do when my bones know a thing and my brain wants to be sure.
“Out here,” he says, and his voice is not teasing at all.
Kellum steps close enough that his boots touch my toes. He cups my face, thumbs at my jaw, and I feel a tremor run through him that isn’t fear so much as awe, the shake of a man about to lift something heavy he wants.