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)
Kellum blinks once, slow, like he’s trying to hold something in his eyes that wants out. “This doesn’t wait for cops and it doesn’t wait for tomorrow. I handle this right now,” he states, careful, “He brought this on you. I’m going to him.”
My stomach drops. “Kellum—”
“Keys,” he says, but he’s already moving, not for the hook where we keep the SUV keys, but for the door. For the night. For the bike. Fury is not hot on him. It’s cold. Calculated.
“Kellum.” I follow him into the hall. “Don’t. Please. Don’t give him what he wants.”
He stops long enough to look at me. Whatever he sees on my face bends something inside him, but doesn’t break it. “I told him,” he reminds, quiet, calculated. “I told him once. He had his chance to cut the shit. He had a choice. We all do. He chose wrong.”
“Kellum—”
But he’s gone. The door slams. The engine screams a second later, raw and immediate, and then the sound tears down the street.
For three heartbeats, I stand there, phone in my hand typing away to Crunch knowing my man needs his brothers, and then I move. I grab the SUV keys off the hook, shove my feet into shoes, and hit the porch. The camera light over the door blinks like it has advice. I don’t take it. I get in the SUV and follow the noise I know. His bike.
His taillight is a red pulse I chase across town. I know where he’s going. Every turn is a page in a book I’ve already read. Left at the four-way, right where the road widens and forgets it’s in a neighborhood, straight through the stupid brick gate Brian paid too much for—my heart in my throat at that part. Because I don’t know if the code is changed. When the gate opens for Kellum and me, I can’t help but feel twisted up as if it remaining closed would stop what’s about to happen.
How can one day be such a rollercoaster of crazy?
Fifteen
Kristen
I keep distance, but not much not because I want it but because I’m not stupid. Kellum’s not weaving. He’s a direct line focused on his target. He goes the length of Brian’s driveway in three seconds and lands the bike roughly on the kickstand crooked in the drive like he doesn’t intend to be here long. I park and climb out but I’m not fast enough.
The front door opens before he can knock. Brian is a classic narcissist, he heard the engine a block away and couldn’t resist the attention. He steps onto the porch with arms spread like he’s greeting guests. He doesn’t see me yet, his eyes are focused on Kellum.
“Kellum,” he mutters, pleased with himself. “To what do I—”
Kellum hits him.
There’s no wind-up. No speech. Just a fist, as clean as a professional boxer, snapping Brian’s head sideways. The sound is a crack that makes my stomach flip. Brian stumbles backwards into the doorjamb, shock wiping his smirk clean for the first time in his life as blood trickles out of his mouth.
“I told you,” Kellum states, voice low, the kind of low that makes dogs sit down. “You disrespect her again, you feel it.”
He hits him again.
Brian tries to square up, but he’s never squared anything in his life that didn’t fit neatly into a portfolio. He swings, sloppy, cagey, and Kellum steps inside it like he’s been doing this since he learned to walk. Another punch. Another.
It’s not a fight. It’s a lesson. It lasts too long and not long enough, my breath hitching out in useless little sounds while my hands clench and unclench. My brain tries to sort the two things at once. The part that wants to cheer until my throat turns raw because someone finally, finally made the outside of Brian match the inside.
And the part that wants to scream because the man I love is about to break something we can’t afford to replace—his own freedom.
The thought takes root somewhere deep inside me. The feelings I have for Kellum that have creeped up in me slowly, delicately, and I want to protect them.
I want to protect him.
“Kellum!”
He doesn’t hear me over the rage inside him. The punch thrown, his fist makes contact in Brian’s stomach this time, knuckles sinking into a button up suit shirt he didn’t bother to change out of. Brian wheezes, folds, and Kellum lets him hit the porch before he grabs the front of his shirt and hauls him up like a rag doll.
“I told you,” he repeats, quiet enough to make the hair on my arms stand up. “You got one warning. Didn’t fuckin’ listen.
Brian spits something that was probably going to be a word and ends up a sound and I think a tooth flies out onto the ground. He goes for Kellum’s face with an open hand because he doesn’t know how to do otherwise. It skids off cheekbone and fury. Kellum’s fist answers and Brian’s nose goes—there’s a flash of red; I look away before I catalog it. Kellum’s breathing hard now, chest heaving, the restraint I’ve seen him put on himself every day snapping like a belt you stretched too far.